From "school bully" to "gang leader," average age 17, charged with 45 counts of rape...
[4] Compiled from: Red Star News
Case review
Bairin Left Banner, located in the northern part of Chifeng City in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is a small town that just shook off the label of a poverty-stricken banner county last year. Here, a group of teenagers with an average age of only 17 committed dozens of violent crimes within just two years.
The Chifeng Municipal People's Procuratorate accused Wang Ling and 18 other defendants of committing 45 rapes between August 2017 and May 2019.
Wang Ling’s parents stated that they did not dispute the facts of his crimes, saying, “He did commit crimes, but they did not warrant the death penalty.”
[2] Most of the victims' parents believe that their daughters' sexual assault changed their original life trajectories and hope the law will severely punish the defendant.
From October 15 to 19, the Inner Mongolia High People's Court held a second-instance hearing for the case, and the judgment has not yet been pronounced.
It is worth noting that this "local tyrant who terrorized the region and committed all kinds of evil" was actually "the one who got bullied the most" during his school days.
In the recollections of childhood friends and schoolmates, as well as his own account, Wang Ling was once publicly stripped of his pants by older students and was frequently stopped at the school gate and demanded money…… So he attached himself to a big brother and followed him into the underworld. Later, he began recruiting his own followers and bullying others, sinking deeper and deeper.
[6] In addition to the rape charge, Wang Ling was also accused by the Chifeng City Procuratorate of ten charges, including affray, picking quarrels and provoking trouble, forcible indecency, insult, child molestation, group licentiousness, illegal detention, forced transaction, and illegal intrusion into a residence.
After the Wang Ling case, the education system in Bairin Left Banner launched a special campaign to comprehensively rectify the environment both inside and outside schools and implement the No. 1 Procuratorial Recommendation of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, aiming to prevent juvenile delinquency.
In September 2019, Yu Shumin, Chief Procurator of the Baarin Left Banner People's Procuratorate, emphasized at a relevant symposium that the Wang Ling case served as a wake-up call for society. The juvenile crime rate has been rising year by year, and this case represents a hidden “debt” from the past. Its root causes lie in school bullying triggered by factors such as violent tendencies, materialistic comparisons, physical defects, jealousy over academic performance, and ingratiation with the opposite sex. It reflects deep-seated problems including the lack of school supervision, excessive parental indulgence, the involvement of idle members of society, disorderly environments around schools, and lax supervision and law enforcement.
"Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China"
Article 236
Whoever rapes a woman by violence, coercion, or other means shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years. Whoever has sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of fourteen shall be deemed to have committed rape and shall be given a heavier punishment.
Whoever rapes a woman or has sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of fourteen shall, under any of the following circumstances, be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years, life imprisonment, or death: (1) The circumstances are flagrant; (2) The victim is multiple; (3) The act is committed in a public place in front of others; (4) The act is committed by two or more persons in turn; (5) The victim is a girl under the age of ten or causes injury to her; (6) The act results in serious injury, death, or other serious consequences to the victim.
[1] The author's perspective
This case reveals not only multiple heinous crimes but also a series of loopholes behind them, including adolescent psychological issues, parental and school education, and lax local law enforcement. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the area is a small town that only recently emerged from poverty-stricken county status. Due to economic limitations, many able-bodied locals have to work outside, leaving their children to grow up freely in the area. For these children, lacking parental discipline and influenced by the local campus culture, they are often subtly affected without realizing it. Some may have been victims of school bullying, others may have experienced despair with no way out, and day by day, the seeds of crime begin to grow slowly. However, no matter what, one should never extend their evil hand to others.
Now let us turn to Wang Ling in this case. In addition to rape, he committed multiple other criminal offenses, demonstrating a pattern of unrelenting wrongdoing. He went from being a “campus bully” to a “gang leader,” and one can only imagine how many people he has harmed. Yet despite being a notorious crime boss, he evaded justice for so many years. The author identifies two reasons for this: first, the victims were too afraid of Wang Ling to report him to the authorities; second, the local police neglected their duties. After all, Wang Ling had already become a local tyrant. Had the police investigated the matter earlier, how could there have been no results? The sooner criminals are brought to justice, the less danger there is to society, and perhaps one fewer victim.
Whether it is an educational issue or a legal one, the current fractured state of affairs is not what any of us wish to see. We hope that the relevant authorities, schools, and parents will all learn from the painful lessons of this incident and truly uphold the principle of “nurturing the person as the foundation, cultivating virtue as the priority.” We hope that our children’s tomorrow will be filled with brightness, and that the world of adults will be filled with hope.
