TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Control Yuan investigation has found that National Taiwan University (NTU) failed to protect students from sexual harassment and that some students who reported sexual harassment were adversely affected as a result.

The Control Yuan, the Taiwan government’s auditing body, issued the investigation results via press release on Thursday (July 11), per CNA. Control Yuan Members Wang Yu-ling (王幼玲), Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容), and Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) carried out the investigation, saying in the press release that there have been many reported incidents of sexual harassment at NTU. 

They said they included an associate professor suspected of sexually harassing multiple students and a dormitory supervisor is suspected of sexually harassing one student.

The investigation found that police charged an NTU dormitory supervisor suspected of sexually assaulting a student in September 2022. However, the report also noted that NTU had been aware of a separate sexual harassment allegation involving the same supervisor and student for one month by the time charges were filed.

NTU failed to put in place measures that would reduce the chances of contact between the supervisor and the student, handling the incident with insufficient speed and care, the investigation found. It also noted that NTU committed serious oversights by failing to establish codes of conduct and training that could have prevented such incidents.

A case involving an NTU student who was allegedly sexually harassed by their thesis supervisor also received scrutiny. Control Yuan investigators found that a student was made to rewrite their entire thesis after they submitted a sexual harassment complaint because the student’s intellectual property rights belonged to the accused professor.

The investigation found that this case seriously affected the student’s education and that NTU failed to protect the student from backlash occurring as a result of their complaint. The report found that in this instance, NTU again failed to protect students' interests.

Many regard NTU as the most prestigious university in Taiwan. In 2022, there were just under 33,500 students across all departments at NTU.