Thousands of netizens left angry comments after police in east China said they would not charge a father seen aggressively kissing and touching his daughter, claiming that as he was the father, so his actions could not be defined as sexual assault.

Video of the alleged assault surfaced online. In the video, the man is seen lifting his daughter's blouse, caressing her back and kissing her face aggressively and even putting his hand into daughter's pants. The girl struggles and attempts to push her dad away and reluctantly told her father that she was in pain and refuses to her father touch her bottom. The entire scene happened while his wife and mother-in-law were sitting next to them.

A female passenger who shot the video on Saturday night on G1402 high-speed train from Guangzhou South station to Shangrao in Jiangxi Province, and sent the video clip on Sunday to a local newspaper in hopes that the man would be punished.

After an investigation the Nanchang Railway Police released a statement on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo, sparking furor among Chinese netizens.

The police concluded that as the man is the girl's father, his actions did not constitute molestation and could not be deemed illegal. That means the man's actions were not sexual assault.

After the police statement was published, over 20,000 comments from netizens questioned the logic and insisted that being a parent cannot be grounds for absolution if a man exceeds boundaries.

One of netizens @MIFFY commented that "If it doesn't count as molestation since they are father and daughter, what does it count as? Pedophilia?"

"The police may have concluded that because it was a father and daughter, the act did not constitute molestation. If that's so, it's illogical. Fathers had been caught for molesting or even raping their daughters," Wang Zhenyu, a lawyer at Beijing-based Yipai Law Firm told South China Morning Post.  

Related

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)