Mon, Dec 04, 2023 page3

• Panty thief leads to school censures

  • By Yang Yao-ju / Staff reporter
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  The Control Yuan on Friday reprimanded two schools for negligence and shielding a teacher who had a fetish for stealing students’ undergarments when he taught in Tainan 10 years ago.

  When teaching at the Tainan Commercial Vocational School in 2013, the teacher, surnamed Chuang (莊), headed next door to a clothes-drying courtyard at National University of Tainan to steal women’s underwear, a probe report presented on Friday by Control Yuan member Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) showed.

  Citing findings from an earlier investigation, Chuang had done so three times, stealing 150 pieces of underwear belonging to 26 female students, which police later recovered at his residence, Chi said. School officials covered up the case by not reporting Chuang to the authorities, allowing him to teach at other schools for four more years, she added.

  

  The main entrance of the Control Yuan is pictured in Taipei in an undated photograph.

  Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times

  She said the theft of women’s underwear should be handled under the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act (性騷擾防治法), since it concerns sexual matters.

  While the victims might have been afraid of being harassed or violated, school officials dealt with the case poorly and did not notify the victims, who were unaware it would be mandated for investigation as a gender-equity or sexual harassment matter, experts cited the case as a form of sexual fetishism related to undergarments.

  There were four major failures by school officials in the case. First, Chuang committed theft, contravening the Criminal Code, yet Tainan Commercial Vocational School did not establish a mandated Gender-Equity Committee to deal with the matter, nor did it convene a Faculty Evaluation Committee, nor did it issue a public alert for students’ safety, Chi said.

  The school principal later filed a petition at the Control Yuan, to claiming he was not aware of Chuang’s actions, but records showed the school had file a complaint with police after the incidents in 2013, and then notified Chuang, resulting in him resigning and seeking other teaching jobs, Chi’s report showed.

  During police questioning at the time, officers at Chuang’s apartment recovered 150 pairs of underwear and other undergarments, the theft of which the school principal and officials did not known, Chi said.

  After the 2013 police investigation, Chuang left the school six days later and took a teaching job at another school in Tainan, but the new school failed to check why Chuang had left his former employer, and officials only later uncovered Chuang’s offenses four years later, when he was implicated in an alleged sexual harassment case while teaching at Zhongli High School of Commerce and Home Economics in Taoyuan, Chi said.

  Officials at the Zhongli school discovered Chuang’s thefts in 2013 during their investigation and sent an official notice to the Tainan Commercial Vocational School requesting information on the case, but were initially refused.

  The school only convened a Gender-Equity Committee after a request by Ministry of Education (MOE) officials, Chi said.

  When it received complaints and the local judiciary had made an investigation in 2014, National University of Tainan officials learned about the 26 victims and had set up a bank account for financial compensation, but when notified of the case in 2017, the university initially replied that there were no victims at the school, and only contacted the victims after a push by the MOE.

  Even after the MOE stepped in, the school only mailed the notification to seven female students, and only later did officials admit to not putting full efforts into recovering the entire list of 26 victims, Chi said.

  Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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