Chinese man accused of raping another man walks free due to loophole in criminal law
Chinese criminal law does not define male sexual abuse, prompting experts to call for amendments to protect men's rights
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 25 September, 2014, 4:26pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 25 September, 2014, 4:28pm
Wu Nan [email protected]
A Chinese policeman leads away a rape suspect, wearing a cloth over his head. Statistics on male rape in China are scant. Photo: David Wong
A Chongqing man accused of kidnapping and raping another man has been released with nothing but a slap on the wrist, which experts said exposed the need for Chinese law to recognise male rape, mainland reports said on Thursday.
According to the victim, he was out on an evening walk two weeks ago when the suspect abducted him and dragged him to an abandoned house in Hechuan district, Chongqing, in Sichuan province.
There, the victim pleaded to be set free and even offered money to his captor. Refusing to let him go, the suspect raped him.
When he was let go, the victim reported the incident to local police. Both men remained unnamed in the news reports.
The suspect was briefly detained and had to be released, with only an official reprimand, when police could not charge him with a crime, the Chongqing Evening News reported.
The Regulations on Administrative Penalties for Public Security allows detention of up to 15 days.
Experts said the case exposed a loophole in mainland criminal law, which explicitly defines rape as crimes against women – but leaves out men.
The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China states that the “crime of rape is using violence, coercion or any other means to force having sex with women, or girls who are under 14 years old”.
It ascribes penalties of three to 10 years in prison, depending on the age of the victims and the level of violence.
Raping minors below 14 years old carries harsher sentences. Legal experts explained that lawmakers eliminated the definition on the rape and sexual abuse of men during a legal reform in 1997. The previous 1979 Criminal Law of the PRC recognised male rape.
Experts urged authorities to reform the law to provide stronger protection for men against sexual abuse, news website thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.
There have been a series of cases of men being sexually abused in recent years, but statistics are spare. While sexual violence against women are exposed in the media on a daily basis, male rape cases are less reported on. It is social taboo on the mainland to discuss same-sex relationships, let alone male rape.
In May 2010, a 42-year-old male security guard sexually abused his 18-year-old male colleague in Beijing. The suspect was sentenced to one year in jail for intentional injury instead of sexual abuse due to the legal loophole.
Ding Jinkun, a lawyer from the Shanghai Dabang Law Firm, said that men have equal rights as women to be protected from sexual abuse.
He said the "rising" cases of the sexual abuse against men and underage boys is a wake-up call to reform the criminal law to protect men.
