A baseball coach at a Taichung elementary school has been fired and an investigation launched over the alleged molestation of dozens of children under his care, local authorities said yesterday.
The allegations were made public at a news conference yesterday morning attended by Taichung City Councilor Chiang Ho-shu (江和樹) and two mothers of children at the school.
Parents had noticed changes in their children’s behavior, and, after asking about it, learned that they had allegedly been touched by the coach of their school baseball team, Chiang said.
Photo: CNA
The parents notified the school and Taichung police, he said.
Taichung police opened an investigation into the matter, he said.
After being summoned for questioning, the coach attempted to commit suicide, Chiang said.
After arresting the coach, police allegedly found videos of a sexually explicit nature on his phone and identified at least 25 children in them — from second to sixth grade — as well as some who are now in junior-high school, Chiang said.
As the coach had been at the school for six years, he might have targeted as many as 100 children, Chiang said.
The coach was convicted of forced indecency in 2012 and given a five-year suspended sentence, Chiang said.
He was hired by the school in 2019, he added.
“How defective is the Education Bureau’s hiring process that it was unable to screen out a sexual predator?” Chiang asked.
One of the mothers described the horror of having to identify her child in one of the videos to police.
“Every day we sent him to school. It is like we were personally delivering him to hell,” she said.
Taichung Bureau of Education Director Chiang Woei-min (蔣偉民) said that the school had immediately suspended the coach after being contacted by the parents on Oct. 26.
He was then fired on Nov. 11, he said.
When the school hired the coach in 2019, it checked the Ministry of Education’s database of people prohibited from working in education and did not find any red flags, he said.
However, the Ministry of Justice uploaded new records to the system in 2021, and it is still being determined whether the school conducted regular follow-up checks via the database as is legally required, Chiang Woei-min said.
The Taichung Police Department said the criminal record checks it issues typically do not include information on suspended sentences, as long as the person did not violate the terms of their probation.
At a city council meeting, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) said the coach is in the custody of prosecutors, who have filed a legal motion to hold him in detention incommunicado as the investigation proceeds.
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