Print

Mail

wiki links

Prison official throws in towel

After being stripped of his post by the Ministry of Justice for having an extramarital affair in the late 1990s that produced a child, former Kaohsiung Prison warden Wu Hsien-cang (吳賢藏) announced yesterday that he would retire.

Wu said he had devoted all of his efforts to being Kaohsiung Prison's warden for more than four years, but that he had been defamed by gossip and then unfairly removed by the ministry. He said that he was angry with the ministry's decision.

Wu was one of two wardens removed from their posts last week for having flings. Taichung Woman's Prison Shen Kao-te (盛高德), who is married, was also fired after spending a night with a married female subordinate at his official residence in Taichung City last month.

After local Chinese-language newspapers alleged that the two men had indulged in extramarital hanky-panky, the ministry probed the cases and found the allegations to be true.

In Shen's case, newspapers ran a photograph of his subordinate entering his residence. In Wu's, the newspapers ran a picture of him driving a boy -- apparently his love child -- to school at a time when he should have been at work.

Minister of Justice Morley Shih (施茂林) yesterday defended the ministry's tough action, saying that "prison officials' responsibility is to rehabilitate prisoners, so their life should be clean and moral."

"The two wardens were removed from their office for having extramarital relations with women, which the ministry has strictly forbidden," Shih added.

Huang Cheng-nan (黃徵男), director of the ministry's Department of Corrections, said that Shen spent one night with a female lecturer who taught cooking classes at the prison.

In Wu's case, Huang said that although Wu's wife passed away three years ago, he had begun an affair and fathered a love child when she was still alive.

The newspapers said Wu began an affair in the late 1990s with a woman surnamed Lee, who is also the girlfriend of the late gangster Wu Shou-hsiung (吳守雄), who was killed in a gun-battle in the 1970s. Lee inherited Wu Shou-hsiung's assets after he was killed, and ran a transportation company in Kaohsiung.

The newspapers also reported that Lee has invested in the entertainment and hotel business and is a well-known businesswoman in Kaohsiung.

The papers said that because of Lee's close relations with the criminal underworld, she often visited friends in prison. On just such a visit to Pingtung Prison, Lee became acquainted with Wu Hsien-cang, who was then warden of that prison.

The papers said Wu and Lee's child was born in 1998.

The papers added that after Wu's wife passed away in 2002, Wu quickly married Lee and they lived in a rich neighborhood near Chengching Lake in Kaohsiung County.
This story has been viewed 1876 times.