The Ministry of Education and Fu Jen Catholic University’s response to a rape case is too little, too late, feminist groups said yesterday, calling for revisions to the Gender Equality Education Act (性別平等教育法) to improve confidentiality protections for rape victims.
After being chastised by the ministry, the university earlier this week apologized for its handling of a rape case last year, saying that there were “serious concerns” that former College of Social Sciences dean Hsia Lin-ching (夏林清) and former of psychology department chairman Ho Tung-hung (何東洪) had violated ethics standards in addressing the case.
The university has promised an investigation into whether Hsia’s and Ho’s conduct was illegal, after earlier stripping them of their administrative positions.
“Justice that arrives late is not justice. Online attacks against the victim have been continuous,” Taiwan Gender Equality Association secretary-general Huang Chia-yun (黃嘉韻) said, adding that the university’s delay had fueled a continued online uproar over the incident, which culminated in the victim, a psychology student surnamed Wu (巫), earlier this month offering an online apology for publicly criticizing Hsia and the faculty working group that investigated the incident.
Wu’s boyfriend, surnamed Chu (朱), in May sparked an online firestorm with a Facebook post accusing Hsia of attempting a cover-up.
Huang said that Hsia’s and Ho’s responses — which included news conferences, a public forum and TV appearances in defense of their conduct — were breaches of their duty to keep the investigation’s details secret.
“It is cruel to say what happened and who said what on each day, because that places a huge amount of pressure on the victim,” Huang said. “The whole handling of this episode created an atmosphere in which the victim felt that they had no choice, but to apologize to try to calm the storm, which is extremely unfortunate.”
Huang said that the incident also showed the need for revisions to the act to more clearly define the investigative process to better guarantee confidentiality.
“This incident has made us see that there has not been real change since the Gender Equality Education Act was passed,” she said.
“After the law was passed, universities were supposed to handle incidents through school gender equality commissions, and those commissions are bound by confidentiality provisions. However, what we have seen is that universities also establish separate investigative committees, and it is not clear if they are also bound to confidentiality,” she said.
Huang added that the online uproar reflected broader societal ignorance of how rape cases should be handled, calling for the inclusion of gender equality instruction in national educational guidelines.
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