The Control Yuan has impeached the nation’s former ambassador to Saint Lucia, Peter Chen (陳家彥), after it concluded that he did sexually harass a fellow female diplomat back in 2016 as she alleged.
The government watchdog issued the impeachment yesterday, referred the case to the Disciplinary Court, which handles cases of civil servant misconduct, to level punishment, it said.
Among the disciplinary measures Chen could face are being relieved of his duties, having his pension and/or salary cut, being given a demerit or being demoted.
Photo: Taipei Times
Chen, who served as ambassador to the Caribbean ally from mid-2020 to early this year, was impeached based on the Control Yuan's own investigation into a sexual harassment accusation by one of Chen’s female subordinates when he was deputy head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of Protocol.
According to the impeachment report, Chen, a supervisor of the victim in the department, asked the victim to brief him on a special project in a hotel room in May 2016.
While in the hotel room, Chen allegedly put his arms around the victim’s waist and forced her down on the hotel room bed against her will.
Chen tried to stop the woman from leaving the room even though she had told him several times that she did not think the act was appropriate and asked him to stop doing so, the report said.
The victim originally did not want to make the case public until she later found she could possibly cross paths with Chen again at the ministry, given that both are diplomats.
She officially filed a complaint over Chen’s harassment to the ministry on Oct. 16 last year.
The ministry completed its internal probe into the matter and found the victim’s accusation legitimate on Nov. 13 last year, before handing the case to the Control Yuan.
In his defense, Chen told the ministry and the Control Yuan that the victim’s accusation was unfounded and that she leveled the charge only because she held a grudge against him because he had been harsh on her at work.
After speaking to several witnesses related to the case and looking into the available evidence, including an apology Chen sent to the victim’s phone following the incident, the Control Yuan deemed Chen’s behavior unbecoming of a diplomat.
It said his actions had seriously damaged the image of a diplomat and the country as a whole, and therefore impeached him, it said.
Asked to comment, the ministry yesterday said that it fully respected the Control Yuan’s decision.
Chen is currently an ambassador on home assignment at the ministry's Institute of Diplomacy and International Affairs.
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