The New Power Party (NPP) caucus has proposed an amendment to the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例) to toughen criminal penalties for those who distribute pornographic images of minors, NPP Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) said yesterday.
The caucus proposed the bill after the police on Thursday cracked down on two large voyeuristic Web sites in Taiwan that reportedly made NT$30 million (US$1.09 million) by distributing non-consensual pornographic images of 287 adults and underage girls.
One of the 15 people arrested was a man surnamed Chang (張), 28, who had been sentenced by the Taipei District Court in 2019 to six years in jail for secretly filming almost 60 female high-school students on toilets. The High Court rejected his appeal.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
While the district court was reviewing the case, Chang and another man continued to sell unsolicited photographs of women to the two voyeuristic Web sites in April and May 2019, prosecutors said.
The two sites had about 250,000 subscribers, they added.
All of those arrested have been indicted for contravening the act.
Wang said that the case is similar to the “Nth Room” case in South Korea, as Chang is accused of selling unsolicited videos to the voyeuristic Web sites, which allegedly distributed the videos for profit.
The criminal case in South Korea involved blackmail, cybersex trafficking and the distribution of sexually exploitative videos via the Telegram app between 2018 and 2020. Photographs of 103 confirmed victims were found to have been shared and sold to more than 260,000 online IDs.
“To terminate this perverted industry, we have proposed an amendment to the act, which would impose harsher sentences for people distributing pornographic images of children and teenagers,” Wang told a news conference in Taipei.
The caucus has proposed raising the fine for those shooting or producing photographs and videos of minors engaging in sexual intercourse or other lewd conduct from NT$1 million to NT$3 million, Wang said.
Under the proposed amendment, those spreading, broadcasting or selling child and teenage pornography would be sentenced up to seven years in jail and would face fines of up to NT$10 million.
The current sentence is up to three years in prison and a fine of up to NT$5 million.
“We also propose imposing harsher penalties on those possessing pornographic content involving minors without a legitimate reason. Instead of a fine, they should be sentenced to up to one year in jail and face a fine of between NT$20,000 and NT$300,000,” she said.
The caucus would also propose a different act at the upcoming legislative session to prevent people from exploiting non-consensual images of adult women, she said.
“The Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) and Article 315 of the Criminal Code are the only legal recourse available to adult victims at the moment. While the Ministry of Justice has proposed amending the Criminal Code to impose penalties on those spreading non-consensual images, what victims need the most is for those images to be immediately taken down from the Internet,” she said.
“They also need counseling after such a traumatic experience. All these issues can only be addressed through a specific act on the legal consequences of improper handling of non-consensual images,” she added.
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