Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the Modern Women’s Foundation yesterday reminded the public, especially women, to be on alert for “corpse-picking” — a term used to describe people taking an unconscious or drunk woman home or to a hotel for sex.
Citing recent media reports about three men who picked up a drunk and unconscious woman outside a karaoke parlor in New Taipei City (新北市), taking her to a hotel, but giving up their plan after she woke up, the foundation said “corpse-picking” happens all too often, especially around holidays, including Valentine’s Day.
“Last year, the Modern Women’s Foundation handled 250 cases of sexual assault, 50 of which involved the rape of a woman who had gotten drunk and/or lost consciousness,” foundation deputy chief executive Lin Mei-hsun (林美薰) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: Huang Chien-hua, Taipei Times
“Such incidents usually happen between 2:30am and 3am, around KTV parlors or nightclubs, and the rapist could be someone the victim knows or a stranger,” Lei said.
She said that some rapists may intentionally get their victims drunk, while others pick their victims at random after finding them lying drunk or unconscious on the street.
Since most victims in such cases are unconscious, the act of taking them away is referred to “picking up a corpse.”
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Lai Fang-yu (賴芳玉), an attorney who has long been involved in the women’s rights movement, said that regardless of what the act is called, it is a crime.
“The victim may not have resisted because she was drunk to the point of unconsciousness, but that does not mean she approves of what the rapist is doing to her. That makes it a crime,” she said. “Even if the victim can react a little, if she is not fully conscious, it is still considered a crime.”
Some people may think that “corpse-picking” is a side effect of nightlife culture, but Lai said she does not agree.
“It is not part of a culture, it is a crime,” she said.
The foundation executive called on the public to stop supporting such crimes by sympathizing with men who are prosecuted for these acts or believing that the victims were “asking for it.”
Department of Protective Services Vice Director Lin Wei-yen (林維言) from the Ministry of Health and Welfare said that, in line with the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法), the owner or operator of a KTV parlor or nightclub should seek to prevent such crimes from occurring at their establishment.
“By law, an owner must do something to prevent it from happening. If such an incident occurs, the owner must help the victim. They must also provide a hotline for customers to report sexual harassment or sexual assault at the establishment,” Lin Wei-yen said.
“If an owner fails to do any of these, he or she could be fined up to NT$100,000 for each violation,” she said.
The ministry also urged the public to pay more attention to incidents of sexual harassment or assault and provide assistance to the victim.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods