Outrage in China as city officials are accused of 'covering up' rape of six schoolgirls

Six girls, some as young as 11, were taken from school by their headteacher

They spent the night in hotel rooms with him and a government official



Now police suggest it was the girls who 'seduced' the two men

Police in China have been accused of trying to cover up a sex scandal in which six schoolgirls, some as young as 11, spent the night in hotel rooms with their headmaster and a government official.

The two men were detained on suspicion of inappropriate liaisons after taking the girls from school to separate hotels in Wanning City, Hainan Province, state media said yesterday.

The girls were first found absent from class on the afternoon of May 8, prompting a search by teachers, parents and police before they were located over the following two days, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

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A policeman talks at a press conference in Wanning City, China where officers have been accused of trying to cover up the rape of six schoolgirls

Initially local press reported that the girls had all been sexually abused, but police have since muddied the waters by saying that the girls are still virgins and that it was they who ‘seduced’ the two men and invited them to the hotel rooms.

There have also been claims that the two men were ‘sugar daddies’ to two of the young girls.

Four of the girls spent the night of May 8 in a local hotel with a school principal, who has since been fired, Xinhua said.

One of the girls told police that the man - identified only by the surname Chen - had been intimate with her.

Xinhua did not provide further details of the inappropriate behavior, though the report cited Wanning police as saying medical checks had been performed on the girls and that no sexual intercourse had taken place.

It said a government worker in Wanning - identified only as Feng - took the two other schoolgirls to another hotel the same night, but that the girls denied he acted inappropriately.

Initially local press reported that the girls had all been sexually abused, but police have since claimed it was they who 'seduced' the two men

A Wanning city official, who gave only her surname Zhuo - as is customary with low-ranking Chinese bureaucrats - said that the man is a clerk at the local housing administration bureau.

She said that provincial authorities were planning further medical exams for the girls.

The two men did not know each other, and it was not immediately clear whether any of the girls - who attended at least two separate schools - were students where the principal worked.

The father of one of the girls told the South China Morning Post: 'She is too little to know what happened to her - she's not even 12 yet.

'She complained of having headaches, on and off, during the weekend.

'I have no choice but to stay calm because we need to get to the bottom of this and find out exactly what happened to my girl.

'We must see that whoever did this is locked away.'

According to an officer of a local police branch that found two of the girls, they were scared and unable to answer any questions.



