The
17-year-old son of a prominent Chinese general and military singer has been
sentenced to 10 years in prison for gang-rape, bringing to an end a six-month
affair that provoked outrage cry about entitlement among the country's
wealthy elite.
The Haidian district people's
court in Beijing sentenced Li Tianyi and four other juveniles for getting a
woman drunk, beating her, and gang-raping her in a Beijing hotel in February.
Three others received sentences of three to four years. The only legal adult in
the group, a man with the surname Wang, was sentenced to 12 years behind bars.
"The behaviour of the five
defendants counts as gang-rape. It has caused harm to the victim's mind and
body, as well as harm to society, was of a vile nature, and should be punished
accordingly," said the verdict.
Li's family argued that the victim was a prostitute and that the
sex was consensual. Li received a harsher sentence than his peers because he
refused to repent for the crime or compensate the victim, state media reported.
The other defendants have each given her 150,000 yuan (£15,244). Li's defence
lawyer, Lan He, told state media he would appeal.
Li's parents are both famous
singers – his father is the
dean of the music department at the People's Liberation Army's Academy of Arts
and holds the rank of general; his mother, Meng Ge, is also a renowned military
singer.
Lan Rongjie, a law professor at Zhejiang University, said 10
years was the harshest sentence an adolescent can receive for gang-rape.
"If this was not Li Tianyi, and his case had not drawn the attention of so
many people, I think the sentence would be lighter," he said. "The
court's image is at stake – they want to display to the world that this is
still a just system."
The case was followed on
Sina Weibo on Thursday afternoon. While many users applauded the harsh verdict,
some expressed doubt that Li would serve his full sentence. "They say it's
10 years, but who knows how long he'll actually be locked up for," wrote
one user.
Another user wrote: "I
hope with all my heart that this case is the beginning of true justice (in China courts), and strikes against those real tigers, the products of
entitlement."
Li has been in the public spotlight since he was young, when he
danced on television specials alongside his parents.
It was learnt that Li was
arrested in 2011 after driving a BMW
without a licence, crashing into another car and attacking a couple that tried
to keep him from fleeing the scene. And he spent a year in juvenile detention
and his father apologized publicly for the incident.
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