The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a three-year-and-eight-month jail sentence for a former air force officer convicted of raping a female colleague in 2018.
A former Hualien Air Base staff sergeant surnamed Chen (陳) appealed the case after the Hualien branch of the High Court in July last year upheld an earlier ruling by a lower court that found him guilty of raping the colleague, court documents showed.
The woman, a subordinate of Chen, was attacked while on guard duty at the air base in July 2018, the same month authorities recovered the flight data recorder of an F-16 jet that had crashed on Wufen Mountain in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District (瑞芳) a month earlier.
Court document showed that the married staff sergeant used this discovery as a pretext to lure the woman to the base’s flight control office to drink and celebrate, and then raped her.
Chen claimed that the sex was consensual and that the woman did not resist.
However, based on the evidence collected and testimony from several air base staff, the court said the victim is a lesbian and had never had a boyfriend.
She did not resist, as she was afraid of being punished for drinking while on duty, authorities said.
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