A Kaohsiung RT-Mart security employee was sentenced to more than 13 years imprisonment for sexual assault, while the court required the parent company to financially compensate the victim.
The Kaohsiung District Court convicted the RT-Mart employee, surnamed Chang (張), of sexual assault of a minor for actions at his workplace in January 2022.
Chang, 36, was harassing a 17-year-old female intern, both in person and over messaging apps, expressing romantic interest in her, before she blocked him, the court said.
Photo: Taipei Times
After being blocked on social media apps, Chang threatened her with a knife at the RT-Mart, dragged her into a storage area and forced her to disrobe, before physically and sexually assaulting her, using cleaning supplies to attempt to destroy biological evidence of the assault, and taking sexually explicit photos of her to blackmail her into not reporting the assault to law enforcement, it said.
Chang was convicted of sexual assault as well as breach of the Child and Youth Sexual Exploitation Prevention Act (兒童及少年性剝削防制條例), wherein any “persons who films, produces, or reproduces with justification, any sexual image or video of a child or a youth...” may be sentenced to maximum of seven years, and is subject to a fine.
Chang was sentenced to 13 years, 6 months imprisonment.
The court mandated reparations of NT$3 million (US$95,021) which Chang was unable to pay, lacking the finances or assets. The victim and her family filed a civil suit demanding compensation for physical and mental trauma.
Their filed litigation said RT-Mart Co had failed in its duty to supervise and monitor its employees, and was responsible for financial compensation to the victim.
The court ruled in the victim’s favor, saying that RT-Mart was negligent in its duty.
As RT-Mart was bought from Ruentex Group, which operated the store in a joint venture with French retail outfit Auchan Group by Taiwan’s PX Mart Group between the assault and the court conviction, PX Mart was deemed by the court to have the responsibility for the compensation.
PX Mart said in a release that they would comply with the court’s decision and pay out financial compensation to the victim.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS