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Sat, May 29, 2010
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Sex predator kept girls in dungeon <!-- TITLE : end--> </td></tr> <tr><td colspan="3" height="15">
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Police have found two missing teenagers naked and chained in a secret, underground chamber behind the home of an alleged rapist. The shocking discovery was made in Shengying, a remote village in suburban Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, just hours after a note written by one of the girls pleading for help fell out of a broken television set.
Zeng Xiangbao, 39, the owner of the house, was already in detention when police freed the teenagers from their makeshift prison. Media reported that Zeng had admitted nine allegations of rape a week earlier but said nothing about the secret chamber. The city's public security bureau offered few details on the case when contacted by China Daily. However, officers confirmed the victims - identified as Zhou, 19, and 16-year-old Hu - were held for 10 months and two years respectively.
Witnesses said police arrived in the afternoon on May 14 with Zhou's father and searched a low-lying, gray cement building with small windows sealed by iron plates to the right of Zeng's house. "At about 5 pm, two girls were carried out on stretchers and wrapped in blankets," said Xu Jing, who lives across the street. "I saw Zhou carried out on someone's back. She was pale and expressionless."
Xu Lihua, a community doctor who participated in the rescue, said Hu had bruises all over her body and smelled extremely bad. "The smell was very strong, even when she was covered with a thick blanket," he told Beijing News. Both girls we taken by ambulance to a hospital in downtown Wuhan, the provincial capital, more than an hour's drive away. They have since been transferred to another hospital for protection.
Neighbors of Zhou's family claim relatives said both girls had been beaten and raped. However, police investigators refused to reveal whether the girls had been sexually assaulted. <table align="right"> <tbody><tr> <td>
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"The investigation, although affected by an influx of media to the area, is going well," said Wang Yongfeng, a public security bureau spokesman, who declined to give any information on the condition of the girls.
He appealed for the media and general public to allow them time to recover. The Zhou home appeared empty this week and all calls went unanswered. "They try to go to the hospital (to see her) every day," said a neighbor. Hu's family lives in a nearby village. The dramatic rescue came after a man surnamed Du visited his friend's electronics repair shop in the morning and found a note that had fallen out of a partially dismantled television set. It read simply: "Help. I've been held prisoner underground for more than a year."
Along with the Chinese characters was a hand-drawn map that showed where the girls were being kept, as well as the telephone number and address of Zhou's family, where the girl lived with her father and brother. Du called the number and asked her father: "Has your daughter been kidnapped?" Three hours later, Zhou's father - who lived just 200 meters from where his daughter was chained up - arrived at the scene with the police.
It is believed Zhou poured water onto the television after hiding the note inside. The broken set was then sold by Zeng to a recycling center and ended up at the electronics shop three months later. The teenager, who graduated from a nearby vocational school last summer, attempted similar pleas for help by slipping notes into empty boxes of instant noodles and other items, Beijing News reported. Zhou was reported missing in July "but (her family) just pr<innity></innity>esumed she had<innity></innity> eloped with a boy she met on an Internet chat room", said a neighbor.</td></tr></tbody></table>
