People in Taiwan want to make it harder to get away with having pictures of child sex abuse after one of the show’s top hosts got away with it. After seven movies of children were found on Mickey Huang Tzu-chiao’s portable hard drive, he was fined 1.2 million NTD ($37,000; £30,000) and told to write an apology letter.
But the TV star won’t have to go to jail for two years if he behaves. The host says, “I will never make the mistake again” as an apology. But because the charges are so serious, protesters have called into question the prosecutor’s choice.
For someone with such a good image and lots of money, the Modern Women’s Foundation in Taipei said on Facebook that the punishments are “truly insignificant.” A group of famous people from Taiwan also wrote an open letter asking politicians to make crimes against children and sexual exploitation more severely punished.
“People always talk about these things as if they were news.” “People say bad things about it, but the dark clouds clear up soon enough that no one remembers about it,” it reads. “We hope we can turn anxiety into strength to urge the Legislative Yuan to amend the law and establish a stronger safety net for Taiwan’s children.”
Individuals in Taiwan who are found to have any sexual picture or video of a child without a valid reason may be jailed for up to one year and have to pay a fine of 30,000 to 300,000 NTD.
In the US, on the other hand, possession can get you up to 10 years in jail. Japan, on the other hand, gives up to a year in jail or a fine of up to 1 million yen ($6,600; £5,200). Huang, who is 52 years old, is well-known in Taiwan. He started his career in the late 1980s and is now one of the best TV hosts on the island. He has won many awards and is the host of some of the country’s most famous shows.
The police found out about him last year after two women accused him of sexual misbehavior during a wave of #MeToo claims that shook Taiwan. A decade ago, Huang was accused of forcing a 17-year-old girl to kiss him and take naked pictures with him. In 2013, he was accused of forcing another girl to have sex with him.
He said sorry for both events, and the police are now looking into them. There was “objective evidence” and a settlement between Huang and the women, the Taipei District Prosecutors Office said last week. The charges were not being pursued further. Police searched Huang’s home while they looked into the women’s claims and found the seven videos of children, which Huang admitted to downloading in 2023.