By KHT Staff. AI illustration image.
KAOHSIUNG — The Kaohsiung District Court (高雄地方法院) has acquitted a woman accused of public insult by force (強暴公然侮辱) after prosecutors alleged that she threw tissue paper contaminated with cat feces at a neighbor’s rolling iron gate during a long-running neighborhood dispute, according to a report by China Times.
The defendant, surnamed Zhuang (莊), was charged over a March 2025 incident in Siaogang District (小港區). Prosecutors said she used metal tongs to pick up tissue paper from the street, smeared it with stray cat droppings, and repeatedly threw it at the neighbor’s gate late at night.
Zhuang denied wrongdoing, saying she did not know the neighbor, was looking for a cat, and could not clearly see what was in the tissue paper because a knee injury made it difficult for her to bend down.
After reviewing surveillance footage, however, the court rejected that account and found that she had carried out the act described by prosecutors. The judgment also noted testimony that the underlying dispute was mainly between Zhuang and the complainant’s mother over the feeding of stray animals, and that the complainant said his mother had pushed him to file the case.
The ruling explained that the conduct did not meet the legal threshold for the offense charged. Judges said prosecutors had not shown that the act was directed at a specific individual in a way that satisfied the elements of public insult, and had also failed to clearly explain or prove how the conduct met the legal meaning of force/violence under that offense.
