The charges applied in the case of the "tumbler bodily fluid terror" incident that occurred at an elementary school in Seogwipo, Jeju, in last April are increasingly leaning toward sex crimes rather than the initial charge of property damage.
According to the Seogwipo Police Station today (the 14th), the police are reportedly reviewing legal precedents to see whether sex crime charges can be applied to suspect A, who was booked on charges including trespassing and property damage.
Suspect A is accused of secretly sneaking into a classroom at an elementary school in Seogwipo late in the afternoon on April 27 and fleeing after putting bodily fluids into the tumbler of female teacher B.
After realizing the crime, Teacher B consulted a psychiatrist and was told that it was "a dangerous crime with a very high recurrence rate." She subsequently submitted a request urging an investigation to the Seogwipo Police Station, asking for a thorough probe.
However, about a month later on June 5, suspect A reportedly broke into the classroom where Teacher B served as the homeroom teacher once again, urinated on the teacher's chair, and fled.
Teacher B expressed that she is suffering from severe anxiety symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder, suspecting that these two crimes may have been systematically and deliberately targeted at her.
Despite the victimized female teacher complaining of severe psychological shock, the police had previously shown reluctance to apply sex crime charges to suspect A.
To apply sex crime charges such as forcible indecency, there must be violence or intimidation accompanied by "direct physical contact." The existing legal standard—that cases like this "bodily fluid terror" are difficult to view as direct physical contact—had been an obstacle.
However, last September, the Supreme Court ruled that a man's act of putting bodily fluids into a beverage cup that a female employee was drinking from constitutes the crime of forcible indecency, and sent the case back to the lower court.
The Supreme Court judged that the act of putting bodily fluids into a beverage cup essentially aims to have the victim drink it, and thus must be seen as exercising physical force against the body.
Furthermore, the court explained that because bodily fluids carrying strong sexual connotations were made to enter the victim's body, inflicting mental and physical suffering, these factors combined amount to forcible indecency.
This marks the first time that so-called "bodily fluid terror," involving putting bodily fluids into a beverage to make someone ingest it, has been recognized as forcible indecency.
Based on Supreme Court precedents and other legal reviews, the police plan to finalize their decision on whether to apply charges of forcible indecency before forwarding the case to the prosecution.
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