Intelligence Online
TAIPEI (Reuters) - A Taiwan court convicted five people on
Thursday for their roles in a notorious sex scandal in which a former
politician was caught on a hidden camera having sex with a married man.
The Taipei district court sentenced Shen Jung, publisher
of the Chinese-language Scoop weekly magazine, to 30 months in prison for
invading the privacy of Melody Chu Mei-feng, a former television reporter
and reporter who shot to fame in the Chinese-speaking world after the
scandal broke.
The court also handed down sentences ranging from six to
26 months to three editors of the tabloid magazine for mass-producing and
giving away video discs showing Chu having sex with the married man in her
bedroom, a court spokesman said.
Chu's estranged friend, Kuo Yu-ling, who installed the
hidden camera and sold the footage to Scoop to pay for her daughter's
college education, was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.
"They caused tremendous damage to the victim,"
spokesman Liu Shou-sung told reporters after the verdict was delivered.
Kuo said she would appeal. "I am a nobody. I feel
helpless," said Kuo, who is not in custody because defendants in Taiwan
are not necessarily picked up by the authorities until after final
conviction.
The other defendants could not be reached for comment.
Chu has dropped a lawsuit against her former boyfriend,
Tsai Jen-chien, who helped Kuo install the camera. Tsai was a former mayor
of the northern high-tech city of Hsinchu and had made Chu director of the
city's department of cultural affairs.
The government seized thousands of copies of the magazine
and accompanying video discs, but pirated copies of the video made their way
across the globe.
Chu, 35, disappeared briefly from the public eye after the
scandal but bounced back with a book detailing her relationships with six
lovers. She also granted media interviews and worked as a radio disc jockey.
She held a concert in Hong Kong this week after launching
her singing debut in Singapore in March. She was reputedly not very
good. - Yahoo!
25 July 2002
