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    County Cops Dismissed 13-Year-Old’s Rape Claim

    Legal affairs head said the girl ‘looked mature.’

    At 14, China’s age of consent is already lower than in many countries. Yet county police in central China reportedly dismissed a 13-year-old girl’s statutory rape claim as a consensual encounter after a one-day investigation because the girl looked older than her age.

    After new media outlet Beijing Time broke the story on Sunday, police in Yiyang, Hunan province, announced on Monday that it would investigate the case. Yiyang is the city that administers Anhua County, where the case took place.

    According to Beijing Time’s video report, a 29-year-old man took the girl to a hostel in Anhua County on April 27 and had sex with her. On the same day, the girl — given the alias Fenfen — reported her experience to the local police. But the next day, Anhua County police dismissed the case, saying there was no evidence of a crime.

    Born on Dec. 10, 2004, Fenfen is not yet 14, and according to her father, she also has an intellectual disability. Her father told Beijing Time that the family refused to sign the police notice informing them that the case had not been accepted — but the suspect, surnamed Li, was nonetheless released from custody on May 2.

    According to Chinese law, children under the age of 14 cannot consent to sex, and nothing a minor does can be interpreted as consent. But the country’s highest legal authorities issued an official opinion in 2013 that details the circumstances under which a defendant is expected to know that a child is underage, leaving room for a defense based on ignorance.

    The director of Anhua police’s legal affairs office told Beijing Time their investigation found that the suspect did not know Fenfen was under 14, and that she did not disclose her age. “The girl appeared to be quite mature. In plain words, it’s just a hook-up,” said the director, surnamed Wen.

    Zheng Ziyin, a Guangzhou-based lawyer who specializes in child sexual abuse cases, couldn’t believe someone in Wen’s position would say such a thing. “It’s highly unprofessional,” he told Sixth Tone. “This officer made a judgement from the perspective of an adult man. He never considered the issue from the perspective of child protection. He never imagined the consequences that his decision would have on the girl and her family.”

    Zheng added that police had no right to judge whether a suspect was guilty, and advised any families encountering similar scenarios to seek counsel from the local public prosecutor’s office.

    The Anhua case triggered widespread anger among netizens. Yiyang police soon responded, announcing that it had set up an investigation team, with supervision from the provincial legal affairs team and city prosecutors.

    The police bureau of Anhua County refused to reveal further details of the case when contacted by Sixth Tone on Tuesday but posted on its Weibo account on Monday that it would strictly follow national laws and reinvestigate the case based on the principle of justice.

    Fenfen’s father told the media that the family is seeking damages for psychological harm to their daughter. “She burned her bedsheet the other night. She’s been misbehaving lately because of the incident,” he said.

    Editor: Qian Jinghua.

    (Header image: Corbis RM/VCG)