Child prostitution case leaves many questions

While a child prostitution scandal rocks Zhejiang province's Yongkang, a quiet county-level city, Yongkang No 4 Middle School - where the youngest of the recently discovered prostitutes came from - remains at peace, at least on the surface.

In contrast to the calm, however, parents were in shock when they learned about what had happened, especially when the name of Hu Liangqi, a deputy to the local people's congress of Yongkang and the head of Zhuming village, appeared on a client list in the case.

"I was in panic when I read the news in the paper," said Jiang Xinglong, a taxi driver who has a 15-year-old daughter in another local middle school. "My first reaction was to find my daughter and ask her if there's something wrong with her school.

"I don't understand what they're thinking - their own daughters could end up doing the same thing at school."

"There are extra procedures to go through to arrest a deputy to the people's congress," explained Yang Chao, a lawyer with Beijing's Huawei Law Firm.

"We're looking for another four suspects, three of whom are still applying for an arrest approval from the procuratorate," Chen Yongke said. "And we've published an internal warrant across the country to track down another one."

On April 5, the Yongkang public security bureau arrested six people on suspicion that they had "sheltered and introduced prostitution".

Among them was a 21-year old surnamed Chen who is suspected of being a "girl hunter". Some juvenile girl students are also believed to be involved in the case.

Chen Yongke, bureau spokesman, said he wouldn't reveal information about the young girls' names, ages and schools they attend, saying he wants to protect their privacy.

As for the girl hunter, "Chen was sentenced last August to three years in prison with a suspension of three years and six months", the officer said. "Chen was still serving her sentences when we caught her in April.

"These girl hunters have connections with clients and they introduced their younger female cousins and friends (who are students) into the business, some of whom were forced into it while the rest were doing it voluntarily," Dong said.

Another source, who asked to remain anonymous, said a dozen teenage girls are involved in the case.

"Two of them are students from Yongkang's junior middle schools and the youngest, who just celebrated her 14th birthday in March, came from Yongkang No 4 Middle School," said the source, who has connections with local judicial authorities.

Earlier last month, Cao Jianfeng, a teacher from Yongkang No 4 Middle School, told local media outlets that one of the students was from the school where he works.

"She is not from the type of family that commonly has troubles, such as a single-parent family, but there was a certain amount of parental laxity," said Cao, adding that no teachers were involved in the case.

Lu Hongfei, principal of Yongkang No 4 Middle School, said both the students and his school were victims of the child prostitution scandal, declining to comment further.

"We knew it a long time before there was (media exposure and a police crackdown)," said Dong Chengyao, 16, who dropped out of the school a year ago.

"In the eyes of some students, especially those in the eighth grade, it's perfectly acceptable to trade your virginity for 5,000 yuan ($790).

"For the first time, you can get 5,000 yuan. But the longer you stay in the business, the cheaper you become until you sell yourself for the same price as common prostitutes. Almost everybody who was in my class knew about these things."

She said 1,500 yuan was the price for non-virgins at the school.

"I knew teachers heard about it but they turned a blind eye and just pretended they didn't know about it," said a ninth grade student from the school, who declined to provide his name.

"There were only a few students from the eighth grade doing it at the beginning, but their bad behavior soon influenced the seventh grade."

"From Monday to Friday, we're confined to the boarding school," he said. "But girls would do it during weekends in local hotels."

The child prostitution case has given rise to a wider debate about what charges men should face for sleeping with teenage girls.

"If the girl is above 14 years old, it's a case of prostitution, for which the punishment can be only 15 days in detention and paying fines," said Zhou Dan, lawyer from the Shanghai Shaogang Law Firm who specializes in sex-crime cases.

The police did not release the ages of the juvenile prostitutes who were involved in the case.

"There are two important questions in this case apart from concerns about age - whether it had to do with the sex and money trade and whether the girls did it of their own accord."

If suspects are proved to have paid for sexual services from girls who are younger than 14 and were not forced to offer those services, they will be charged with "having sex with an underage prostitute". The punishment for that crime is three to 15 years in prison.

He said it's very easy for a defendant to deny he knew a girl was under 14.

Chinese law punishes rapists with three to 10 years in jail and death sentences can be handed out to those convicted of raping a girl under 14.

Yongkang police, though, said they're handling the case as being one of "sheltering and introducing prostitution" rather than "having sex with underage prostitutes" and putting a priority on cracking down on "girl hunters" rather than "clients".

Gu Xiaoming, sociology professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said society should prevent the law from harming those who are underage.

"The essence of the law should be changed to protect the young," he said. "As for schools, they should take on more responsibility by offering classes on psychosexuality in addition to sex education."

Zhou said that if a case like this happened in the United States, the parents of the students involved could be deprived of the custody of their children or even be sent to prison.