'Many Young Girls Have Been the Victims of Abuse'

More than 100 women college students in China wrote to parliamentary delegates this week to complain about a growing number of reported sexual abuse cases in primary and high-schools across the country last year. Miao Jie, a volunteer at the non-profit health and rights group Yirenping, told RFA's Mandarin Service that sexual harassment and abuse is also a problem for women enrolled in Chinese universities, and that there is no system of support for victims:

This stems from the reported cases of sexual abuse of young girls. Sexual abuse and harassment also exists in universities, and sometimes results in the woman becoming pregnant.

There is no system [to deal with the problem] and no one to provide basic sex education, or measures people can take to protect themselves.

When they do become pregnant as a result of abuse, they suffer psychological harm as well, which can cast a shadow over their lives.

[University students] are also in need of a system to support and protect them.

Influencing policy

In raising this issue, we have focused on elementary and high-school students, because many young girls have been the victims of abuse.

If women college students pay attention to this issue, they can perhaps have an influence on the direction of government policy in the right direction, and set up a system to deal with it.

In the course of last year, we had the case of the Hainan elementary school principal who took primary school students to a hotel room, as well as the case of the schoolteacher ... who abused primary school students in Henan.

There were also cases that have happened since. From this we can see that this problem was already very serious and very widespread, but that it just hadn't been brought into the public eye before.

Reported by Shi Shan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.