A physical education teacher at a school in Taipei has been charged with sexual harassment after complaints accused him of fondling and groping female students, reports said yesterday.
The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office indicted the teacher, surnamed Tseng (曾), who worked at a junior-high school, after completing its investigation.
Tseng allegedly took advantage of teenage students during classes and at his office, prosecutors said.
The incidents began in September 2018, with Tseng allegedly touching a student’s breasts, thighs and genital area during an outdoor class, prosecutors said.
Another female student accused Tseng of fondling her several times during swimming lessons and also when he asked her to sign forms in his office, they said.
The third girl wrote in a complaint that during outdoor training, Tseng patted her on the buttocks and groped her inner thighs and genital area, prosecutors said.
Tseng denied the accusations.
Investigators gathered evidence for indictment, including statements from students, footage from surveillance cameras, and interviews with other students and teachers, they said.
In a separate case, the High Court upheld a guilty verdict against a national coach for having sex with a female athlete, although his sentence was suspended.
Investigators found that the male coach took the athlete to motels in Taichung for sex over a two-year span starting in 2013, when she was a second-year university student, to 2015, when she stopped the meetings.
The coach said that it was consensual sex, but judges in the first ruling convicted him on offenses against sexual autonomy, in that he abused his authority to coerce her into having sex.
The High Court handed him a suspended sentence of 10 months, with judges saying that the two had reached a settlement.
It found the coach guilty of only two instances of sex in violation of the woman’s sexual autonomy and acquitted him on 28 other instances.
The defense cited messages sent by the athlete, which suggested she had consented to the relationship.
One of the messages read: “I hope we can sustain the same good relationship as before... Teacher, you are the pillar of my well-being.”
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