Yesterday, for the second day in a row, the Taipei Prosecutors' Office summoned former Hsinchu City Bureau of Cultural Affairs chief Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳). She again failed to appear, claiming she was ill.
Chu is the plaintiff in a suit filed Dec. 31 against 19 employees of Scoop Weekly, charging the publication with libel after it wrote a lengthy story alleging that she was promiscuous. The magazine also distributed a secretly filmed sex video which it claimed featured Chu. The suit also names the Chung-ti Technology Co, which produced the VCD.
The VCD allegedly features Chu having sex with a married man. Chu has yet to publicly confirm that it is her in the video.
"It's very possible that it's me. It really did look like me. But I am not sure whether the VCD is a fake or not," said Chu during a TV interview last week.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Lin Jinn-tsun (林錦村), first summoned Chu to attend a hearing on Tuesday. Chu's lawyer, Chung Yung-sheng (鍾永盛), at the Tuesday hearing said Chu was too sick to show up. Lin then rescheduled the hearing for yesterday morning, planning to arrange a confrontation between Chu and Kuo Yu-ling (郭玉鈴), the prime suspect in the scandal.
Yesterday, however, neither Chu nor her lawyer appeared at the hearing. Before the hearing,Lin received a phone call from Chu's lawyer, who said that she was still ill.
"According to the law, if Chu continues being absent, prosecutors will have to reclassify her from plaintiff to witness to compel her to attend the hearing," Lin said.
"Because Chu is a victim in the case, we have yet to decide how to proceed," Lin said. "Since Kuo continues to remain silent, we don't as yet need Chu's testimony to help us clarify questions. But we will summon her again soon."
Kuo has admitted to having planted the camera that was used to film the now-infamous VCD in Chu's apartment.
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