By Kim Jong-chan
A district court has refused to make public personal information on a sexual offender who was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for raping his two teenage daughters.
The father, 62, was also ordered to wear an electronic anklet for 10 years.
The Cheongju district court in North Chungcheong Province Wednesday ruled that it is inappropriate to make public personal information on the convicted father since doing so means that information on his daughters will be also made available, thus doing damage to them.
The law makes it mandatory for the court to make public personal information of sex offenders, as part of measures to curb such offenses.
In a previous ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that personal information on a father convicted for sexually assaulting his daughter be made public in a prudent way to prevent people from becoming aware that the victim was his daughter.
If Wednesday’s ruling is upheld by the Supreme Court, it would break the precedent.
In its ruling, the district court said there was a need to be prudent in making public personal information on the father, given that it could do harm to the two daughters.
It ordered the father not to approach the daughters by phone or any other means during the period of wearing an electronic anklet.
The father, surnamed Lee, allegedly raped his 11- and 12-year-old daughters, both mentally retarded, several times between 2009 and 2010.