The Taipei District Court yesterday sentenced Chang Tzu-yen (張子彥) to six years in prison for placing hidden cameras in school and public toilets to secretly film women and girls, as well as circulating the recordings.
Two years of the sentence can be commuted to a fine and the ruling can be appealed.
Prosecutors had asked for a harsh punishment as a deterrent after an investigation found that Chang, 26, secretly filmed more than 160 girls and women mainly in Taipei and New Taipei City.
The court said that it found Chang, a recent graduate of the National Taipei University of Technology, guilty of violating the personal privacy of the victims.
Investigators had found the videos stored in Chang’s computer and tried to identify the victims, including junior-high school students and university students, as well as a police officer.
Forty of the victims filed judicial complaints against Chang.
During the court hearing, one of victims testified that she suffered mental anguish and has been afraid of going to public toilets since the incident.
One victim was quoted as saying: “When the video was shown to me, it felt like I was being raped. This man is a pervert.”
Another at the court hearing said: “I feel quite sick seeing Chang here in court. He must receive a heavy punishment for what he has done... Now I need a friend to accompany me when I use a public toilet.”
Investigators found that Chang started secretly filming women and girls in 2015.
He was caught in April 2018 when a cleaner found a hidden camera, including memory cards, inside a women’s restroom at National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Medicine.
The camera was traced to Chang and police in a search of his apartment in New Taipei City found more explicit videos of unidentified women in his computer.
Investigators examining the footage determined that Chang had sneaked into women’s restrooms on the NTU campus and other Taipei universities, as well as Taipei First Girls’ High School and Taipei Zhongshan Girls’ High School.
He also placed cameras inside the public bathrooms of city government buildings in Taipei and New Taipei City, they said.
Chang rated the women in the videos according to their attractiveness, and tracked some of them through social media to learn their identities, investigators said.
He allegedly followed them and took their photographs for his categorized video files, they said.
Investigators found that Chang had passed on the videos to at least two of his friends for their viewing.
They also found Chang followed high-school dance clubs’ social media pages to find out where they were practicing and installed hidden cameras inside the bathrooms at those locations.
“China is preparing to invade Taiwan,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) said in an exclusive interview with British media channel Sky News for a special report titled, “Is Taiwan ready for a Chinese invasion?” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today in a statement. The 25-minute-long special report by Helen Ann-Smith released yesterday saw Sky News travel to Penghu, Taoyuan and Taipei to discuss the possibility of a Chinese invasion and how Taiwan is preparing for an attack. The film observed emergency response drills, interviewed baseball fans at the Taipei Dome on their views of US President
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) today issued a "tsunami watch" alert after a magnitude 8.7 earthquake struck off the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia earlier in the morning. The quake struck off the east coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula at 7:25am (Taiwan time) at a depth of about 19km, the CWA said, citing figures from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The CWA's Seismological Center said preliminary assessments indicate that a tsunami could reach Taiwan's coastal areas by 1:18pm today. The CWA urged residents along the coast to stay alert and take necessary precautions as waves as high as 1m could hit the southeastern
ECONOMIC BENEFITS: The imports from Belize would replace those from Honduras, whose shrimp exports have dropped 67 percent since cutting ties in 2023 Maintaining ties with Taiwan has economic benefits, Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials said yesterday, citing the approval of frozen whiteleg shrimp imports from Belize by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as an example. The FDA on Wednesday approved the tariff-free imports from Belize after the whiteleg shrimp passed the Systematic Inspection of Imported Food, which would continue to boost mutual trade, the ministry said. Taiwan’s annual consumption of whiteleg shrimps stands at 30,000 tonnes, far exceeding domestic production, the ministry said. Taiwan used to fill the gap by importing shrimps from Honduras, but purchases slumped after Tegucigalpa severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan
The Executive Yuan yesterday approved a southwestern extension of the Sanying MRT Line from New Taipei to Bade District (八德) in Taoyuan, with a goal of starting construction by late 2026. The 4.03-kilometer extension, featuring three new stations, will run from the current terminus at Yingtao Fude Station (LB12) in New Taipei City to Dannan Station (LB14), where it will connect with Taoyuan’s Green Line, New Taipei City Metro Corp said in a statement. This extension will follow the completion of core Sanying Line, a 14.29-kilometer medium-capacity system linking Tucheng (土城), Sansia (三峽)
RSS