The Humanistic Education Foundation yesterday urged the management of a special education school to seek compensation for student victims of on-campus sexual abuse from those who committed the crimes, saying that taxpayers should not pay for the wrongdoing.
Three years ago, the foundation exposed a series of sexual assaults on students in a special education school by their teachers.
Following up on the case, the foundation discovered that, while four of the victims are entitled to compensation, the money might have to come out of taxpayers’ pockets since the school administration did not seek compensation from the offenders and certain faculty members.
“Among the five victims we’ve been helping, four victims are entitled to compensations of NT$1.1 million [US$36,000], NT$1.3 million, NT$1.5 million and NT$1.4 million from the school following either debt negotiations with school administrators or court rulings,” the foundation’s executive director Joanna Feng (馮喬蘭) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
“However, the school has yet to seek compensation from the offenders. If the school fails to do so by October, the funding for the compensation has to come out of taxpayers’ money,” Feng said.
She said that more than 5,000 people have signed a petition launched by the foundation, calling on the government and the school administration to file a lawsuit to demand that the offenders and some faculty members pay the compensation.
The foundation’s southern Taiwan branch office director Chang Ping (張萍) said that the Control Yuan has impeached 16 faculty members in connection with the case and “obviously, these people also have some responsibilities.”
“During the series of abuses, a group of students were sexually assaulted on a school bus, but when some students reported to two of the teachers on the bus, they were told to sit down and ignore what was happening,” Chang said. “Do these teachers not have any responsibilities? Don’t they need to be asked to compensate the victims?”
“The government should not ask taxpayers to pay for the wrongdoing of these teachers,” she added.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), who also attended the press conference, agreed.
“According to the National Compensation Act (國家賠償法), government agencies can pursue responsibilities from government employees who failed to fulfill their duties,” Yu said. “It’s not fair that those who should shoulder their responsibilities can dodge it, and taxpayers have to pay instead.”
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