Injustice From Beginning to End: April 7 Final Court Hearing (Part I)

   It’s been one week since I landed in the ultimate destination of this chapter of my life – Indonesia – and it’s been a busy, but happy and smooth, start getting settled and learning my way around a brand-new place…far, far away from the nightmare of the Devil’s Dregs and the ineptitude, injustice, indifference and prejudice of Taiwan’s human rights-deficient “dinosaur” judiciary. I’ve got internet access again, although much less reliable, considerably slower and more expensive than in Taiwan.

  In keeping with the tradition of most of the earlier court hearings, the final one of April 7 was just as farcical as – if not a bit more than – the others.

  After confirming that I had no attorney, just a few minutes into the hearing the new judge asked me to explain why I sued the plaintiffs. Seems patience and good listening skills are severely lacking (especially when foreigners are speaking) as evidenced by all three judges conduct during the extremely limited chances I’ve had to speak in court. Just a few minutes into my testimony – which was translated into Chinese by the court-appointed translator – the translator interrupted me to say that I’d better hurry up my explanation because of the judge’s impatience. When the nursing university attorney and/or representative speak they go on for 10, 15 minutes at a time with little or no interruption. I can’t even speak for 5 minutes without being interrupted and rushed to finish! This has been the “modus operandi” of Taiwan’s court throughout the nearly three years of court hearings.

  The rushes through my testimony about how the nursing university (國立臺北護理健康大學) collaborated with the accuser in falsely accusing me of sexual harassment and violated my legal and human rights in the school’s investigation and decision were broken periodically by the judge asking the plaintiffs’ lawyer to respond to what I had said. Two of the more incredible responses he made were:

1)    The gender equity committee which “investigated” the accuser’s complaint and the larger committee which made the decision were completely independent (although all the members were chosen by at least the school president) and it was not possible for the school president, the nursing department chairperson, or anyone else at the school to have influenced or directed anyone on the committees to a particular decision;

2)    Three different times during his long-winded “speech”, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said to the judge that I was “avoiding telling all the details about what really happened at the activity” and “leaving out what I really did”. I kept asking the translator to ask the other side to say clearly what they meant by this vague reference, but their lawyer just kept repeating the same thing and the judge didn’t even ask him to clarify what he was talking about. Yet, when I testified that I had a witness who told me exactly what and who was behind the false accusation against me, the judge insisted I tell her who the witness was.

To be continued…