8,000 suspects charged for child molestation in past 4 years

China charged a total of 8,069 people with child molestation from 2010 to 2013, said the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) here Thursday, ahead the International Children's Day.

Also, 255 people were charged with having sex with prostitutes below 14 and 121 people were charged with luring girls below 14 into prostitution, said the SPP statement.

Procuratorates across the country have stepped up their efforts against all crimes targeting children, especially sexual abuse cases, said Xiao Wei, the SPP spokeswoman, at a press conference here.

The country has been shocked by a string of child molestation cases involving teachers in recent years.

In April, a teacher in east China's Anhui Province and another in central China's Henan Province were sentenced to 17 years in prison and suspended death respectively for raping and molesting a dozen of their students.

In May last year, a news story about a school principal and a government clerk in south China's Hainan Province raping primary school girls roused strong concerns about sexual crimes against children nationwide.

In the Hainan case, Chen Zaipeng, the former principal of Wanning No. 2 Primary School, and Feng Xiaosong, a former clerk at the city's property administration bureau were respectively sentenced to 13 and half and 11 and half years in jail.

Prosecutors will continue giving priorities to child molestation cases and seek the most serious legal punishment against these offenders, Xiao said.

The SPP statement also said that prosecutors have booked and charged fewer juvenile offenders since 2012 and the recidivism rate of juvenile offenders dropped by 29.6 percent from 2008 to 2013.

However, the age of juvenile offenders kept decreasing in these years. A majority of juvenile cases involve those between 16 and 18 but the number of those involving the underage from 14 to 16 has increased, said Shi Weizhong, an SPP official at the same press conference.

Most of the young offenders are less educated, Shi said. In 2013, 90 percent of juvenile offenders prosecuted nationwide received less than nine years of education.

Most of these children are from disfunctional families and violent and pornographic contents on mass media and Internet also contribute to the cause of their misbehaviors, he said.