TAIPEI - A children's welfare group on Monday called on Taiwan's authorities to toughen punishment against child molesters by strengthening training of judges and using experts to testify, in the wake of a public outcry over lenient sentences meted out to pedophiles. The Child Welfare League Foundation R.O.C. said that in the past five years, the number of children sexually abused in Taiwan has reached 18,570, a significant increase from previous years.

The foundation was citing government statistics, which it presented at a press conference. Most of the victims are children aged between 6-12; they accounted for 2,711 of the total number of sexually abused children in this five-year period. Meanwhile, the number of victims aged under six has steadily increased and has reached more than 1,000, according to the statistics.

Wang Yu-min, executive director of the foundation, said that children who fall victim to traumatic sexual abuse are usually too frightened by the incidents and have difficulty expressing their painful experience during the very time-consuming legal process. It is therefore difficult to gather evidence against offenders, Wang said.

The foundation was speaking out after three recent cases where judges cleared or gave light jail sentences to defendants sparked public criticism. In one case, the Supreme Court rejected a prosecutor's appeal to give a tougher sentence to a man who had been accused of molesting a 3-year-old girl. The Supreme Court ruling said prosecutors had failed to prove the girl was opposed to the sexual activity.

In another case, a man charged with molesting his 2-year-old niece was acquitted by judges who said they believed the victim was mistaken about the time of the alleged crime.

In the third case, judges sentenced a child abuser to just 38 months in prison - less than half the sentence sought by prosecutors.

The rulings have caused 270,000 people to write on websites, including the social networking website Facebook, to demand that the judges be fired or to complain about their judgments.

The child welfare foundation's Wang said that currently rulings in most child abuse cases in Taiwan mainly hinge on judges' decisions. She called for strengthening the training of judges so that they are more attuned to the real world, and urged the establishment of an expert witness system to allow testimony from experts on children.

She added that the protection of children has been listed as a top priority in many countries, and that Taiwan should also establish this concept.

Taking California as an example, Wang said that in the U.S. state, people convicted of child sexual assault could be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Shen Shou-ching said earlier this month that under the current law, it can be difficult for judges to ascertain whether or not an offender is acting against a victim's will when the victim is under a certain age.

The Judicial Yuan has asked the Ministry of Justice to draft an amendment to the Criminal Law that would apply tougher penalties to pedophiles, Shen added.

The amendment would categorize all sexual activity with minors under the age of 7 as a serious rape charge, punishable by a minimum of seven years imprisonment, Shen said.

Saying that was not enough to resolve the problems child victims face, Wang added that last year, there were 4,000 reported child sexual abuse cases involving children aged 6-18, and that the problem is even worse than the figure shown.

She also asked that courts make public convictions involving sexual abuse of children over the past three years so the public can review the cases to see if the rulings were fair and appropriate.