Teacher sentenced to death for student rapes

By Tom Qian  |   2009-3-2  |     ONLINE EDITION

A PRIMARY schoolteacher in central China was sentenced to death yesterday for raping 21 girl students over three years, a Hubei-based newspaper reported today.

The People's Intermediate Court in Xiangfan City, Hubei Province, found that the 50-year-old teacher surnamed Li committed 32 sexual assaults when he was teaching at a school in Wolong Town of Xiangfan City from October 2004 to April 2007. All the victims were under the age of 14, according to the Chang Jiang Times report.

Li often asked two students to sleep with him at the same time at a dormitory in the school. He gave them 5 yuan (US$0.73) after sex and warned them not to talk about it.

Li was not arrested until April 2007 when parents of a student reported him to the police. Police arrested Li in class in May 2007 after investigations.

There were reports that he had he raped students before that, but there was a lack of evidence and victims were unwilling to testify for fear of "losing face."