The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that a Taiwanese expatriate is being detained in Los Angeles for alleged sexual misconduct in Belize, where he practiced acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
The Chinese-language China Times yesterday reported that Kevin Lee (李崑臨) allegedly molested several of his Belizian female patients and videotaped them as they got undressed. Many of the alleged victims were said to be wives of politically prominent men and well-known socialites.
The Taiwanese embassy in Belize has been closely monitoring the situation since late last month when the case broke and it is now assisting Belizian police with their investigation, ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said.
Ambassador to Belize David Wu (吳建國) said in a telephone interview with Central News Agency on Monday that Lee, who has lived in Belize for nearly two decades, had been accused of secretly filming his patients, but that he did not commit sexual assaults as has been alleged.
“This is not a sexual assault case. No wives of ranking Belize officials fell prey to Lee,” Wu said.
Wu also confirmed Lee’s arrest.
The China Times reported that a technician who was fixing Lee’s PC several weeks ago found nearly 600 video files on Lee’s hard disk that allegedly showed several Belizian socialites and ministers’ wives being sexually molested in his clinic. A disk of the videos began to circulate after an attempt to blackmail Lee failed, causing uproar in the country.
Sources who have watched the videos said the supposed victims seemed to have been sexually assaulted when in a dazed state, the report said.
The alleged victims apparently include female diplomats from other countries stationed in Belize and their dependents, prompting Belizian police to issue an international warrant for Lee through Interpol, which led to Lee’s arrest last week, the newspaper report added.
Wu said his embassy has learned that a suspect who is accused of trying to blackmail Lee showed a disk and the letter used in the blackmail attempt to a leader of the Taiwanese expatriate community in Belize.
The disk showed a patient undressing. Wu said as the two parties played the disk over dinner, a Belizian official nearby alerted a minister and the matter came to light.
The diplomat said the alleged victims were average Belizian citizens and that no wives of ranking officials were involved, as far as the embassy knew. He said reports that wives of senior officials were involved was simply speculation and that police in the country had yet to confirm them.
Because many of the 1,000 Taiwanese living in Belize practice Chinese medicine, Wu expressed the hope that the incident would not hurt Taiwanese expatriates in Belize and that it would not affect Taiwan’s image in the country.
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