By ANTARA News/AFP,
Beijing : A primary school principal was executed in northern China after being convicted of raping and sexually abusing 39 girls during an 18-year reign of terror, state press said Thursday.
Luo Yanlin, 48, was executed in Gansu province on Wednesday — National Teacher’s Day in China, the local Lanzhou Morning Post reported.
Luo was sentenced for raping and sexually abusing 39 girls aged from seven to 14 when he worked at three schools in the province between 1988 and 2006, it said.
“Luo Yanlin was morally bankrupt and used his special position to rape and sexually abuse many young female students often repeatedly, and over a long period,” the verdict by China’s supreme court said, according to the paper.
“He… severely harmed the health of the girls and disrupted the normal order of the school. His crimes are especially odious and the harm to society severe. He deserves strict punishment.”
Luo appealed for leniency as he had confessed to most of his crimes, but the court rejected his plea.
Luo was arrested in 2006, while he was principal of a village primary school, after two of his former students who had gone on to college came forward and brought charges against him.
One of the college students told police she had been raped up to 10 times between 1998 and 1999, while the other young woman said she had been raped and then abused again when she threatened to tell her parents.
Police eventually got testimony from the 37 other victims, it said.
The victims, some of whom were repeatedly raped, said they had been lured into Luo’s office for after class lessons or to do homework, the Lanzhou Morning Post said.
The actual number of victims was likely higher as many women were unwilling to give evidence due to the stigma attached to such crimes, the report said.
According to the paper, rumours of rape and sexual abuse at schools where Luo taught had circulated for years, but no one had been able to provide any evidence without the testimonies of the victims.
The report and others in China’s state-run press did not say whether Luo was married or had children himself.
In June 2007, another schoolteacher in Gansu province was also sentenced to death for raping 18 female students between late 2001 and early 2005.