Suddenly all kinds of people in China are offering to sleep with the headmaster.
The unusual outpouring is in response to a recent spate of sex abuse cases, including that of a school principal who spent the night in a hotel room with four underage girls.
Artists, activists, university students and police officers are photographing themselves — some nude and provocatively posed, some angry and menacing — with the message: “Principal, get a room with me. Leave the young students alone.”
The online campaign — mixing performance art, satire and outrage — has tapped into public anger over sexual abuse against children.
It is a problem in China partly because of a lack of sex education and partly because Chinese society has become unmoored from traditional strictures after decades of rapid economic change and social change.
Attitudes toward sex have become more lax, especially noticeable among powerful officials, often found to be cavorting with very young mistresses and prostitutes. Children are prone to the abuse because they have not been adequately prepared, and can be easily intimidated by teachers and other authority figures.
“Schools and parents have failed to instill in our children the sense of rights and to teach them how to protect themselves,” said Xiong Bingqi (熊丙奇), a deputy director of the Beijing-based education think tank 21st Century Education Research Institute. “If the children know about their rights, know they can call police if they are sexually assaulted and have the assaulters punished, it will sure deter the criminals.”
Recent sex abuse cases against children that have become public should be a wake-up call for Chinese families and schools, Xiong said, adding they may only be a tip of the iceberg.
“The students may not know they have been sexually abused,” Xiong said. “Or if they know, they don’t tell their parents. Sometimes, schools settle those cases without telling the police.”
In a recent survey by Beijing News, 37.4 percent of the respondents said they do not know how to teach their children to protect themselves from sexual abuse.
The national debate on the problem began early last month, when a primary school principal was caught spending a night with four schoolgirls — all under the age of 14 — in a hotel room in southern China’s Hainan Province.
Chen Zaipeng (陳在鵬), the principal, has been fired and charged with rape.
Members of the public reacted with astonishment to the high-profile case, and have been reading with fury as at least seven more cases of sexual abuse by school teachers or employees against young girls have come to light over the past three weeks from different parts of China.
Several victims were as young as eight years old.
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