Taipei police said yesterday that 53 men had been arrested for sexual harassment on Taipei's MRT system in the past five years.
The police said 14 of the 53 arrested possessed undergraduate or master's degrees and that some of them were teachers, engineers and civil servants.
Some of those arrested had been convicted, while others were still awaiting trial, police said, without offering specific figures.
Those arrested are all between 20 to 40 years old and many had psychological problems, police said.
The men were arrested for improperly touching women and for filming or taking pictures of women's underwear or bodies on the MRT system, police said.
Police said the development of high-tech, miniature still and video cameras had contributed to the growth of illicit filming on the MRT.
Some of those arrested uploaded the images and videos to the Internet or sold them on VCDs or DVDs, police said.
Police said that some of the perpetrators shot videos and photos from floor level and up the skirts of high school girls.
Sexual harassment crimes on the MRT system often occur during the morning and evening rush hours and late at night when students leave cram schools to go home, police said.
In one case, a man with a fetish for women with long hair was arrested for touching the hair of several women on the MRT system, police said.
Another man apprehended for splashing semen on women told police that his behavior helped him to release emotional pressure.
The Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said that its staff had increased monitoring to prevent sexual harassment, especially in the vicinity of women's restrooms, and that it offers a "women's only" subway car late at night.
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