Home News China. The parents of seven schoolgirls sexually abused by a teacher in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi have succeeded in getting their case heard again by a local court, following a petitioning trip to Beijing last month. The Ruichang Municipal People's Court in Jiangxi heard a combined criminal and civil lawsuit on Thursday against year-old former primary school teacher Tao Biaogong in which the parents' lawyers argued for a "heavy" criminal penalty for Tao, as well as compensation of one million yuan U.
Wang said the case had been held behind closed doors to protect the identities of the victims, who were in the second year of primary school when the abuse occurred. She said none of the girls had appeared in court but they had all been represented by their parents. A parent of one of the victims, identified only by a pseudonym Mu, said he had shouted verbal abuse at Tao in court when he denied warning the girls not to speak to their parents about the abuse, at which point he was warned of proceedings against him by court officials.
However, he wasn't ordered to leave, he said. But parents said the full extent of the abuse had come to light only after six of the seven girls had developed genital warts. While Tao admitted sexually touching the girls, he denied having full intercourse with them, according to official media. But the parents were told when they took the girls to receive medical attention that the warts were sexually transmitted, and some have suffered from intimate bleeding, the parents say.
The families are seeking compensation for the emotional and physical damage inflicted on their daughters by their ordeal, as well as for economic losses incurred by medical bills and the loss of employment as they quit work to fight their daughters' case. Another parent, who left his daughter in Jiangxi to seek work in the southeastern province of Fujian, said his daughter had yet to recover from the viral, sexually transmitted genital warts contracted after the abuse took place.
Protecting children's rights Rights groups say the ruling Chinese Communist Party has failed to uphold the rights of the country's children, with many left vulnerable to sexual abuse, child labor, and harm through shoddy goods and medicines and poor safety standards. It said those who pursue their children's rights are frequently the targets of government persecution, citing the case of Tang Hui, sent to labor camp for her campaign for tougher sentences for men who gang-raped her year-old daughter.
