China executes primary school teacher guilty of raping 26 pupils
Chinese courts heard over 7,000 cases of child sexual abuse between 2012 and 2014
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Your support makes all the difference.A Chinese primary school teacher has been executed after the country’s top court found him guilty of raping and sexually abusing 26 girls.
Li Jishun targeted “young and timid” pupils between the ages of four and 11, according to a statement by the Supreme People’s Court reported by the BBC.
A teacher in the Gansu province, Mr Li carried out the attacked between 2011 and 2012 while working in a rural school. Some of his victims were abused on more than one instance.
He was found to have raped 21 of his victims and abused five others. The attacks took place in classrooms, dormitories and in the nearby woods.
The court called him a “grave threat to society” and “thus believes that it was appropriate for Li Jishun to be executed.”
He was put to death on Thursday. On the same day, the Supreme Court told local media that the courts had heard 7,145 cases of child sexual abuse between 2012 and 2014.
The statistics were a rare disclosure for the courts, and showed that the amount of cases had gone up by 40 per cent over the two years.
The ruling was widely discussed on Chinese social media, with many users supporting the teacher being sentenced to death.