A Taitung County councilor yesterday questioned a decision by the Taitung County Gender Equality Assessment Committee on an allegation of rape as it risks prioritizing county government regulations over district court rulings.
A teacher in 2018 was accused by a 27-year-old woman of raping her when she was a student sometime in 2000 or 2001, and causing her mental and physical trauma.
The Taitung District Prosecutors’ Office dropped the case at the time citing a lack of evidence, but the committee in 2019 ruled that the teacher was guilty of rape and dismissed the defendant from his then-position as school principal.
Photo copied by Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
The defendant appealed the case with the Ministry of Education, which last year ruled in favor of the teacher and ordered that he be reinstated.
Within 10 days of the teacher’s reinstatement, the woman refiled a rape lawsuit, which was rejected by the prosecutors’ office.
However, the committee again ruled against the teacher and dismissed him from his position as an elementary-school teacher.
Taitung County Councilor Chen Ming-feng (陳銘風) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that the case ran the risk of prioritizing the county government’s ruling over that of the prosecutors’ office in a question of a breach of criminal law.
However, even were one to set aside that issue, the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法) was passed in 2004 and cannot be retroactively applied to a case that allegedly occurred in 2000 or 2001, Chen said.
It is not fair to revoke the defendant’s right to work over an unproven allegation from 20 years ago, Chen said, adding that the decision to remove the defendant from his position as a teacher should be made by the school’s education assessment committee.
Taitung County Education Department Director Lin Cheng-hung (林政宏) said that while the defendant was not prosecuted, the committee is empowered to recognize hearsay as evidence.
As long as the committee’s conclusions based on its investigations were not contradictory, the Taitung County Government would enter the issue into the record, Lin said.
After the incident is entered into the record it is then forwarded to the school’s education assessment committee, which determines how the incident is handled, Lin added.
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