A tour guide surnamed Hsieh (謝) has lost his job after he allegedly verbally harassed students from Taichung Municipal Taichung Girls’ Senior High School during their graduation trip.
The students went on a three-day trip earlier this month to Kaohsiung and Pingtung County’s Kenting (墾丁).
During the bus ride from Taichung on the first day, Hsieh had asked the students to listen to him and allegedly said: “If not, then I will put my tongue in your mouth, and twirl it inside 18 times,” and “If you don’t listen, then you would have no boyfriends in the future ... nobody would want to date you,” as well as other statements the students deemed as offensive language.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
Several of the students posted on social media about Hsieh’s actions after the trip, with one student saying: “I felt very uncomfortable, it was quite offensive.”
“It was disgusting, like verbal harassment of a sexual nature,” another said.
Others demanded that the school reopen the tender for next year, as Fairy Tours Co, the travel agency Hsieh worked for, had obtained a contract for the school’s trips for six years straight.
Fairy Tours Co owner Huang Kuo-jui (黃國瑞) issued an apology on Monday last week and said that Hsieh has been dismissed.
“From my impression, he seemed quite responsible and diligent at work ... but this time, he took the jokes too far,” Huang said.
School principal Hung Yu-ling (洪幼齡) said she would convene a gender equality committee to investigate the incident, and to see if Hsieh could be prosecuted under the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法).
As part of his apology, Huang said he would refund the fees paid by students on Hsieh’s bus.
He also donated NT$50,000 to the school’s fund for promoting gender equity and pledged to include gender and sexual harassment prevention in their staff training.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS