In a final ruling last week, the Supreme Court upheld a verdict by the Taiwan High Court, which last year sentenced Cheng Chia-yao (鄭家堯) to seven years and six months in prison for sex with a minor.
The father of the victim, identified only as “Amy,” said that he could live with the outcome.
“I would have preferred the pedophile Kevin Cheng … to be locked up for longer, but I can accept the sentence,” he told the Taipei Times in an e-mail on Thursday.
Cheng was convicted on four counts of having sex with a minor, as Amy was 13 years old at the time of the events.
Amy’s father is a UK citizen who has been living and working in Taipei.
Last year, he called Cheng “a depraved man” and “a pedophile.”
Having sex with an underage child constitutes pedophilia and Cheng would have been jailed for “10 years or longer” in the UK, he added at the time.
Cheng’s lawyers told the Supreme Court that he had had consensual sex with Amy, and that her parents and Cheng had been embroiled in a financial dispute.
“[Cheng] is a pathological liar,” the father said in the e-mail. “I shall not waste any time commenting on anything that has come out of the vile rapist’s mouth. His guilt has been proven repeatedly.”
After the verdict last year, the father, who attended all the court hearings, said: “The judges were very good, and the legal system did its job.”
“I would like to encourage other victims of sexual crimes to have the courage to come forward and fight,” he said. “Don’t let the pedophiles think they can get away with whatever they want.”
The High Court said that Cheng took advantage of Amy’s naivete and had sex with her for the first time when watching films with her at her house while her parents were away.
In March and April 2014, Cheng took Amy back to his home and had sex with her again, the court said.
That same year, Cheng took Amy on a trip to Yilan County and once again had sex with her, the ruling said, adding that Amy’s ability to describe specifics of Cheng’s genitals and body provided key evidence.
In the first verdict in the case in May 2017, the Shilin District Court found Cheng guilty and sentenced him to less than three years in prison, which critics said was lenient.
Amy’s parents have said that the sex was not consensual and constituted rape of an underage girl, who was naive about her body and lacked the social experience to deal with a “depraved man.”
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