The High Court in a second ruling on Thursday handed a prison term of eight years and four months to a former highway police officer for sexual assault and filming explicit videos of dozens of minors.
The case can be appealed.
Cheng Yu-hsiang (鄭羽翔), now 28, was first convicted in November last year of having sex with minors. He was sentenced to nine years in prison, and six months that are commutable to a fine for contravening the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例) and related offenses under the Criminal Code.
Cheng filed an appeal, and the High Court on Thursday reduced the sentence to less than nine years in prison and five months of community service. Cheng’s lawyer and the judges cited as reason Cheng settling and providing financial compensation to some victims and their parents.
An investigation showed that Cheng, while serving as an officer of the National Highway Police Bureau Ninth Brigade, had since 2019 sought out young boys on dating sites and chatrooms, inviting them to meet him in public and sexually assaulting them.
His actions first came to light after his meeting with a 15-year-old high-school boy at an electronics plaza in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District (中正), where he sexually assaulted the boy in a public washroom, the investigation showed.
The boy and his family filed a police report, including a physical description of the perpetrator. Police tracked down and summoned Cheng for questioning. They also seized Cheng’s computer, smartphone and tablet computer, and found many photographs of boys in school uniforms, as well as videos of Cheng engaging in sex with young victims.
Confronted with the evidence, Cheng insisted they were consensual and not sexual assault.
Public prosecutors indicted Cheng late last year on charges of sexual assault involving up to 27 underaged victims, with the youngest aged 13.
The National Highway Police Bureau convened a work performance evaluation committee, which handed out two major demerits as punishment, which served as the basis for Cheng’s dismissal from the force.
In the second ruling, the judges said that Cheng had qualified to enter the police force, indicating that he is intelligent and is familiar with the law, while those he took advantage of were underaged people who were not aware of their personal rights and bodily autonomy.
“Yet for his personal sexual pleasure, Cheng sought to befriend underaged people through online sites, lure them out and forced them to have sex with him and film them. There were numerous victims and some were repeatedly violated, which can have a serious negative impact on their mental health and physical development,” the court ruling said.
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