The Humanistic Education Foundation yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to make a new regulation apply retroactively to allow schools to fire any teachers found to have sexually assaulted students.
Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭), executive director of the foundation, told a press conference that before the legislature passed the regulation, many schools only suspended teachers found to have sexually assaulted students.
These teachers remained on the payroll, receiving half their salary.
PHOTO: CNA
By contrast, victims of sexual assault had to spend money to take the perpetrator to court, Feng said, calling this unreasonable.
On Nov. 6, the legislature passed an amendment to the Teachers’ Act (教師法) plugging a loophole in legislation that allows teachers implicated in sexual abuse cases to continue teaching.
The amendment stipulates that a teacher review committee must suspend any teacher allegedly involved in sexual abuse within a month of the alleged incident and refer the case for investigation by the school’s gender equality committee.
The offender can be dismissed, suspended or denied renewed employment if the investigation finds the allegations to be true.
Before the amendment, committees — usually composed of teachers or administrators — sometimes failed to act against a colleague and through indecision or inaction allowed teachers found guilty by the gender equity education committee to continue teaching, sometimes for years. That practice has resulted in some suspects repeating their offenses.
Chen Wei-man (陳尉滿), a member of the Taiwan Coalition Against Violence, said that some school principals even conceal sexual assault cases committed by teachers for fear of scandal.
He urged the ministry to investigate how many sexual assault cases had been kept secret by schools.
National Taiwan University law professor Lee Mau-sheng (李茂生) said any principal found to have covered up an incident could be charged with violating the Criminal Code (刑法) and sentenced to two years in prison.
The National Teachers Association and the National Alliance of Parents Organization issued press releases to support the foundation’s call.
In response, Chen Hui-chuan (陳惠娟), a section chief from the ministry’s Department of Personnel, said it would be up to local education bureaus to decide whether the new regulation should apply to cases that occurred before the regulation took effect on Monday.
Chen said the ministry was mulling whether to amend regulations to give poor year-end reviews to school principals who are found to have concealed sexual assault cases.
As an example, Feng said a male teacher at a junior high school in Kaohsiung City in October last year allegedly sexually harassed a female student.
The school’s gender equality committee suggested firing the teacher after its investigation in December found the allegations to be true.
The school’s review committee then suspended the teacher until the judiciary handed down a verdict.
As a result, the teacher is still on the school’s payroll and receives half of his monthly pay, Feng said, calling this “extremely unfair.”
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