Three months after facing allegations he forcefully licked a man's ear in a karaoke parlor, the country's top health official found himself beleaguered by a similar scandal again yesterday.
Twu Shiing-jer (
Cheng filed a lawsuit against Twu in the Taipei District Court yesterday and requested compensation of NT$1.
"In February or March 1999, a man verbally harassed me in a train in the Hong Kong underground," Cheng said.
According to Cheng, she was on her way to enroll at the University of Hong Kong.
"The man kept asking me personal questions, which quite upset me," Cheng said.
"I did not answer him. He then bumped into me and injured my neck. My collarbone was hurt. It took more than a year for my collarbone to recover," Cheng said.
"Besides, the man was accompanied by a renowned pediatrician, surnamed Lee," she added.
Cheng said she recognized the man as Twu when Twu's ear-licking scandal broke out last October.
"At that time, I was 80 percent sure the man was Twu," Cheng said.
She added she then made a plea to Premier Yu Shyi-kun.
"I wanted Yu to ask Twu to make an apology, but Twu refused," Cheng said.
Cheng said that she is now absolutely sure the man is Twu.
However, Yu said investigators found that Twu did not do anything to violate the law.
"We have informed Cheng of the investigation results already," Yu said.
In response to Cheng's allegation, Twu asked the public to be the judge of the truth.
Twu was cleared in the earlier scandal. Another official in the DOH, Tu Hua-lin (
The ear-licking scandal broke out just a month after Twu was appointed as acting head of the DOH.
Disgraced PFP Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安), who encouraged Cheng Ko-jung to go public with the allegations against Twu, later hung head her in shame along with Cheng at a press conference to apologize for the pair's false allegation.
Many Chinese-language media were criticized as having gone too far in their reportage of the scandal because they treated the scandal as though it were truth.
"During the ear-licking event, most of the media reported the scandal was true. But their reporting was later proved wrong," Twu said.
Twu was at a legislative session when Cheng made the allegation. Twu, unwilling to talk to the media about the sex allegation, hid in a restroom for a while.
"This time, I really do not want to say any more. But please consider this: why have scandals about me always broken out just after I have assumed new positions?" Twu said.
"I do not know who has been masterminding these scandals. Why do they always target me?" Twu asked.
According to Twu, he and Lee Chin-yun (
Twu admitted he took the subway while in Hong Kong, but stressed he did not know the woman.
Meanwhile, Lee said that he didn't see Twu doing anything improper to any women while on the subway.
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