Taiwan High Court, Hualien Branch. (Photo by reporter Wang Jinyi)
A male elementary school teacher in Hualien followed the children into the school toilet, put his mobile phone through the gap under the partition of the stall, and secretly filmed the bathroom footage 48 times. Two of them were successful. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison at the first instance. In February, the male teacher refused to accept the decision and appealed. The Hualien Branch of the Taiwan High Court changed the case. According to the Child and Juvenile Sexual Exploitation Prevention Regulations, the crime of taking sexual images of children was combined and sentenced to 6 years in prison. In the civil part, Master Lang argued that the rights of girls were not violated, but the Hualien Branch of the High Court recently ruled that the defendant should compensate one of the schoolchildren 250,000 yuan, and no appeal is allowed.
The verdict pointed out that a male acting teacher surnamed Lin worked as a teacher at an elementary school in Hualien from August 28 to September 12, 2024. Knowing that the victims were all school children under the age of 12, he followed them with a mobile phone into the shared toilets of the school and filmed them from the bottom up. Except for two successful attempts at capturing sexual images, the remaining 46 attempts failed because they were not captured.
The first-instance judge held that the defendant's behavior was to cause children to be filmed with sexual images against their will, and the 48 crimes were combined and sentenced to 11 years and February in prison. However, the Hualien Branch of the High Court believed that the victim was secretly photographed without his knowledge and was not raped, coerced, tricked or used for power. Therefore, he was punished according to the same regulations for the lesser crime of filming sexual images of children, with a sentence of more than 1 year and less than 7 years. Each crime was sentenced to a period of 1 year and February to 2 years and August respectively. The combined sentence should be 6 years in prison, and the mobile phone in the case was confiscated.
The judgment also mentioned that the man surnamed Lin had previously sexually harassed underage girls and secretly photographed underage girls' skirts in public places. Later, because the victim withdrew his complaint, he was either not prosecuted or not accepted. The appraisal results concluded that Mr. Lin did not have any circumstances that exempted him from liability under Article 19 of the Criminal Law, but he did suffer from voyeurism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other diseases. Although he expressed his willingness to apologize and compensate, some victims and legal representatives stated that they had no intention of reconciliation, or did not appear in court and were not forgiven.
In the civil part, one of the schoolchildren filed a civil lawsuit attached to the criminal case, seeking compensation of 1 million yuan. Master Lang argued that two of the incidents could not have violated privacy rights, and the other two could not be identified as filming of the plaintiff. The Civil Court of the Hualien Branch of the High Court held that the right to privacy is an important right based on personal dignity and personal subjectivity. As long as the person is secretly photographed in a hidden toilet space, regardless of whether the person is photographed or not, and whether the person is a specific person or not, the privacy of the person using the toilet has been violated. Therefore, it ordered Man A to pay compensation of 250,000 yuan.
The court considered that the victim was at an important stage of personality development and learning self-protection. He suffered psychological burden and shadow after being victimized, and the circumstances were serious. The court also considered the identity of both parties, the extent of the infringement, and the financial capabilities of both parties to consider 250,000 yuan as appropriate. It also pointed out that Master Lang is currently in prison in accordance with the criminal verdict.
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