Sexual abuse casts shadow over left-behind children

Working in cities has become the major source of income for villagers and has made the village more affluent than the others nearby. Besides, the villagers don't know what else they can do to support their family other than working in cities.

One month after the first hearing of the case, the victims' parents began to return to the cities. In their eyes, they had taken the children to receive all the necessary physical examinations, and they "had to earn a living for the family."

Yet their life couldn't be the same as before. After the scandal, both the parents and the girls became sensitive and vulnerable.

Tian Chao said that his daughter used to be bright and cheerful. But after the police investigation, she had nightmares every night for more than four months. During the day, she kept lying motionless in the sofa with a staring vacantly. This is a typical symptom of a child suffering psychological trauma, according to Tong Xiaojun, head of the Children's Research Institute at China Youth University of Political Studies. He said that the girls should have received psychotherapy immediately after the scandal broke.

In a public statement, the local education authorities said that "six to 13 sessions of psychotherapy were conducted for the 12 girls and achieved positive results," but the victims' parents said that the girls hadn't received any therapy.

Till now, the parents and the government haven't reached consensus on the liability and compensation of the case. "There is a lack of rules on how to compensate the victims of sexual abuse targeting young girls," said Wu Hui, the lawyer representing Tian Chao's daughter. The amount will be very low under the current law, so in previous cases, compensation was all settled through mediation, he said.

Now the parents simply want to move away from the village.

When Tian Chao was back, he tried his best to stay at home. It was too depressing and stressful to go out. A villager once said to him in the street that "you are using the children to threaten the government for money."

Ma Dandi, the father of another victim, used to be very popular in the village, but after the scandal he was also reluctant to go out. "Our customs place a special value and significance on this kind of things. It seriously damaged the reputation of the children and their families," he said. He is planning to move to a nearby city or even another province.

"Left-behind" children have become a major social concern in China. Statistics show that by 2012, there were 61 million "left-behind" children all over the county, accounting for 22 percent of the national total.

Luckily, society and the government are paying more and more attention to the well-being of the left-behind children. In March, the All-China Women's Federation, a non-governmental organization aimed at protecting women and children's rights, proposed legislation on family education and promotion of community service for "left-behind" children, so as to ensure the they can receive the necessary attention from their parents and proper care from others when their parents are not around.

"In any case, children don't know how to protect themselves, so it is the adults' responsibility to protect them," said Professor Long Di, a child sexual abuse expert at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.