Sexual assault charge against former Taiwan minister dropped
Staff Reporter 2012-09-13 15:35 (GMT+8)
Prosecutors have dismissed the charge against the former foreign minister. (File photo/Su Wei-hsuan)
Prosecutors in Taipei's Shilin district on Sept. 11 dropped a sexual assault charge against former minister of foreign affairs Chen Chien-jen on Sept. 11.
Chen was first accused in April of having sexually assaulted a woman who produced tissue paper which she said had his semen on it. Tests confirmed Chen's DNA on the sample but found it was not semen as claimed. The plaintiff has also called Chen 305 times within the last six months, actions regarded as "not normal" for a victim in a sexual assault case, our sister newspaper China Times reported.
"The entire case was manipulated. I have yet to read the official report from prosecutors so I will not comment much. But I sincerely hope that we can be more careful with cases like this before making them public," Chen said of the allegations that have followed him for the last few months.
Media reports said that the 54-year-old female plaintiff told police on April 18 that she and Chen had dinner on April 7 at a Yoshinoya eatery in New Taipei's Xizhi district. She said that after dinner, Chen invited her to his residence and sexually assaulted her. The woman told the police that she and Chen live in the same apartment complex.
The woman told police that as Chen's wife mostly lives in the United States, she often visited Chen to help take care of his affairs. She said that Chen first assaulted her in August last year and that he used nude photographs of her to blackmail her and had assaulted her on several occasions since then.
Chen denied the allegations, saying that the woman invited him to dinner at a Yoshinoya eatery on April 7 and that they were only there for a short time. He said that the woman never entered his residence nor did he go to hers.
He told reporters that the woman began to harass him after dinner. Although he did not know her intentions, he believed that the woman was speaking and acting oddly. Chen said that he and his family members have been seriously harassed by the woman and that her actions led him to file a complaint with the police.
Local press reported that the complaint, which Chen filed on April 20, asked the police to stop the woman from harassing him but sopped short of asking the authorities to press charges against her because she was a neighbor.
