The Taiwan High Court yesterday handed 29-year-old Justin Lee (李宗瑞) the maximum sentence of 30 years in prison for a string of sexual assaults and for filming sex acts without consent.
Lee was also ordered to compensate the victims a total of NT$27.75 million (US$926,000).
He appeared in court for the ruling, which can be appealed with the Supreme Court.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Lee is from a wealthy family. His father, Lee Yueh-tsang (李岳蒼), was a board member of Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控) and a director at Yuanta Securities Co (元大寶來證券), but resigned after his son became embroiled in the scandal.
The 29-year-old was initially accused of date-raping 28 women he picked up at nightclubs around Taipei since 2009.
Most of the women were incapacitated to varying degrees after consuming drinks that officials said Lee laced with date-rape drugs.
In September last year, the Taipei District Court found him guilty of raping nine women and filming sex acts with 17 women without their consent.
Lee has been detained since August 2012 and has maintained that he is innocent of the charges.
He said that his picking up women for consensual sex was a “normal aspect of Taipei’s nightclub culture.”
Media reports said the 30-year jail term for Lee is an unusually heavy sentence for sexual assault crimes in Taiwan.
Witnesses said Lee was shaken upon hearing the ruling, describing him as glaring, with his mouth open in “an expression of disbelief.”
In the first ruling on Lee’s case in September last year, the Taipei District Court handed him a combined jail term of 22 years and four months and ordered that he pay NT$14.25 million in compensation.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS