Bad criminal law treats child victims as prostitutes
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, May 20, 2013
Ignorant of the law
Some press also blundered badly in ethnics, whether intentionally or not. In zealously inquiring about who contacted whom first for the fateful rendezvous - the girls or the headmaster - they are oblivious to the harm they are doing and are ignorant of Chinese law.
Under China's Penal Code, having consensual sex with underage girls is considered rape. So it doesn't matter who asked whom out first. The innocence of the children is not to be exploited by devious pedophiles. Media obsession with damning details helps none other than the sex perverts, who in their own defense alleged the girls voluntarily had sex with them and got paid in return.
What responsible journalism should be doing now is to zero in on the wrongheaded clause that emboldens the likes of Chen to prey on their targets.
The clause, a 1997 amendment to the country's criminal law, stipulates that consensual sex with girls under 14 carries a prison term of five to seven years. The amendment was aimed at distinguishing with rape of minors, a crime punishable by the death penalty.
Over a decade, it has been increasingly observed that the clause was responsible for the the spike in rape cases involving minors. The rapists are occasionally officials, some of whom believe that sexual intercourse with virgins can boost their health and stamina.
With deterrent of the death penalty gone, many monsters have little to fear for the consequences of their crimes.
Criticism of the clause first gained momentum in April 2009, when several officials in Xishui County, Guizhou Province, were prosecuted on charges of having sex with minors whom they had actually forced into sex slavery.
The convicts were given jail terms ranging from seven years to life imprisonment.
Another high-profile case in which the defendants cited the amendment as extenuating circumstances occurred in 2011, when seven township officials in Shaanxi Province raped a 12-year-old girl and said "she did it of her own accord." They were found guilty and sentenced to three to seven years in prison in 2012.
No doubt the clause in itself is demeaning, portraying the victims as child prostitutes.
As the Wanning case proceeded, we were again shocked at the expose on Thursday that a primary school principal in Anhui Province had sexually assaulted nine female pupils over 12 years, without being detected.
It is no exaggeration to say that the 1997 amendment has opened a Pandora's box of child sex abuse, to the delight of pedophiles.
China should consider the practice in South Korea and Germany, where pedophiles could be punished with chemical castration, suggested an angry commentator in Thursday's Guangzhou Daily. But perhaps no measure would work better than the immediate repeal of a law that goes too easy on scum like the duo in Wanning.
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