Left-behind girl had been sexually abused by mystic sought by her grandmother, police reveal.
By Fan Yiying
A 13-year-old girl from southwest China’s rural Sichuan province jumped to her death earlier this month after being sexually assaulted by a fortuneteller hired by the girl’s grandmother to treat her poor health, Sixth Tone’s sister publication The Paper reported Wednesday.
The girl, known only by her surname Wang, was one of China’s so-called left-behind children, living with her grandmother while her parents worked elsewhere. On the morning of July 12 she took a bus from her home in Guancheng Village in Sichuan to the nearest city, Huaying, where she committed suicide.
The public security bureau in Huaying said in a statement posted to its Weibo microblog Tuesday evening that Wang’s “severely superstitious and feudal-minded” grandmother — surnamed Tang — had enlisted the services of a fortuneteller to treat Wang’s unspecified physical ailment.
The fortuneteller, referred to in the statement by his surname Li, claimed the treatment would require “consummation” with the girl. With the complicity of Wang’s grandmother, the statement said, Li took the young girl to a forest on May 30 and raped her.
Given Wang’s age, details of the crime were not made public until consent was given by members of Wang’s family.
In the days leading up to her death, Tuesday’s police report said, Wang had written four suicide notes and made two audio recordings. She felt angry and depressed following the abuse and resorted to suicide in an attempt to “prove her innocence,” the statement said.
Lai Weinan, a lawyer who specializes in the sexual abuse of minors, told Sixth Tone that in cases like this, successful prosecution largely comes down to whether the defendant confesses. “Suicide notes aren’t necessarily admissible as direct evidence,” Lai told Sixth Tone, “though they can serve as proof if any descriptions [within the notes] of aspects of the man’s physical appearance are found to be accurate.”
Lai also said that the outcome of the case “will rest on the attitude of the police.” A lack of commitment on the side of the police in cases of sexual abuse against minors has been cited as one of the major obstacles facing victims in their pursuit of justice.
With Wang’s case, a spotlight is once again trained on the issue of left-behind children in rural areas. Their parents, over 270 million migrant workers, have moved from the Chinese countryside to big cities in search of more stable and better paid employment.
China’s most recent census, conducted in 2010, counted approximately 61 million left-behind children in China, or one-fifth of the country’s child population. Despite having access to free public education, many school-age kids struggle to deal with the absence of emotional support a nuclear family can provide. Most end up under the care of grandparents, who are often illiterate.
“It is difficult for up-to-date knowledge and information to penetrate rural communities,” said Li Tao, a sociologist who last year conducted field research on left-behind children in Sichuan. “When it comes to the upbringing of children by their grandparents, this has led to older people holding on to feudal superstitions and ignorant mindsets.”
A survey conducted in 2015 by the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Statistics found that, when meeting difficulties or being bullied, almost two-thirds of left-behind children turned to their teachers for help rather than their grandparents.
As a result, without the care of parents, lawyer Lai said children left behind in rural areas are at higher risk of sexual assault than their urban counterparts, and are more frequently targeted by criminal groups.
An officer at Huaying’s public security bureau confirmed to The Paper that the two suspects — Tang and Li — had been detained as of July 13, but they refused to make any further comment when contacted by Sixth Tone on Thursday.
Additional reporting by Wang Lianzhang.
(Header image: Yang Yi/Sixth Tone)
