A Fu Jen Catholic University dean has been accused of trying to cover up a sexual assault that took place on campus last year and making offensive comments to the alleged victim during an inquiry, a university student surnamed Chu (朱) said on Sunday.
Chu made the allegation against College of Social Sciences dean Hsia Lin-ching (夏林清), a professor of psychology and a well-known feminist, in an 8,000-character Facebook post.
However, Hsia on Wednesday replied on Facebook that Chu’s narrative and quotes attributed to her “differed substantially from [her] recollections of the incident,” and denied that a faculty group was set up to paper over the incident.
“University gender equality committees have been working for many years and teachers on the front lines could easily think that the matters should be handed to the gender equality commission and the legal system, and abdicate their responsibility as educators to help students grow and learn with them,” she wrote.
Chu said that his girlfriend — a psychology student surnamed Wu (巫) — was raped by another student in the department, surnamed Wang (王), following an on-campus event where alcohol was served.
Chu said that he had become concerned about Wu’s safety after his telephone calls to her went unanswered, and that going to the party, he found Wang assaulting Wu and called the police.
Chu said that Wang was indicted in January for rape in January following DNA tests.
Chu said that right after the incident, Hsia repeatedly pressured Wu not to file a police report and not to make a formal complaint to Fu Jen’s gender equality committee.
He quoted the dean as saying: “I want to know what you have experienced as a woman; do not play the victim,” and: “This incident might be the straw that breaks this department’s back.”
Hsia later tried to push the faculty working group investigating the incident to conclude that the alleged crime was a case of intoxicated consensual sex, and stalked students who posted Facebook comments supporting Wu, sending them e-mails and ordering their teachers to talk to them, Chu said.
Wu eventually decided to file a complaint with the gender equality committee, which ordered Wang expelled.
The department has refused to comment on the incident, saying it wanted to avoid interfering with an ongoing legal case and citing concerns for the victim’s privacy.
A student and faculty forum is to be convened on Tuesday to discuss the handling of incident.
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS