⚡ Key Summary
Sexual Violence at Severe Disability Facility and First-Instance Verdict:
The director of "Saekdongwon," a residential facility on Ganghwa Island in Incheon, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting and physically abusing resident persons with disabilities by exploiting their isolated environment and power dynamics. The director's side has appealed, questioning the credibility of the victims' statements and alleging schizophrenia.
Recognition of Credibility of Statements by Persons with Disabilities and Significance of Ruling:
The court recognized the facial expressions, gestures, and specific contextual details of persons with severe intellectual disabilities as truth grounded in firsthand experience. It marked significant progress by handing down a guilty verdict taking into account the unique nature of sexual crimes against persons with disabilities, even when specific dates of the offenses could not be definitively established.
Judicial Limitations and Unresolved Tasks:
Limitations remain, including an acquittal on rape charges for sexual assault committed while a victim was asleep due to a narrow interpretation of assault and intimidation (finding guilt only under the Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities), and the exclusion from investigation and trial of 19 other residents suspected of having suffered abuse due to communication difficulties. This highlights the urgent need for expanded fact-finding investigations.
At Saekdongwon, a residential facility for persons with severe disabilities located on Ganghwa Island in Incheon, the facility director was recently sentenced to 15 years in prison. Charges of sexually assaulting three residents with disabilities were upheld in the first-instance trial.
Koh Eun-young | Attorney for Victim A
I was deeply shocked that this has been repeated yet again. If physical violence was used to suppress victims' resistance in the past 'Silenced' case, now psychiatric medication is administered, and they use that to attack the credibility of the victims' statements...
What exactly happened inside that facility? We examined the first-instance ruling point by point.
1. What Happened Inside the Facility
Let us look first at the crimes established by the court. In February last year, Victim A was sexually assaulted by the facility director inside her room. A few days later, she was assaulted again in the hallway at night while on her way to the restroom. When Victim A resisted, the director threw a glass cup from the cafeteria, causing her head to bleed. Another victim, B, was sexually assaulted while sitting on the toilet in the restroom. Victim B was barely able to move with the aid of a walker. Victim C was struck on the palm 34 times with a drumstick in the administrative office.
2. Speaking Out After Eight Years
The catalyst that brought this case to light was the glass cup the director threw at Victim A. At the time, the facility notified the guardian only after taking Victim A to the hospital and having her scalp sutured. When Victim A's mother asked to see the CCTV footage to determine how the incident occurred, the facility refused, claiming it lacked the authority. Ultimately, the mother removed Victim A from the facility. It was only after that point—after being assured that she would never have to return there—that Victim A began to speak. It had been eight years since she entered the facility.
Koh Eun-young | Attorney for Victim A
Saekdongwon was not an institution used temporarily; it was an entire life space where residents ate, slept, lived, and received care. And the Defendant was the head of that very facility. The relationship between the victim and the Defendant was grounded in a far stronger dynamic of power and dependence than that of an ordinary perpetrator and victim...
3. Called Him "Dad"
The residents living there referred to the director as "Dad." Prosecutors pointed out that this title demonstrated the deeply unbalanced relationship between the residents and the director. Every aspect of daily life—times for eating and sleeping, outings, and hospital visits—depended entirely on the director's word.
During the investigation into the facility, one resident stated, "I have no parents, and I have nowhere else to go except here." Based on the statements of the victims mentioned earlier, the director appears to have further exploited the reality that residents were isolated from the outside world. The victims' testimonies cited in the ruling included statements such as "He said he would kill me if I told my mom" and "He said my mom wouldn't come get me."
4. Throughout the Trial, "It Is All Lies"
The director, however, flatly denied all charges. He offered two main arguments: ① Victim A's statements were delusions caused by schizophrenia. ② His right to defense was infringed because the specific dates and times of the offenses were not identified.
The schizophrenia claim was particularly persistent. Using the fact that Victim A had taken psychiatric medication at the facility as a pretext, the defense attacked her as suffering from mental illness, and even claimed that the glass cup she was struck with did not exist in the facility.
Koh Eun-young | Attorney for Victim A
They kept pointing out minor peripheral details—such as not precisely remembering or giving slightly varying accounts regarding the dates or times of the crimes, or the exact shape of the glass cup that caused the injury—to argue that the victim's entire statement was untrustworthy. While she was at the facility, schizophrenia medication was prescribed and administered to her, and the party that prescribed and administered that schizophrenia medication was Saekdongwon itself.
The Attorney submitted medical opinions to the court from two university hospitals that had examined her at different times. Both institutions concluded that no symptoms of schizophrenia were observed in Victim A and that it was difficult to diagnose her with the condition.
5. The Court Dismisses the Claims
The court's judgment was clear. Regarding Victim A, it determined that her statements were not the result of auditory or visual hallucinations caused by schizophrenia. Furthermore, the court placed greater weight on the credibility of the victims' statements by citing the director's own admission during the police investigation, where he said, "I do not believe they are capable of colluding to align their stories."
The most significant aspect of this ruling lies here: the court directly addressed how statements made by individuals with severe intellectual disabilities should be evaluated. According to records compiled by investigative agencies, the victims explained what they experienced in their own words and expressions, adding gestures and facial expressions when they struggled for words. There were also indelible details: "I knew he had entered because I heard the sound of slippers dragging." "He was tall, standing a head taller than me." "The inside of the dormitory was dark, but the emergency light above the room door was on, so I could tell it was the director." The court concluded that these statements appeared to be grounded in direct, firsthand experience. Three statement analysis experts also unanimously agreed that there was no possibility of false testimony.
Regarding the director's second argument that the timing of the crimes was not specified, the indictment for one victim merely stated that the offenses occurred "in the summer between 2012 and 2023." The court held that specifying exact dates is inevitably difficult given the victim's degree of disability, communication ability, and the inherent nature of sexual crimes where objective evidence is hard to obtain. The court firmly stated:
If the charges are dismissed simply because they are not more concretely specified, it would become virtually impossible to secure convictions in similar sexual offenses committed against persons with severe disabilities.
— From the first-instance ruling
The outcome was a 15-year prison sentence. The court also ordered a 10-year employment restriction and 3 years of probation.
6. However, One Charge Was Acquitted
This covers the convictions. However, an acquittal was handed down on just one charge in the indictment: the rape charge concerning the sexual assault of a victim while she was asleep in her living quarters.
Article 6 of the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Sexual Crimes contains two provisions: rape of a person with disabilities through assault or intimidation, and intercourse by taking advantage of a state of inability to resist. The prosecution indicted this charge under Paragraph 1. The court ruled that to penalize someone under Paragraph 1, assault or intimidation with the intent to engage in sexual intercourse must be proven, and that the act of pulling down the clothes of a sleeping individual and penetrating them could hardly be deemed an assault in itself.
Park Yoon-hee | Attorney (Former Chief Prosecutor, Women and Children Crime Investigation Division)
It did not deviate from the strict standard of "assault or intimidation in the narrowest sense" required by the Supreme Court. However, looking at recent lower-court rulings, even under the same standard, there is a clear trend toward recognizing assault and intimidation more broadly in cases involving persons with severe disabilities by comprehensively taking into account the degree of the victim's disability, the power dynamic with the facility head, and the isolated environment. Viewed in light of recent sentencing trends, there is ample room to see this as a somewhat narrow interpretation.
Nevertheless, a violation of the Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities for the same act was found guilty.
7. And Those Who Remained Unnamed
In total, four victims had their harm legally recognized in this ruling. However, there appear to be significantly more victims. Prior to the court's verdict, at the request of Ganghwa County, the Cognitive Science Research Institute at WOOSEOK University conducted in-depth investigations into residents living at Saekdongwon twice, in December last year and February this year. A team of 15 researchers was deployed, first identifying each individual's communication method through play and dialogue in consideration of their severe disabilities before conducting in-depth inquiries. As a result, circumstances pointing to suspected abuse were identified among 19 individuals who had resided at the facility.
Yet, only the sexual assault cases involving three victims and the physical assault case involving one victim made it through police investigation to trial. This was because investigative authorities recognized only the harm of those who were able to articulate their experiences in complete sentences. Those unable to explain their ordeal verbally still have not been officially recognized as victims.
8. Fifteen Years Since 'Silenced'
Following the 2011 film 'Silenced,' which depicted the Gwangju Inhwa School incident, the law was strengthened. Sexual crimes targeting persons with disabilities were classified into more specific categories, and aggravated penalties were established for facility heads and staff members. The requirement for a victim's complaint to prosecute was abolished, and a communication assistant system was introduced for victims with communication difficulties. Yet, 15 years later, the same tragedy has repeated itself.
As this case came to light, nationwide inspections were conducted once again. This past April, inspections of 1,507 residential facilities for persons with disabilities nationwide uncovered 33 suspected cases of abuse, 8 of which prompted formal investigations. Ganghwa County ordered the closure of Saekdongwon, and Incheon Metropolitan City revoked its corporate establishment permit. However, Saekdongwon contested these actions by filing administrative lawsuits. Calling the 15-year sentence absurd and claiming that the court unilaterally accepted only the victims' testimonies, the director appealed on September 4.
This first-instance trial clearly marked progress. The court opened its ears to voices that had long been doubted simply because their speech was clumsy. Yet we cannot stop here. The mission remains for us to uncover the truth through thorough investigations into the suspected harm of the 19 other individuals at Saekdongwon and the suspected cases identified at disability facilities across the country.
Deep Dive Q&A
Q1. The director of Saekdongwon claimed that the victim's statement was a "delusion caused by schizophrenia" and that his right to defense was infringed because specific dates of the offenses were not identified. Why did the court reject these arguments?
A1. The court determined, based on medical opinions from two university hospitals, that no symptoms of schizophrenia were observed in the victim, and it evaluated the credibility of the statements highly in light of the director's own admission that the victims were unlikely to have coordinated their accounts. Furthermore, the victim consistently described specific details—including words, gestures, the glow of the emergency light, and the sound of slippers—and three experts agreed there was no possibility of false statements. Regarding the issue of specifying the timing of the offenses, the court rejected the director's claim by explicitly stating that if strict dates are demanded given the communication capabilities of persons with severe disabilities and the nature of sexual offenses, proving guilt in sexual crimes targeting persons with disabilities would become virtually impossible.
Q2. Although suspected harm was identified among 19 facility residents during the in-depth investigation, why were only four victim cases brought to trial?
A2. This occurred because investigative authorities officially recognized and investigated only the statements and abuse cases of individuals capable of directly explaining their harm in complete sentences or clear expressions. Although the in-depth investigation by the Cognitive Science Research Institute at WOOSEOK University uncovered suspected harm among 19 individuals with severe disabilities, residents who could not articulate their suffering verbally were excluded and not officially named as victims in the investigation and trial process.
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