Imagine sleeping peacefully in your bed and being jolted into consciousness by loud swearing in the middle of the night. This was the nightmare endured by dozens of residents of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, who had to put up with the antics of a crazed neighbor.
A Taiwanese court of law recently ruled against a woman surnamed Chen who reportedly installed sound-amplifying equipment on the balcony of her home in Kaohsiung and used it to insult her neighbors at odd hours of the night, at least three times per week, for nearly two years.
In May 2023, Chen began using a megaphone to insult several neighbors with whom she had disputes, but the sound coming from her balcony was so loud that it affected the peace of several other households in her neighborhood. She always “broadcast” at maximum volume, with each session lasting a few dozen minutes.
After enduring the situation for almost two years and failing to reason with Chen, dozens of neighbors filed a joint complaint with the local police. The case eventually ended up in Court, where Chen admitted to using a megaphone to curse at her neighbours at late hours of the night, but claimed she did so only occasionally and only because the noise caused by her neighbors had prevented her from resting properly.
A judge ruled that, by deliberately and repeatedly using amplified equipment to broadcast abusive language during late-night hours, Chen had gone beyond what society deems reasonable or even tolerable. She was sentenced to three months in prison, commutable to a NT$90,000 ($3600) fine, but she can still appeal the sentence.
This kind of audio torture is nothing new. A few years back, we posted about a man who terrorized neighbors by playing loud music and dog barking all day long, as well as about a woman who played Verdi’s La Traviata at loud volume for 16 years.
