Taiwan immigration official charged with molestation

TAIPEI - A Taiwan immigration official has been indicted for sexually molesting four foreign women, a newspaper reported Sunday.

According to the United Daily News, Shih Pao-ning, 48, a National Immigration Agency official in charge of Taichung City, used his position to molest four foreign women last year.

The sexuals abuses occurred in the interview room of the immigration agency’s Taichung branch. Although Shih covered the security camera with paper, the monitoring system recorded the happenings, and prosecutors pressed charges against Shih based on the recordings and complaints from the four victims.

The four victims were two Vietnamese, one Thai and one Filipino woman.

Shih forced two Vietnamese women, detained for overstaying their visas, to strip, and molested them, the paper quoted the indictment as saying.

He forcibly hugged and kissed a Thai and a Filipino woman respectively, after they refused to be fondled by him, the indictment alleged.

“Shih’s conducts have seriously damaged our country’s international image, so prosecutors are seeking a harsh penalty for him,” the indictment said.