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Civic Groups Call for Swift Amendments to the National Sports Act and a Child and Youth Work Permit System

Cases of coaches convicted of sexually abusing children returning to private clubs and community teams reveal systemic gaps in Taiwan’s child-protection regime, where legal reform and disclosure mechanisms still lag far behind the risks children face.

狼教練轉場進社區、帶隊接觸兒少，不適任教練資訊揭露的漏洞從何補起？

The Reporter · By 嚴文廷 · 7 July 2026 · read the original in Chinese →

Civic Groups Call for Swift Amendments to the National Sports Act and a Child and Youth Work Permit System民間呼籲速修《國體法》、建立兒少工作證制度

涉犯性侵、猥褻兒少的教練，即使判刑確定，甚至假釋出獄後，雖已離開校園和教育現場，仍能輕易轉入各種民間俱樂部、私人工作室擔任教練，持續近距離接觸兒少，並有權勢關係。

Coaches implicated in the sexual assault or molestation of children and adolescents, even after their convictions are final, and even after being released on parole, may have left campuses and formal educational settings, yet they can still easily move into all kinds of private clubs and studios as coaches, continuing to have close contact with children and adolescents and to occupy positions of power over them.

《報導者》整理與訪查過去案件發現，這是制度性的保護漏洞。由於《國民體育法》修法遲滯，狼教練資訊揭露始終缺乏明確法源；15年未動的《兒童及少年福利與權益保障法》修法，才進入草案公聽階段。兒少保護制度的缺漏，到底何時才能補破網？修法與制度改革的腳步，始終趕不上孩子面臨的性侵害風險。

A review and investigation by The Reporter of past cases found that this is a systemic gap in protection. Because amendments to the National Sports Act have stalled, there has never been a clear legal basis for disclosing information about predatory coaches; amendments to the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act, untouched for 15 years, have only just entered the draft public-hearing stage. When, exactly, will the gaps in the child-protection system be mended? The pace of legal and institutional reform has never caught up with the risk of sexual abuse faced by children.

“Song Zhibin, a baseball coach at an elementary school in Taiping District, Taichung, sexually assaulted and molested young players over many years. Last year (2025), the Taichung District Court convicted him of forcible sexual intercourse against more than a dozen underage boys; for a total of 90 offenses, he was sentenced separately to prison terms ranging from three years and six months to eight years and six months. After further investigation, the Taichung District Prosecutors Office discovered in April 2026 another 19 victims, and again indicted Song Zhibin for sexual assault and forcible molestation.”

The report was airing on the evening television news. Betty, a pseudonym, who lives in Taipei, was watching with her fifth-grade child when she finally seized the moment to say the words she had rehearsed for so long, words whose anxiety had kept her from sleeping soundly. Choosing her wording with care, Betty said, “I heard that a coach on your former team once violated players’ bodies. Has anyone touched your body in a way that made you uncomfortable?” The child thought for a moment and answered, “No.”

The instant she heard the child’s answer, Betty finally breathed a sigh of relief. At a press conference in January this year (2026), the Humanistic Education Foundation had revealed that brothers Lu Zhihe and Lu Zhihui, who had previously been sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting and molesting players, had after being released on parole become coaches for the “Shadow Warrior Parent-Child Community Baseball Team.” They had in fact coached players in several youth baseball tournaments, and had even rented school venues in Taipei’s Wanhua District. Shadow Warrior was the team Betty’s child had joined.

Before that, Betty and another parent, Ajuan, also a pseudonym, had already taken their children away from Shadow Warrior. “At first my child still didn’t want to switch to a new team. Every time, I wanted to ask whether the two coaches with records of sexual assault had touched the child inappropriately, but I was afraid that if it had really happened, the child still wouldn’t dare say so. I quietly rehearsed over and over how to ask in a completely natural setting. It happened that the television was airing related news, and only then did I really ask.”

It was only after seeing media reports on the story that Betty and Ajuan were startled to realize that the coaches of the team their children played on every week had once been child sex offenders. At the time, in the team’s LINE group, other parents asked whether the reports were true. Lu Zhihe, who had changed his name to Lu Kai, admitted in the group: “What the parents have asked about is true. Much time has passed, and we are willing to bear everything.” When Betty and Ajuan saw this, their scalps went numb, and they began looking for excuses to take leave. But a parent serving as team leader suddenly demanded that all parents use their real names in the LINE group to post in sequence their support for the coaches; anyone who did not speak up was directly removed from the group. In an interview with The Reporter, Ajuan said:

“Not joining in, leaving the group, that was no great matter. What shocked me most was that parents in the group began asking everyone to choose sides. They said the coaches had devoted themselves for a long time, provided bats and equipment, charged very little, and were doing it all to give back to baseball, so the coaches should be given a chance.”

“But Betty and I both felt: this isn’t right. These are people with prior convictions for sexually assaulting children. How can they be allowed to come into contact with minors again? That was what we found most inconceivable.”「但我與貝蒂都覺得，這不對吧！這是有性侵孩童前科的人，怎麼能再接觸未成年？這也是我們覺得最匪夷所思的。」

According to other baseball coaches in the Wanhua area, after the Humanistic Education Foundation exposed the Shadow Warrior community baseball team’s coaches as having sexual-assault records, the team at one point changed its name and entered competitions under the new name. After being exposed again, it has not taken part in competitions since.

The fact that the Lu brothers had become coaches for a community team after being released on parole was first exposed in 2025 by Liu Baijun, executive director of the Taiwan Good Sports Association. The Humanistic Education Foundation, tracing the matter further back, found that from around 2023 the Lu brothers had been serving as community baseball coaches in the Wanhua area.

Chen Zhiyuan, executive secretary of the Humanistic Education Foundation, pointed out that a community baseball team can hire coaches or set itself up as a studio without any formal registration; once players put on jerseys, they can enter competitions. Some small community tournaments do not even check coaching certificates: wearing a jersey is enough to coach from the sidelines. By contrast, schools hiring outside coaches are supposed to check, under the Gender Equity Education Act and the Regulations Governing the Reporting, Collection, Inquiry, Handling, and Use of Information on School Personnel Unsuitable Due to Gender-Related Incidents, whether a person is unsuitable. Yet even then, in the case of Song Zhibin, the Taichung elementary school hired him because it failed to conduct the check. How much more vulnerable, then, are community baseball teams that need not check at all?

Liu Baijun, Taiwan’s first female baseball umpire, recalled: “I met the Lu brothers around 2006. At the time, I was accumulating practical experience as a baseball umpire. When the elementary-school team coached by the two brothers played local scrimmages, they were willing to let me stand as umpire, even as plate umpire. Later, when I was able to become a baseball umpire smoothly, they really had helped me a great deal, and I was very grateful to them.”

But more than two years ago, she received private messages from community baseball coaches saying that after leaving prison the Lu brothers had returned to grassroots baseball coaching and were even taking children to competitions, which was extremely inappropriate. They hoped Liu’s public profile could be used to stop the brothers from teaching baseball again and protect children’s safety. Liu, who once worked at the Garden of Hope Foundation, said: “My background as a social worker set off alarm bells. The two brothers should be permanently separated from children and adolescents. I kept raising this with the Taipei City Sports Federation and the baseball association, but no one paid attention.” In the end, she had no choice but to expose the matter at a Legislative Yuan public hearing:

“After I exposed it, there were even coaches who privately relayed the brothers’ request that I leave them a way to live. But I am not trying to cut off their livelihood. They can do any work they want (they are currently selling fruits and vegetables at a market). The one thing they should not do is come into contact with children.” This case exposes the gaps in existing laws and regulations for protecting children and adolescents.

Regarding the disclosure of information on unsuitable coaches, the Sports Administration, predecessor of the Ministry of Sports, set up in 2025 a “Special Information Section on Unsuitable Coaches Involved in Illegal Incidents,” hereafter the unsuitable-coach section. It published the names of 144 coaches holding certificates from specific sports organizations who, over the 15 years from 2010 to 2025, had been involved in illegal incidents concerning gender equity, injury, homicide, and domestic violence. But Lin Yuxuan, secretary of the Humanistic Education Foundation, found in her investigation that the two Lu brothers were not on this list at all.

When reporters from The Reporter actually checked the Ministry of Sports section, they found that the platform’s data contained only names, sports, and links to court judgments; the section’s search function allowed users only to select categories and did not permit direct searches by coach name.

Lin Yuxuan stressed that Lu Zhihe had changed his name to Lu Kai after leaving prison; even if he had been on the list at the time, the current search function would not find him.

The current draft remains with the Executive Yuan and has not yet been sent to the Legislative Yuan for amendment. Yet on June 23 this year, the Legislative Yuan passed, on third reading, a lawmaker-sponsored amendment concerning gender ratios. In other words, key reforms such as a legal basis for a coaching-certificate inquiry system and management rules for revoking coaching certificates have fallen through and, to this day, still lie with the Executive Yuan. Unsuitable coaches remain free to teach in communities, and parents have no channels through which they can search for them.

In response, Jiao Jiahong, deputy secretary-general of the Taiwan Good Sports Association and a former Legislative Yuan assistant, expressed regret. He said this should have been an opportunity to revise the system for revoking the certificates of unsuitable coaches. Although civic groups have called for amendments to protect children and adolescents, the Ministry of Sports has not actively stated a position.

Legislator Chang Yalin, who has long followed the issue of predatory coaches, believes that the Ministry of Sports’ unsuitable-coach section is currently incomplete in function and ineffective, and that it also lacks an adequate legal basis to require a mandatory inquiry mechanism. The law should positively enumerate the conduct that makes sports coaches and sports referees unsuitable, she said, drawing on Article 4 of the Regulations Governing the Establishment of Qualification Certification and Management for Sports Coaches by Specific Sports Organizations, and listing 11 items including sexual assault, homicide, sexual exploitation of children and adolescents, and sexual bullying. The Ministry of Sports should establish the inquiry system, while city and county competent authorities should conduct inquiries. She criticized the ministry for invoking the lack of a legal basis as its reason for inaction, yet when it comes to actually establishing that basis and amending the relevant provisions of the National Sports Act, it has taken a passive attitude and still has not sent the amendment draft to the Legislative Yuan.

Responding to The Reporter’s questions, the Ministry of Sports said it would establish a license inquiry system through amendments to the National Sports Act, and would publicly announce unsuitable sports coaches’ names, identity-document numbers, sports, and the legal bases for revocation and violations. Before that, it said, it would strengthen the professional knowledge and child-protection awareness of sports organizations at all levels, community sports organizations, and personnel engaged in teaching sports to children and adolescents, and would continue updating the information in the unsuitable-coach section. The ministry emphasized that in the future qualified-coach license inquiry system, it will be possible to search by coach name and sport type, and the results shown will all be coaches whose qualifications are valid and current.

Legislator Chen Peiyu suggested that the Ministry of Sports should use subsidies to require individual sports associations to update unsuitable-coach information regularly, and should also work with local governments to conduct spot checks of coaching certificates. The most serious holes should be patched first, she said, by requiring coaches engaged in private teaching to obtain certificates and come under management.

Beyond the many holes in the disclosure of information on sports coaches involved in sexual violence, there is also no law to regulate coaches with relevant criminal records who move into private teams or private coaching and rent public venues. Chen Zhiyuan noted that in July last year, the Humanistic Education Foundation exposed the case of badminton coach Li Jianwei, who in 2018 sexually assaulted a student while working at a school, was dismissed, and was permanently barred from serving as an educator, yet went on to coach in the private sector. Li Jianwei is also listed in the unsuitable-coach section.

Chen Zhiyuan said the Hualien case is only the tip of the iceberg. There has long been too much gray area in the disclosure of information on predatory coaches and in the management of inquiry systems, including private clubs borrowing venues everywhere while no law requires venue owners to check the unsuitable-coach section. He stressed that publicly operated venues, when rented out, should fulfill their responsibility to protect children and adolescents. Before regulations are complete, the government has the authority to use management measures to prevent predatory coaches from contacting children. In June this year, the Sport for All Administration under the Ministry of Sports sent a letter to county and city governments requiring them to add to rental contracts a major-breach clause allowing termination if a person involved in a case is present. Chang Yalin agreed: “In the short term, amending the National Sports Act to give county and city competent authorities the inquiry responsibilities they should have is the more feasible approach.” She gave the example that holding competitions usually involves venue rental and approval by competent authorities, and county and city authorities can use that process to check whether participating teams’ coaches and referees are listed in the unsuitable section. Even if the section has gaps, multiple parties can still take part in guarding the gate.

On the issue of predatory coaches renting venues, the Sport for All Administration under the Ministry of Sports replied that it would continue holding courses for coaches on sports safety protections, and would cooperate with police and health authorities to protect children and adolescents. Such a response still does not require venue managers to check users’ backgrounds.

Take Song Zhibin as an example. At the time, he had obtained a police criminal-record certificate to apply for the school job, because he had been sentenced to five years with probation, had not reoffended, and could still obtain such a certificate. A Control Yuan report further pointed out that the school had failed to check the Ministry of Education’s “Reporting and Inquiry System for Unsuitable Personnel in Educational Settings,” allowing a predatory coach to enter the campus and endanger students; the Control Yuan therefore censured the elementary school and the Taichung City Education Bureau.

Li Jinglei, a podcast host concerned with children’s issues, initiated a petition last year on the Public Policy Online Participation Platform calling for the establishment of a “child work permit” system. After the petition accumulated 5,000 endorsements within 60 days and was formally accepted, the Ministry of Health and Welfare incorporated the child and youth work permit issue into the draft amendments to the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act, which has not been amended in 15 years, and completed regional public hearings in May and June this year.

In an interview with The Reporter, Li Jinglei said she welcomed the draft amendments to the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act, but also raised several concerns. These included the fact that the draft requires only workers in the three categories of “education, care, and training” to hold a child and youth work permit. Yet these three categories are too broad, and fail to specify clearly or cover occupations that may come into contact with children and adolescents. Are private tutors, private coaches, and play companions included? In her view, regardless of form, and regardless of whether the person is a professional, anyone who comes into contact with children and adolescents should, following the model of Australia’s Blue Card, be required to hold a child and youth work permit before providing services.

Li Jinglei pointed out another problem: under the draft currently announced by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, an unsuitable worker can be stopped from contacting children and adolescents only after a “final criminal conviction.” But “litigation takes years of trial proceedings, and the party involved may not necessarily be detained.” During that long period, the person is still in a state of “no final conviction.” Does that mean it is also legal for them to contact children and adolescents? If parents do not know the worker’s details or background, and may not be able to find them out, such people may still continue to have contact with children and adolescents.

Fan Yun pointed out that much in the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s draft remains urgently in need of discussion, including the fact that people who have committed serious domestic violence could serve as child and youth workers under the draft, and that it would be necessary to wait until a third-instance final judgment before blocking someone from such work. She believes the draft’s scope of application is overly narrow, while its qualification settings, limited to final criminal judgments and substantiated administrative investigations of sexual assault, are too lax. Both would reduce the law to a formality and fail to eliminate predators. After the draft is sent to the Legislative Yuan, she said, she will propose a corresponding version and hopes it can be reviewed in the next session.

Faced with the persistent inability to resolve the problem of predatory coaches effectively, Lin Chia-ho, associate professor in the Department of Law at National Chengchi University, said that requiring all workers who come into contact with children and adolescents to hold a valid work permit “sounds like a good idea.” But as a legal scholar, he is more cautious about refusing certain groups a return to society and about “catch-all legislation.” Merely defining what degree of involvement counts as “continuous care of children and adolescents” or “continuous contact with children and adolescents” may require lengthy discussion, as well as positive enumeration of which industries count and which workers must be included. Nurses, for example, count as caregivers, but do doctors? These questions must all be discussed clearly.

In addition, Lin Chia-ho believes the scope of obligations and responsibilities must also be defined. If a person holding a child and youth work permit turns out to be the perpetrator, how much legal responsibility should the operator bear? That, too, needs discussion. He emphasized that one can understand society’s sense of urgency about solving problems such as predatory coaches continuing to teach in communities, but Taiwan has a poor record of hurried legislation in the past. If a complete child and youth work permit system is to be established, it must be debated with care.

Returning to the National Sports Act, Lin Chia-ho, who has participated in discussions on its amendment, also suggested that the Ministry of Sports should promote revisions in response to public expectations. Although the National Sports Act can deal only with coaching certificates under the jurisdiction of sports associations, and if a coach never had an association coaching qualification in the first place, or even opens private classes to instruct children and adolescents, the Act indeed cannot address the case. There remains a considerable gap between that and society’s expectation of comprehensive management. Still, he stressed, filling the most urgent gap first would at least be a step forward:

“In the short term, amend the National Sports Act first to mend the net, then spend time reviewing and establishing a complete child and youth work permit system. While protecting children and adolescents, we must also take account of human-rights protections.” Deeply Seeking Truth, Walking with Many Voices

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