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Summary: The current law identifies children who have been "induced into prostitution" as de facto prostitutes, rather than as rape victims, in the event of an assault. [6 June 2012] - A child protection committee under the national association of lawyers on Friday published its annual report about the "10 prominent cases involving child protection in China," China Youth Daily reports. The annual report, which reviews child abuse cases between 2011 and 2012, scathingly points to a number of cases where civil servants had raped girls under 14 but received lighter punishments than usual based on the country's controversial definitions of rape and the lesser crime of "inducing child prostitution." In early 2009, more than a dozen middle school girls under 14 were forced to have sex with men in Xishui city in southwest China's Guizhou Province. Police found out that the girls had been intimidated by two other teenagers and kept at a woman's house where they were forced to receive arranged customers, including a schoolteacher and other civil servants. The case received nationwide attention and outraged the public. But despite the swift arrest of those who ran the child prostitution ring, the customers were given prison sentences ranging from only five to 15 days in addition to 2,000 yuan-5,000 yuan fines, because the country's current criminal law does not identify such a crime as child rape. Instead, it specifies that if a financial tradeoff is involved, the case should be classified as "inducing child prostitution." Under the current criminal law regarding child rape, offenders can receive sentences of 15 years or more in prison, whereas a case of "inducing child prostitution" would allow an offender to only pay a fine and, in extremely appalling cases, be fined and receive a five-to-15-year jail sentence. Last year, a 12-year-old girl was raped by four township officials in Lue Yang County in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Like the case in Guizhou, the rapists received jail terms of three to seven years and were fined on the grounds that they did not realise the girl was underage when the crime took place and that she had been given financial compensation. Two equally appalling cases involving civil servants and underage girls occurred a week ago in central China's Henan and eastern Zhejiang provinces, refuelling public rage over the country's moral decay and the powerless criminal law regarding child rape. Tong Lihua, Director of the Child Protection Committee at the National Lawyers Association, says those violations are an outcry against the absence of a powerful child protection law. The problem, as she sees, is not so much about law enforcement, but something that is inherently wrong with the current law. Other legal experts in the country also openly oppose the current legal definition of child rape. Ever since it was established as a separate crime in 1997, inducing child prostitution has prompted public criticism. Many legal specialists and child protection experts have called for its abolishment. They assert that the distinction based on whether financial compensation is involved is very misleading because children, as the victims, are very vulnerable to intimidation and other types of manipulation. The law, which is otherwise supposed to give even stronger protection to children, discriminates against them as it identifies them as de facto prostitutes in the event of an assault, the experts say. What's more, the leniency granted to offenders who claim they were not aware of a child's age and had paid for consensual sex simply amounts to giving them a chance to get a free ride with regards to the factual criminal nature of their inflictions upon the child. Tong asserted in the report that the loophole was too obvious to be ignored and said in most countries there is no such secondary crime to rape as "inducing child prostitution" based on financial compensation or consensual sex. The law demands that adults stay away from children or face criminal charges of rape, she said. Tong added that abolishing such a discriminative item in the law would not be that difficult, as she believes society would not disagree that legal protection for children should be no less unconditional than it is for adults.  Further Information:Â
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The report argues that the legal distinction between rape and inducing child prostitution not only discriminates against children, but also undermines the deterrent power of law and gives criminals a free ride.