The attorney of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Hsien-chou (黃顯洲) told civil court judges yesterday that he will seek an out-of-court settlement for his client regarding compensation.
The Taipei District Court's Civil Department yesterday held a hearing on Huang's request for NT$810,000 in compensation from Chan Hui-hua (詹惠華), his ex-girlfriend and a prostitute, as well as Yu Hung-tsan (游洪贊), a friend of Chan's father.
The event in question began when Huang reported to police that he had been robbed, kidnapped and forced to participate in a sex party in a hotel room at Taipei's Grand Hyatt Hotel on Dec. 26, 2001.
Prosecutors later discovered that everyone, including Huang and two other Chinese prostitutes at the sex party had taken the drug ecstasy.
Huang never admitted to taking drugs, although the court ruled against him and sentenced him to attend a drug rehabilitation program.
According to the indictment by Taipei Prosecutor Kuo Yung-fa (
Chan and Yu were sentenced to seven and a half years in prison back in 2002. They have appealed the case to the Taiwan High Court. The High Court asked for the civil case to be concluded quickly so the criminal case could proceed.
"We will ask the defendants to pay the compensation in installments," said Liu Hsien-chang (劉憲璋), Huang's lawyer. "This can be arranged."
According to Kuo's indictment, Huang said that Chan called him on Dec. 26 and asked to meet on Dec. 27 at the hotel to discuss her mother's money problems. After entering the hotel room and drinking a cup of tea given to him by Chan, Huang reportedly fell unconscious. He said that when he woke up on Dec. 28, he found himself naked, and tied to the bed.
Chan and Yu told him they had taken pictures of his naked body, and would use them to blackmail him.
The Taichung-based Huang said he came to Taipei for business on Dec. 25 and stayed at his office at the Legislative Yuan. However, his statement was contradicted by his cellphone records, which indicated that Huang was not anywhere close to the Legislative Yuan on Dec. 26. The indictment also said that after Huang arrived at the hotel room and took drugs, Chan and Yu then called two Chinese prostitutes for a sex party. Huang reportedly fell unconscious and Chan and Yu then took NT$13,000 from Huang's wallet and asked the two prostitutes to leave.
During Huang's detainment at the hotel -- from Dec. 27 to Dec. 31 -- Chan allegedly coerced Huang into giving her the PIN number of his bank card and withdrew a total of NT$810,000 from Huang's account.
That is also the amount of money Huang has requested in compensation from the pair.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: