
Press Conference | Major Child Sexual Abuse and Molestation Case Exposes Systemic Failures in the Support Network: Is It Really Just a Matter of Insufficient Personnel Training? | Joint Petition by the Humanistic Education Foundation, Judicial Reform Foundation, and Garden of Hope Foundation
Last edited: 2026-08-21
Full Transcript of the Press Conference
Full Text of the Control Yuan Petition (Public Version)
I am the father of two victimized children. After the incident occurred, we naively believed that reporting it to the police and entering court proceedings would bring us peace of mind, but we were met with indifference and dereliction of duty every step of the way—unclear police procedures, obstruction during injury examinations at the hospital, social workers lacking empathy and professionalism, school counseling sweeping the matter under the rug, the court leaking personal data, and even a prosecutor depriving us of legal counsel accompanying us to the investigative interrogation, refusing to indict despite surveillance failing to capture the footage and the perpetrator having confessed to the crime.
Our children suffered innocently, only to be repeatedly traumatized within the system. We are stepping forward not to point fingers, but in the hope that society will confront systemic failure, stop treating this case as an isolated anomaly, and genuinely listen to the feelings of the victims.
I also implore everyone to pay attention to the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Center, New Taipei City Government. If the caseload is truly overwhelming, please allocate sufficient resources rather than letting social workers settle for the bare minimum of "as long as it's not illegal," failing to provide even the most basic empathy and support.
Please also pay attention to the judicial handling of child sexual crime victims, ensuring prosecutors help consolidate the testimonies of vulnerable child witnesses, rather than becoming accomplices to the perpetrators by making premature judgments and directly dismissing evidence favorable to the victims. May today's voices trade a path of greater protection for the children and families of the future. —— A Father of the Victimized Children
Regarding a case in New Taipei City where 12 children at a small talent cram school were subjected to aggravated molestation and forced to produce sexual exploitation materials (the case resulted in a court of first instance conviction in March 2025 for aggravated molestation and illegal production of child sexual images, totaling 22 years of imprisonment), the parents of the victimized children identified functional issues across various networks within the sexual assault victim service system, as well as the barriers these issues create for victims seeking help. Having received complaints, the Humanistic Education Foundation, the Judicial Reform Foundation, and the Garden of Hope Foundation, together with the parents of the victimized children, submitted a petition to the Control Yuan today. The main points of the petition are as follows:
I. In a Major Child Sexual Assault Case, Every Single Link in the Education, Police, Health, Social Welfare, Investigation, and Crime Victim Protection Networks Was Unfriendly!
From the reporting and chaotic hospital procedures—failing to implement the principle of reduced statements—to the insufficient professionalism of the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Center, school counseling, and social workers; from the prosecutor at the investigative interrogation refusing to allow parents and lawyers to accompany the children, to crime victim protection resources failing to materialize; and with both the Civil Execution Division and the Crime Victim Protection Association failing to protect personal data—this seemingly dense sexual assault assistance network can be described as unfriendly at every single link from start to finish. The shortcomings of each unit are summarized below:
Category |
Unit |
Shortcomings |
Police |
Tucheng Precinct, New Taipei City Police Department, and Cheng-Ching Police Station, Tucheng Precinct (hereinafter referred to as the "Tucheng Precinct" and "Cheng-Ching Police Station") |
[Issues 1 & 2] Misleading guidance at the reporting end and failure to implement the reduced-statement protocol. Furthermore, the hospital procedure took an excessively long time, spanning 14 hours from the police report to the hospital (from 12:00 PM to 2:00 AM). Right until the very last moment, the administrative counter at Tucheng Hospital demanded that supplementary documents be submitted on the spot as a condition for leaving, and refused to hand the evidence bag over to the police beforehand. The complainants were only able to leave the hospital after returning home to retrieve and submit the documents. |
Health
Social Welfare |
New Taipei Municipal Tucheng Hospital (hereinafter referred to as "Tucheng Hospital") |
|
Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Center, New Taipei City Government (hereinafter referred to as "New Taipei DVSAPC") |
[Issue 3] Failure to build rapport during the accompaniment to record statements, prolonged delays in arranging counseling (when the complainant inquired, they even discouraged the complainant from dwelling on it, displaying a lack of empathy), and shifting blame during communication. |
|
Education
|
New Taipei City Department of Education (hereinafter referred to as the "New Taipei Education Department") |
[Issue 4] Failure to expand the investigation ex officio and integrate relevant units to uncover other potential victims. |
Municipal OO Elementary School, Tucheng District, New Taipei City (hereinafter referred to as "OO Elementary School"), Ministry of Education |
[Issue 5] Shifting responsibility for counseling and failing to provide intervention counseling in accordance with regulations. Ms. Sun, the head of counseling at OO Elementary School, maliciously lied that the victim's parents refused counseling arrangements, and there was a lack of professional supervisory mechanisms to monitor and assist frontline counseling personnel. |
|
Judiciary |
Taiwan New Taipei District Prosecutors Office (hereinafter referred to as the "New Taipei Prosecutors Office") |
[Issue 6] Without prior notice, refusing to allow the legal representative and litigation agent of the victimized children to accompany them during investigative proceedings. |
Civil Execution Division, New Taipei District Court (hereinafter referred to as the "New Taipei Execution Division") |
[Issue 7] Unlawfully failing to redact the personal information of the victimized children, and responding inappropriately to the complainant after being notified. |
|
Association for Victims Support, Ministry of Justice (hereinafter referred to as the "Association for Victims Support") |
[Issue 8] Malinging a document containing the names of the victimized children and the complainant's telephone number to a third party, and subsequently asking the complainant to meet in person with the recipient of the erroneous letter to exchange it; possible lack and confusion of legal resource information, and unjustified delays in the application for compensation. |
Note: Because this petition aims to focus on systemic improvement, the public version of the petition omits the complete case number and information that could identify the victimized children. Please refer to the public version of the petition attached at the very bottom.
Although the 6th Meeting of the 5th Term of the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Promotion Task Force under the Ministry of Health and Welfare resolved on April 28: "(1) Request the National Police Agency, Ministry of the Interior to refine the single-window reporting process for criminal cases and enhance the sensitivity of 110 dispatch center personnel toward sexual violence cases; (2) Request the Ministry of Justice to strengthen the implementation of Article 18 of the Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act, ensuring parents' right to accompany victims during investigations or trials; (3) Request social welfare and education units to strengthen network cooperation and implement the three-tiered counseling mechanism; (4) Request all relevant units to enhance the overall rights protection of sexual violence victims and incorporate this into the professional training curricula of each unit."
However, the above four points boil down to "enhancing educational training," meaning the problems handled in this case are categorized merely as "insufficient personnel training" across units. While this is certainly one direction for improvement, it is likely still insufficient for reviewing the overall mechanism and standard operating procedures.
II. When Every Single Link Goes Slightly Wrong, the Entire Network Mechanism Is Flawed!
Society pays close attention to child sexual assault cases, and the efficiency of judicial procedures is not poor. However, what victimized children and their families need is not only a just judicial verdict; during the process of seeking help, the assistance network must avoid responses lacking trauma-informed sensitivity and unnecessary exhaustion.
This seemingly dense "sexual assistance network for sexual assault cases"—spanning police, health, social welfare, education, and judicial departments—was established to divide labor and optimize assistance resources for victims, rather than to disperse and diminish the attention of professionals across links. At its root, the problem always yields the answer:
"This is the responsibility of another system." When every single link goes slightly wrong, it accumulates into a sense of "learned helplessness" for the victim where every step goes poorly. The fact that this case successfully reached a verdict relied solely on the personal knowledge background, psychological resilience, and luck of the victimized children's parents to bridge the lapses in the network during the process.
Improving the system cannot rely on the attentiveness of individual workers; rather, warnings should be highlighted and mechanisms established as much as possible. Therefore, this petition proposes suggestions in eight major directions for each issue, hoping the Control Yuan will assist in investigating and tracking subsequent improvement efforts:
Demands Corresponding to Issue 1
We earnestly implore the Yuan to track and confirm that the National Police Agency undertakes the following actions:
- Use this case as a teaching case study, incorporating it into the training on competencies and sensitivity for frontline police officers handling sexual assault-related cases.
- Particularly within the standard operating procedures for dispatch center call-takers, incorporate alerts for child-related cases and stipulate that "if frontline dispatch personnel are unable to distinguish between sexual harassment and sexual molestation, all cases shall be transferred directly to the Women and Children Protection Squad for handling."
- Review the current standard operating procedures for one-stop services, requiring that even if it is inconvenient to conduct injury examinations and statement reduction at the hospital, horizontal networking communication during the police reporting stage (police investigation, health injury examination, social welfare accompanying interrogation) must still be integrated through the police (Women and Children Protection Squad) to reduce unclear information and the waste of administrative processes.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 2
We earnestly implore the Yuan to track and confirm that the Ministry of Health and Welfare clearly establishes a "Green Channel Mechanism" within the standard operating procedures for one-stop services in sexual assault cases:
When a report is received at the reporting end, it should immediately "contact the hospital in advance and have the hospital prepare beforehand" to optimize injury examination and evidence collection procedures (including reducing unnecessary waiting times, notifying required documents in advance, and reducing repetitive statements).
Demands Corresponding to Issue 3
We earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the Ministry of Health and Welfare to undertake the following actions:
- The MOHW domestic violence prevention system should establish horizontal communication with schools and crime victim protection units to jointly produce a comprehensive and complete rights notification form for victims (including what schools can do, crime victim protection compensation, and legal litigation resources). Drawing on the practice during police interviews where victims are required to sign and confirm to indicate they have been clearly informed of relevant rights, this form should be provided directly to victims by social workers accompanying them during police interviews, which can effectively reduce gaps and lower social workers' workloads.
- Using this case as an example, hold relevant internal seminars and educational training to ensure that in cases similar to this one, social work personnel possess the professional competence to serve child sexual assault victims, including learning the language and techniques for interacting with children and the ability to build professional rapport in a short time, in order to truly maximize the effectiveness of social worker accompaniment.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 4
We earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the New Taipei City Department of Education to undertake the following actions:
- The New Taipei Education Department should cooperate with police systems and social welfare unit resources (whether education leads or police leads is open for discussion, but the education department must understand the importance of expanding investigations and actively facilitate and assist), obtain rosters of past students from the classroom where the incident occurred, or conduct visits from schools near the incident location to investigate students who may have participated in that classroom, in order to contact and care for potentially victimized students. Following the aforementioned investigations, the network should cooperate with social welfare units to intervene and provide medical and psychological assistance.
- The New Taipei Education Department should produce clear guidelines for counseling victimized children. Dedicated guidance counselors or school personnel actually have little experience and training in handling trauma from child sexual violence. Secondary traumatization of victimized children occasionally occurs during the counseling process. Therefore, there is an urgent need for relevant concrete guidelines to teach counseling personnel appropriate expression and responses when facing cases, guiding victims to recount the events without harming them.
Furthermore, we earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Ministry of Education to review shortcomings in current communication mechanisms and establish and improve them:
- When there are multiple suspected victims or the circumstances are serious, local county and city education departments should report to the secretary-general or deputy secretary-general of the county or city government to establish a cross-departmental task force for handling. When necessary, they should secure rosters of children contacted by the perpetrator and expand notifications to parents.
- Due to the lengthy timelines of judicial investigation and trial processes, through communication mechanisms, while a case has entered investigation but has not yet been indicted, or after indictment but before a final judgment is rendered, the perpetrator may still violate the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act or the Gender Equity Education Act. Notice should be given to the respective competent authorities to raise awareness among educational administrative units and avoid inappropriate administrative arrangements.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 5
We earnestly implore the Yuan to:
- Investigate, issue corrections on, and conduct administrative supervision over OO Elementary School and its personnel for their shortcomings in accordance with the law.
- Regarding shortcomings in the current student counseling system, earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the Ministry of Education to establish a professional supervisory system for student counseling, provide clear guidelines for counseling sexual violence incidents, and establish tiered handling methods.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 6
We therefore earnestly implore the Yuan to investigate and urge the Ministry of Justice to:
- To avoid communication deficits like those in this case, it is recommended to add a note to Item 4 of the Crime Victim Rights Notification Form: "If you wish to be accompanied to court by a trusted person, please submit a request to the prosecutor (or prosecutor investigator) prior to the court session to facilitate prior arrangement. The prosecutor (or prosecutor investigator) will inform you of the arrangement before the session. If you have not yet received a notice, please contact the prosecutor (or prosecutor investigator) to confirm prior to the session."
- Why was the litigation agent in this case also refused accompaniment into the courtroom? What was the reason? Why did the handling prosecutor, while failing to explain how their presence would obstruct investigative proceedings, find it necessary to exclude lawyer-accompanied interrogation? Does this reflect improper application of standard operating procedures for child sexual assault cases by individual prosecutors? This should be investigated and clarified.
- Ensure that standard operating procedures for child sexual assault cases across local prosecutors offices incorporate prior arrangement and communication mechanisms for accompanying personnel, as well as thorough notification procedures, to protect victims' psychological support and stability during the investigation process, and provide appropriate courtroom spatial configurations for prosecutors to arrange according to different case needs.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 7
We therefore earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the Judicial Yuan to undertake the following actions:
- Investigate the standard operating procedures for personal data redaction work in the Civil Execution Division, especially how special warnings are issued and regulations established for sensitive cases involving child sexual exploitation or related matters.
- The court clerk in this case committed not only an administrative lapse but also displayed an unprofessional attitude in problem-solving, which warrants official disciplinary supervision.
Demands Corresponding to Issue 8
We earnestly implore the Yuan to urge the Crime Victim Protection Association to undertake the following actions:
- Comprehensively review the standard operating procedures for sending and receiving mail across all branches of the Association for Victims Support, particularly regarding the dispatch of confidential and sensitive data, to prevent errors from recurring.
- Regarding situations where New Taipei DVSAPC, Legal Aid Foundation (LAF), and Association for Victims Support "clearly fail to meet LAF case-referral standards, yet still demand applicants go to LAF first," submit a comprehensive review at liaison meetings pursuant to Article 18 of the Crime Victim Rights Protection Act, audit whether similar situations occur across tripartite networks nationwide, and align counties and cities experiencing this with the practices of those without such issues to avoid wasting administrative resources.
- Regarding the evaluation of internal lawyer assistance within the Association for Victims Support, reference the experience of the Legal Aid Foundation and strive for the Judicial Yuan and Ministry of Justice to establish an internal information-sharing platform.
- It is recommended that the Association for Victims Support and county and city domestic violence and sexual assault prevention centers integrate resources to design a complete victim rights notification form. This form should inform victims of counseling and complete litigation assistance resources—including the respective review standards and assistance items of the domestic violence and sexual assault prevention center, the Legal Aid Foundation, and crime victim protection—and social workers from the domestic violence and sexual assault prevention center should provide it directly to victims at the very beginning when accompanying them to investigations. This will not only achieve administrative reduction but also allow victims to obtain resources and assistance more swiftly.
In summary, we earnestly implore the Control Yuan to assist and call upon all sectors to continue showing concern.
Press Conference Time
May 6, 2025 (Tuesday) at 9:00 AM
Press Conference Location
Room 101, Legislative Yuan Research Building (No. 3-1, Sec. 1, Jinan Rd., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City)
After the press conference concludes at 9:30 AM, attendees will walk to the Control Yuan to submit the petition.
Attendees
- Parents of Victimized Children
- Joanna Feng | Chief Executive Officer, Humanistic Education Foundation
- Lee Ming-ju | Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Judicial Reform Foundation
- Wang Shu-fen | Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Garden of Hope Foundation
- Legislator Fan Yun
- Legislator Chen Pei-yu
- Councilor Tai Wei-shan
Press Contacts
- Executive Secretary, Humanistic Education Foundation / Chen Chih-yuan 7563@hef.org.tw
- Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Judicial Reform Foundation / Lee Ming-ju mj@jrf.org.tw
- Media Section Chief, Civil Dialogue Division, Garden of Hope Foundation / Chien Ai-tzu goh2332@goh.org.tw
Follow-up
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