The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it would look into a sexual harassment case and if necessary punish the guilty party after a lawmaker made the complaint public on a Web site affiliated with the ministry on Saturday.
A member of staff at the ministry’s Bureau of Consular Affairs on Saturday apologized on an Internet forum to two female colleagues after a complaint of sexual harassment against him was posted on the same message board.
The man, accused of sexually molesting the two colleagues at a KTV earlier this month, admitted to the allegation in the message, in which he said he misbehaved under the influence of alcohol and wants to be held accountable.
At a meeting of the legislature’s Diplomacy and National Defense Committee, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) agreed to refer the case to the ministry’s sexual harassment complaints and review committee after fielding a question from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃).
The high frequency of misbehavior at the ministry is in part because of too lenient punishments handed to wrongdoers, Chen said.
A case in point was Leon Liu (劉壽軒), the former first secretary of the nation’s trade mission in Fiji, who confessed to sexually harassing an employee on two occasions, but was given just two demerits, Chen said.
The member of staff in the latest case has been forgiven by the two victims, but the bureau will convene the disciplinary committee to discuss the case following an investigation, Bureau of Consular Affairs Director-General Thomas Chen (陳經銓) said.
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