Taipei prosecutors yesterday indicted a National Taiwan University (NTU) graduate student, surnamed Lin (林), for allegedly trying to force an underage girl to have sex with him and possessing naked images of minors.
Lin was charged with breaching provisions of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例), along with having sex with a minor under the age of 16 in breach of the Criminal Code (刑法), the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement.
The Taipei Police Department began an investigating the allegations in late 2016, after receiving numerous reports of Lin possessing naked photographs of underage girls, the office said.
Lin was also accused of threatening the girls with circulating the images online if they did not send him more nude photographs, it said.
Prosecutors and a police unit formed a task force and gathered evidence on Lin during a months-long investigation on social networking sites.
After obtaining a search warrant from a local court, police last year raided Lin’s residence and inspected his computer, finding 120 gigabytes of explicit images of women and underage girls.
Lin possessed naked pictures of 81 girls and one who had just turned 16, police said.
Police found that Lin started collecting the images in 2013, and had separate folders with information on the girls’ name, age, school and a rating on their body and appearance.
A background check showed that Lin had attended Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology in Hualien and last year entered NTU Institute of Medical Device and Imaging under a “special admission quota” program.
Prosecutors said Lin admitted to being attracted to underage girls.
Lin was quoted as saying that he had difficulty in social settings and could not form interpersonal relationships with women, as doing so made him feel inferior and affected his sense of self-worth.
However, by using the pictures of another person to assume the identity of a handsome young man, he found a new sense of worth and was able to talk to girls and develop online relationships, which boosted his self-confidence, he said.
This led to his actions to obtain explicit images and try to force himself upon one of the victims, police quoted him as saying.
Lin said he started his ruse by talking to girls online and forming an online fantasy relationship with them, police said.
He then convinced them to send him naked pictures as proof of their love, which he used to obtain more explicit images by threatening to circulate the images online.
Prosecutors said Lin convinced one of his victims to do an outdoor photo shoot, after which he touched her body and tried to have sex with her.
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