Father furious as police release senior citizens who repeatedly raped 13-year-old girl

A 13-year-old girl has been repeatedly raped by three senior citizens in rural Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, news portal jxnews.com.cn reported on Wednesday.

One of the men, after raping the girl, "rented" her to two other seniors for 200 yuan ($32.61) every time they had sex.

"I found out about the rapes on June 5, when I returned home. I was furious and called the police the next day," the girl's father, who works with his wife in a downtown Nanchang restaurant away from home, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Local police later detained the three elderly men after investigation, but released two of the suspects on the same day. The man who is in detention is 63, and all are surnamed Zou, although they are not related.

"Police felt that these two are over 70 years old and there is no use in detaining them," said the father.

The girl's parents are rarely at home, leaving Xuanxuan (pseudonym), the 13-year-old, and her three sisters to live with their grandparents.

Xuanxuan is the man's eldest daughter with his former wife, who now lives with her grandparents in Qianfang village, Liuhu township in Xinjian county, Jiangxi Province.

One day at the beginning of the year, one of the seniors, who is 79 years old, invited Xuanxuan to his home after school. He offered her 10 yuan to enter his room, but the girl turned him down. The man then dragged her into his room by force and raped her.

Afraid that the man would beat her, Xuanxuan chose to remain silent. The man continued to rape her for the next five months and traded her to his two other friends as a prostitute for money.

The father said police told him that people over 70 years old might not be sentenced to jail. "If they aren't sentenced for the rape, they will be encouraged to commit other crimes," said the father, who insists that all three of them must be punished.

"The men in their 70s might be released on bail, since the police take the physical situation of the old men into consideration, but it does not mean they will not be punished for the crime," Huang Yizhi, a lawyer at Beijing Ruifeng Law Firm, told the Global Times.

According to the father, both sides will meet on Friday to negotiate the amount of compensation, which could reach 36,000 yuan.