A narrow government focus on monetary compensation neglects the needs of murder victims’ families, civic campaigners said yesterday, calling for reforms to the government-sponsored Association for Victims Support to allow participation by the families and provide “one-stop” legal and psychological support.
The association — which is directed and controlled by the Ministry of Justice — is charged with helping victims’ family members apply for national compensation under the Crime Victim Protection Act (犯罪被害人保護法).
“[Association personnel] have no idea what families need when these cases happen because they only rarely come to the front line,” Taiwan Children’s Rights Association director-general Wang Wei-chun (王薇君) said at a promotional event for a book of victims’ stories published by the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty.
Photo: CNA
She said that she had assisted more than 10 families of murder victims since her nephew Wang Hao (王昊) died in a horrific 2011 child abuse case, finding that the Association for Victims Support focused only on processing compensation applications.
Families of murder victims struggle to handle the administrative and emotional burden of related criminal cases, which often require them to participate in an autopsy, as well as collecting evidence and giving testimony, she said, adding that the lack of a “one-stop” government contact to guide them through the process left many families vulnerable to legal fraud.
“Many cases have so many different aspects and different ways of being approached that there’s no way even for lawyers to grasp the most subtle aspects — what can you expect of family members whose feelings are in chaos?” she said.
Activist Lin Tso-yi (林作逸) — whose parents were murdered when he was a small child — said that the association’s focus on monetary compensation reflects the structure of the Crime Victim Protection Act, as well as the association’s unwillingness to allow participation from the families of victims whose cases have been resolved.
“The act only has three articles discussing how to help families, while the vast majority of its content is focused on how to provide compensation,” he said.
“The government seems to think that as long as we provide compensation, that should take care of the problem — but the victim’s scars are still there and they need more systematic support and accompaniment,” he said.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wellington Koo (顧立雄) ascribed the association’s focus on monetary compensation to its being directed by prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice.
“As public officials, they feel that they just need to calculate compensation and anything else is none of their business,” he said, adding it was a “mistake” to place the association under the control of prosecutors.
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