The Taiwan High Court’s Taichung branch has given a man a suspended sentence of eight months in prison with a two-year probation period for forcibly kissing a female subordinate for five seconds.
The court also ordered him to pay the victim NT$800,000 in compensation.
The ruling said the defendant, surnamed Lien (連), 36 and married, was a manager at a company in Greater Taichung.
In July 2012, as Lien and the victim were discussing company-related issues in the company’s meeting room, Lien left the room to check whether there was anybody outside, before he returned and closed the door.
He then touched the victim’s hair before suddenly holding and forcibly kissing her, the ruling said.
It added that Lien stopped because the victim resisted.
The ruling said that after examining footage from a surveillance camera in the room, prosecutors found that Lien had kissed the victim for five seconds, despite her resistance.
Lien, who was charged with indecency, was sentenced to eight months in prison in the first trial.
Lien had argued that the woman was his girlfriend, and that she had previously allowed him to hold her hand.
Lien testified that because he was married and could not commit to her exclusively, he felt sorry for her and tried to kiss her to express his love.
He only stopped after finding the woman resisting “slightly,” he told the court.
However, the victim told the court that Lien had on many occasions expressed his love, but that she had rejected him each time.
However, Lien did not give up and instead sexually assaulted her, she said.
Lien and his wife both work for the company, the victim said.
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