The Control Yuan on Friday reprimanded two schools for negligence and shielding a teacher who had a fetish for stealing students’ undergarments when he taught in Tainan 10 years ago.
When teaching at the Tainan Commercial Vocational School in 2013, the teacher, surnamed Chuang (莊), headed next door to a clothes-drying courtyard at National University of Tainan to steal women’s underwear, a probe report presented on Friday by Control Yuan member Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) showed.
Citing findings from an earlier investigation, Chuang had done so three times, stealing 150 pieces of underwear belonging to 26 female students, which police later recovered at his residence, Chi said. School officials covered up the case by not reporting Chuang to the authorities, allowing him to teach at other schools for four more years, she added.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
She said the theft of women’s underwear should be handled under the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法), since it concerns sexual matters.
While the victims might have been afraid of being harassed or violated, school officials dealt with the case poorly and did not notify the victims, who were unaware it would be mandated for investigation as a gender-equity or sexual harassment matter, experts cited the case as a form of sexual fetishism related to undergarments.
There were four major failures by school officials in the case. First, Chuang committed theft, contravening the Criminal Code, yet Tainan Commercial Vocational School did not establish a mandated Gender-Equity Committee to deal with the matter, nor did it convene a Faculty Evaluation Committee, nor did it issue a public alert for students’ safety, Chi said.
The school principal later filed a petition at the Control Yuan, to claiming he was not aware of Chuang’s actions, but records showed the school had file a complaint with police after the incidents in 2013, and then notified Chuang, resulting in him resigning and seeking other teaching jobs, Chi’s report showed.
During police questioning at the time, officers at Chuang’s apartment recovered 150 pairs of underwear and other undergarments, the theft of which the school principal and officials did not known, Chi said.
After the 2013 police investigation, Chuang left the school six days later and took a teaching job at another school in Tainan, but the new school failed to check why Chuang had left his former employer, and officials only later uncovered Chuang’s offenses four years later, when he was implicated in an alleged sexual harassment case while teaching at Zhongli High School of Commerce and Home Economics in Taoyuan, Chi said.
Officials at the Zhongli school discovered Chuang’s thefts in 2013 during their investigation and sent an official notice to the Tainan Commercial Vocational School requesting information on the case, but were initially refused.
The school only convened a Gender-Equity Committee after a request by Ministry of Education (MOE) officials, Chi said.
When it received complaints and the local judiciary had made an investigation in 2014, National University of Tainan officials learned about the 26 victims and had set up a bank account for financial compensation, but when notified of the case in 2017, the university initially replied that there were no victims at the school, and only contacted the victims after a push by the MOE.
Even after the MOE stepped in, the school only mailed the notification to seven female students, and only later did officials admit to not putting full efforts into recovering the entire list of 26 victims, Chi said.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Actor Lee Wei (李威) was released on bail on Monday after being named as a suspect in the death of a woman whose body was found in the meeting place of a Buddhist group in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) last year, prosecutors said. Lee, 44, was released on NT$300,000 (US$9,148) bail, while his wife, surnamed Chien (簡), was released on NT$150,000 bail after both were summoned to give statements regarding the woman’s death. The home of Lee, who has retreated from the entertainment business in the past few years, was also searched by prosecutors and police earlier on Monday. Lee was questioned three
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
RSS