A man convicted of hosting a sex party on a Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) carriage that sparked a scandal yesterday appealed his sentence in New Taipei City District Court (新北市), arguing that he did not organize the event to make money.
Tsai Yu-lin (蔡育林) was convicted of renting a railcar from the TRA on Feb. 9 last year and holding a sex party, with 18 men and a 17-year-old girl named Hsia Yu (小雨) participating.
The court said Tsai had been paid ahead of the event, and had not returned the proceeds to the participants after spending the majority of the funds on the event and return fares for the participants. It found Tsai guilty of attempting to profit from introducing sex to a third party under the Act on Offenses Against Sexual Morality (妨害風化罪).
Photo: CNA
The ruling also said that Tsai had spent a lot of time organizing the event and was very clear on all the expenses, adding that it could be surmised Tsai had hosted the event after estimating he could gain financially from it.
The court gave Tsai a six-month prison sentence.
Following notification of the verdict, Tsai visited the New Taipei City District Court yesterday accompanied by the Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters, the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan and National Central University professors Josephine Ho (何春蕤) and Hsu Ya-fei (許雅斐)to appeal the ruling.
Holding banners reading “defend people’s rights to sexual congregation” and “refuse to submit to imagined offenses, a railcar sex party is not an offense,” Tsai said that following the ruling, he believed that Taiwan was not truly a democratic country.
True democracy means the acceptance of others, Tsai said.
In response to questions from the media as to whether Tsai had intended to host similar events on yachts or other locations to earn money, Tsai said that while he had said during a TV interview that he had entertained the thought, he did not actually mean to put such plans into action.
Meanwhile, New Taipei District Court spokesman Fan Chi-kang (樊季康) said that although the court did not believe that Tsai’s event took place in a public space, the intent to profit financially from the event was there from the start, regardless of how much money was actually made.
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