ON GUARD: Police officer Sun Jing teaches girls in Daoxiangcun Primary School in Hefei City, Anhui Province, how to prevent from molestation on May 30 (LIU JUNXI)

Successive reports of child abuse have captured public attention in China. Of more than 10 cases of child molestation exposed in May, at least nine implicate school faculty and staff members as culprits.

On June 9, the No.1 Intermediate Court of Hainan Province accepted a case involving a primary school headmaster named Chen Zaipeng and a government employee who were suspected of sexually molesting six primary school students.

The case was reported to the police on May 8. On that morning, a teacher in a primary school in Hainan's Wanning City recorded the six girls absent from class. The teacher notified parents, who had no idea of their children's whereabouts.

After a fruitless search, they sought help from the police, who discovered four of the girls spent the night in a hotel with the headmaster of another school, and two girls with a local government employee.

The headmaster and government employee were later detained by the police on charges of child abuse and removed from their positions.

Not long after this case hit the media, more sexual assaults against children were reported.

On May 29, the Supreme People's Court issued a statement, requiring local courts to spare no effort to protect the rights of minors and severely punish criminals who have violated juvenile rights by sexually abusing them.

China's Criminal Law stipulates that criminals who have sexual relations with children younger than 14 should be charged with rape, and offenders could receive a death sentence.

Low awareness

Jianghuai Morning Post, a newspaper in Anhui Province, reported on May 16 that Yang Qifa, a 59-year-old primary school headmaster in the province's Qianshan County, was charged for sexually assaulting nine girls from 2001 to 2012.

The offense was uncovered by chance by a netizen surnamed Cheng.

Cheng works at a multinational company in Beijing. Last August, she returned to her home in Yujing Town in Qianshan for a visit.

Cheng is interested in childhood education. During her holiday, she played games with local children and told them not to keep secrets for bad people. To her surprise, 14-year-old Xue'er broke into tears when she divulged her secret.

The teenager told Cheng that her teacher Yang took her to his office and sexually assaulted her.

Cheng reported the crime to the police on the next day. Within a few days, she identified another six girls abused by Yang, and accompanied them to the police and to physical examinations.

The children's parents were unaware of the abuse until the police took Yang into custody. The Qianshan County Government later revealed that in the past 12 years, Yang had abused nine girls, the youngest of whom was 6.

If children were taught how to protect themselves and report abuse to the police, the crime would not persist, said Xiong Bingqi, Vice President of 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing.

In most of the recently reported cases of child abuse, the crime was accidentally discovered rather than reported by the victims. Low awareness among children makes them vulnerable to sexual predators.

Most victims do not know how to protect themselves and do not report the crime, said Zhang Ning, a prosecutor at Beijing's Chaoyang District Procuratorate. She said that due to the lack of adequate sex education, some victims have not even realized a crime has been committed against them.

"Teaching sex knowledge to children is a pressing issue, and parents should improve communication with children," Zhang said.

The Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center and The Beijing News recently surveyed 107 children aged between 6-14 years and 1,100 parents. More than 38 percent of the children said that no one had told them about protecting the private parts of their bodies from others. Only 18.6 percent of the participating parents replied that they had instructed their children how to avoid sexual abuse and ask for help.

Not only children are told not to report such abuses to the police, many parents themselves are unwilling to do so. According to the survey, only 42.8 percent of parents said that if their children were sexually molested, they would report the offense to the police. Many prefer to keep silent out of fear that exposure will bring about further intrusion on their privacy.

While many children may have been told to stay away from dangerous strangers for safety concerns, they may never suspect that their relatives, teachers and neighbors can harm them.

"Recent cases of child molestation were committed by school faculty members. Kids usually take no precautions against people they believe are kind, but this may also be a source of danger," said Ding Limin, headmaster of the Primary School Affiliated with the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.