Despite a mother’s claim that a boy had bullied her daughter at Taipei Municipal Dunhua Junior High School, a probe by the Taipei City Government’s Educational Department and school authorities declared on Friday that it had been just a simple misunderstanding.
Last month, the mother of a student, surnamed Chiang (江), spent about NT$1 million (US$33,390) in newspaper advertisements accusing a male student of bullying her daughter.
The school subsequently convened its own committee to look into the matter.
Photo: Shi Chih-ju, Taipei Times
Wang Mei-en (王美恩), a member of the committee, told a press conference on Friday that the incident was found to be atypical of most schoolyard bullying cases and that the committee had voted 11 to 0 against making the case an official bullying investigation.
Chiang had clashed verbally with the defendant on the Internet, as well as in the schoolyard, and the clashes suggested she did not fit the image of the long-term disadvantaged student usually found in bullying cases, Wang said.
She added that the school concluded that the students lacked social relationship skills, and the solution was for them to receive counseling on such skills.
Chiang’s mother said she found the verdict unacceptable.
She said it was only normal for her daughter to retaliate when she could no longer take the bullying, adding that when the committee used her daughter’s Facebook responses last year as evidence, it was rubbing salt on wounds that were still raw.
The school is only trying to cover things up, Chiang’s mother said, adding that she believed the school would not help unless the matter reached the scale of the Hung incident, referring to the death of an army corporal who allegedly died from physical punishment in intense heat.
Despite the school’s assurances to Chiang’s parents that they would be able to apply for a second investigation within 20 days of receiving formal notice, Chiang’s mother said she may proceed directly to court.
“We will be discussing the matter with our lawyer next week and we are not ruling out the possibility of suing the [alleged] defendant,” Chiang’s mother said, despite expressing concern that her daughter may be harmed further by the proceeding.
Chiang’s mother said she would forgive the boy if he offered a public apology, adding that she was not asking that he be transferred to another class for fear of him finding fresh bullying victims.
Meanwhile, school principal Kao Min-hui (高敏慧) said that the school was on top of the situation and she was sorry Chiang’s mother was unable to accept the outcome.
She added that the school would seek to prevent future incidents by providing one-on-one consultation for students.
The parents of the alleged defendant made a statement through the school that they respected the results of the investigation and declined media interviews.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS