The Legislative Yuan passed in third reading the draft amendments of Sexual
Assault Crime Prevention Act on October 25, and Minister of the Interior Jiang
Yi-huah thanked all walks of life for suggestions and advice they provided when
formulating the draft amendments and thanked the support by Legislative Yuan
caucuses of both ruling and opposition parties for the amendments to smoothly
complete the legislative process. He said the revised Act will make regulations related
to sexual assault crime prevention more complete to fill the gap of criminal law
legislation and protect people’s personal safety, preventing sexual assault recidivists
from being potential threat to society. The Ministry of the Interior will actively study
and revise relevant regulations and supporting measures so that the new system can be
implemented smoothly on January 1, 2012.
The focal points of Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act amendments are the addition
of Article 22-1, which stipulates that prosecutors or municipal, county (city)
competent authority may submit the assessment report to court or military court and
apply for mandatory treatment of the offenders who committed sexual assault
crimes before June 30, 2006, and Article 23-1, which stipulates that police may
publish on the newspaper or use other methods to make public information about the
identity of the defendants who failed to receive treatment counseling, report for
registration, or convicted sexual assault offenders who are wanted for fleeing or
hiding.
The Ministry said the revised Criminal Code, Prison Act, Rehabilitative Disposition
Execution Act and Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act passed in 2005 stipulated that
prosecutors may apply to court for sexual assault offenders, who did not complete
treatment counseling after serving their short prison sentences, or treatment
counseling was not effective when their prison sentences are due to be completed, to
receive mandatory treatment after serving their prison sentences until the recidivism
risk is significantly reduced. But due to the non-retroactive principle of laws, the
relevant regulations do not apply to offenders who committed sexual assault crimes
before June 30, 2006.
The White Rose Movement started at the end of last year and the incident of a
sexual assault recidivist, who had just served his prison sentence, sexually assaulted
a grade 8 girl student in Yunlin County before killing her last March have led to
repeated appeals by all walks of life for the government to review related laws and
regulations. And the Ministry of the Interior submitted the Sexual Assault Crime
Prevention Act amendments after extensive discussions with relevant ministries and
the Legislative Yuan caucuses of both ruling and opposition parties.
To fill the legislation gap in which Article 91-1 of Criminal Code regulations
on mandatory treatment after serving prison sentence can not be applied to offenders
who committed sexual assault crimes before June 30, 2006 and were assessed as a
recidivism risk, the revised Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act added Article 22-1
to stipulate that prosecutors or municipal, county (city) competent authority may
submit such relevant information as the assessment report and apply to the court for
the offenders to receive mandatory treatment in medical institutions or other
designated premises, temporarily isolating the offenders from the community to
help their treatment counseling and prevent them from committing the same crime,
said Chien Hui-chuan, executive secretary of the Domestic Violence and Sexual
Assault Prevention Committee, the Ministry of the Interior.
The Ministry noted that the mandatory treatment will last until the risk of recidivism
is significantly reduced and during the process an annual assessment will be
conducted on whether it is necessary to continue the treatment, and those who are
judged as no need for further treatment can apply to the court for stopping mandatory
treatment. The revised Act also stipulates that when the offenders return to society
after receiving mandatory treatment, they have to get community physical and
psychological treatment and counseling education so as to extend the effect of
mandatory treatment.
To strengthen community supervision of sexual assault offenders and recidivism
prevention mechanism, combining the enhanced GPS functions of electronic
monitoring technology equipment, the Act’s Article 20 regulations on the time, scope
and manner of using technology equipment to monitor sexual assault crime offenders
during their protective custody are revised to more flexibly use electronic monitoring
equipment, not using them only when the offenders are subject to “curfew” or
“limitation on residence.” And the regulations on lie detector test are also expanded
from the offenders receiving physical and psychological treatment or counseling
education to those who are judged to have to take a lie detector test and approved by
the prosecutor.
The Ministry pointed out that juvenile sexual assault offenders ordered under
preventive control by the juvenile court will receive physical and psychological
treatment and counseling education being implemented by local governments
in the future. Although the offenders who committed crime of forced touching
as stipulated in Article 25 of Sexual Harassment Prevention Act did not commit
sexual assault crime, the revised Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act also adds
new regulations in Article 20 that the offenders who committed crime of forced
touching have to receive community physical and psychological treatment and
counseling education.
As to the offenders who violated Article 224 of Criminal Code (crime of forced
obscenity), or Article 228 (forced sexual intercourse or obscenity by using
authority and influence), and recidivists of forced intercourse or obscenity against
persons under 16 years of age as provided in Article 227 of Criminal Code, the
revised Sexual Assault Crime Prevention Act stipulates that they should regularly
report to the police bureau and the period for reporting is set at five or seven
years respectively according to their sentences. The Ministry explained that
because of the precocious physical development of people nowadays and those
who committed the Article 227 crime might violate the law unintentionally for having
intercourse by mutual consent, to order the first-time offenders, who violated Article
227 because of not understanding the law, to regularly report to the police bureau and
register related information is clearly inconsistent with the principle of
proportionality. Therefore, only recidivists of violating Article 227 are required to
report to the police. In order to know the exact whereabouts of the offenders, the
revised Act also stipulates that the police bureau should regularly or irregularly visits
the offenders during the period they are required to report and register information.
Moreover, with regard to the issues on which no consensus has been reached, the
Legislative Yuan passed two resolutions. One resolution requests the Department of
Health, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior to hold public hearings
and invite relevant experts to discuss and extensively collect opinions about the
feasibility of using hormone therapy (so-called chemical castration) to treat sexual
assault offenders from the aspects of legality, medical ethics, human rights and social
justice as well as related supporting measures for further study. The other asks the
Ministry of the Interior to study the practices of publishing the number of sexual
assault offenders with high recidivism risk in each area by taking into
consideration the size of area under municipal, county (city) jurisdiction, and continue
to actively review and improve the practices so as to alert the public to heighten
vigilance.
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