A researcher at the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) think tank apologized online on Monday, after numerous women accused him of sexual harassment.
National Policy Foundation special associate researcher Albert Tzeng (曾柏文) on Facebook said he wanted to apologize “to any women who have been offended by my past indiscretions,” after two women publicly accused him of impropriety while he was an editor at Initium Media (端傳媒).
The case is only the latest in spate of accusations in recent days, which media have dubbed Taiwan’s #MeToo movement.
The allegations surfaced on Friday last week, when author Wu Hsiao-le (吳曉樂) posted on Facebook about an unnamed former editor who insisted on chatting alone in his car about his marital problems in a conversation that made her feel like she was “suffocating.”
In a followup post on Sunday, Wu said that five women messaged her to share their own experiences with the editor, who she publicly named as being Tzeng.
Later that day, Wu wrote that the number of women messaging her had now reached the double digits, some with stories of Tzeng using inappropriate hugging or other physical contact.
In a separate post, former Initium Media contributor Alison Zhao (趙思樂) said she was harassed by Tzeng and another senior media figure when she was in Taiwan to promote her book at the end of 2017.
Zhao said that Tzeng messaged her directly to apologize, which she accepted.
Tzeng on Monday wrote that he was “ashamed to think of the harm he may have caused others."
He said he heard such allegations against him in 2015, when he had a different understanding of sexual harassment.
However, Tzeng said he has since come to realize that chatting alone in a vehicle might be frightening, especially when with a superior, and since returning to Taichung in 2017 has tried to avoid being alone with women or commenting on their appearance.
In a statement on Sunday, the KMT said that Tzeng has cooperated on special projects with the think tank in the past, but has no cooperative relationship now.
The parties involved have also publicly accepted Tzeng’s apology, it said, adding that it respects their handling of the situation.
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