Internal police regulations forbidding officers from “fishing” have not stopped child prostitution laws from being used for entrapment, several gay rights advocates said yesterday, renewing calls for the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例) to be revised to stop prosecution of adult-to-adult exchanges.
“In 2013, the National Police Agency issued regulations stating that police are not supposed to proactively solicit, but officers have not changed their behavior,” Taiwan Gender Queer Rights Advocacy Alliance secretary-general Nelson Hu (胡勝翔) said, adding that his group this year has received complaints over three individual cases, with official statistics showing a rise in cases reported to prosecutors under the act.
While aimed at banning child prostitution, the act allows for prosecution of adult-to-adult exchanges that involve allusions to prostitution, under the clauses banning unrestricted spreading of information that could lead to the participation of minors.
In the cases reported to the alliance, Changhua police officers actively solicited participants in homosexual online forums with usernames containing sexual innuendos, he said.
“The police officer would continually telephone or send messages expressing greetings and affection, while also bringing up intimate sexual behavior,” alliance president Andy Pan (潘世新) said, adding that police officers proactively offered to pay for sexual services.
While one of the people in question was a sex worker, others had only agreed to meet, while refusing any payment, Hu said, adding that the allegations were impossible to prove because police had deleted messages from victims’ phones after taking them into custody.
Prosecution in all cases has been deferred because the victims were first-time offenders, he said.
“Regardless of the original purpose of the law, its result has been the use of sexual stigmatization to oppress sexual minorities who cannot afford to come out of the closet,” said Kong (阿空), a director of the Taiwan Rainbow Citizens Action Association (台灣彩虹公民行動協會).
“The person in question often confesses because they want to bring an end to the incident as quickly as possible, but the result is that the case gets established and become an ‘accomplishment’ for possible merit points for all the government officials involved,” he said.
Revisions to the act passed last year which changed its focus to “sexual exploitation” are unlikely to reduce unjust arrests because the definition of “spreading” inappropriate sexual information was simultaneously broadened, he said, adding that revisions have yet to be implemented by the Executive Yuan.
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