In 2023, Taiwan amended Article 25 of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Act in response to the MeToo movement, abolishing fines as the sole penalty and imposing harsher sanctions for harassment committed through abuse of power or opportunism. This study investigates whether the amendment has affected sentencing outcomes in criminal courts.
Criminal judgments from the Taipei District Court between 2023 and 2024 were collected. Case circumstances, victim and offender characteristics, and offender attitudes were coded and analyzed by means of one-way ANOVA and multiple regression to determine factors influencing sentencing length.
Findings indicate that victim age and offender attitudes are stable predictors of sentencing: cases involving minors result in harsher penalties, while confessions may reduce sentence length. Although settlements correlated with lighter sentences in univariate analysis, the effect diminished in multivariate models. The amendment has not yet produced a significant sentencing impact, warranting continued observation as more cases accumulate.
In contrast to prior research that primarily focuses on administrative rulings or statutory interpretation, this study provides empirical evidence on criminal sentencing for sexual harassment, offering insights for judicial practice and policy development while laying a foundation for future research on the effects of legal reforms.
