High Court upholds verdict on dad who made kids kneel
By Yang Kuo-wen, Huang Chia-lin and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff write
The High Court on Wednesday upheld a guilty verdict against a Keelung man who made two of his children kneel in public with placards bearing humiliating remarks.
The court found the man, surnamed Chang (張), guilty of coercion and sentenced him to 20 days in prison, which is commutable to a NT$20,000 fine.
Chang in November last year made his son and daughter kneel in a busy public garage at the city’s main bus station, holding up pieces of paper saying: “I am a beggar,” the court said.
Chang said he made his children kneel because his daughter, who attends elementary school, received a low grade, and he felt that this son did not provide her with sufficient guidance, it said.
Chang’s actions traumatized his children and exceeded the reasonable limits of parental discipline, the court said.
He had been cited by the local child welfare service as a possible abuser after multiple incidents of corporal punishment and has one deferred prosecution for allegedly beating his daughter to the point of injury in 2017, it said.
Chang and the prosecutor in charge of the investigation had appealed the original verdict by the Keelung District Court, the High Court said.
In other news, a bar in Kaohsiung’s Sinsing District (新興) was ordered to close for five days and fined NT$6,000 after police repeatedly found minors at the establishment.
The Kaohsiung Police Department in April last year found two underage boys and in March found a boy at the establishment during inspections at 4am and 3am respectively, the Kaohsiung District Court said in a summary verdict.
The Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office has pressed charges against the bar in accordance with the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法).
The act stipulates that places of public amusement are responsible for keeping out underage people during late hours.
The bar owner assumed responsibility for last year’s incident, but said that the boy in the incident in March had claimed to be 18 years old before entering the establishment.
However, the owner’s claims were rejected after the boy testified that bar employees did not check his age.
