Shanghai police said Wednesday they had detained Wang Zhenhua, chairman of the billion-dollar real estate company Seazen Holdings, on suspicion of sexually assaulting a nine-year-old girl.
Shanghai-based newspaper Xinmin reported that the sexual assault took place last Saturday at a five-star hotel in the city. The young girl called her mother after the incident, telling her she was molested by Wang and the parent, who lives in east China's Jiangsu Province, traveled to Shanghai immediately and called the local police upon her arrival.
A 49-year-old woman surnamed Zhou was supposed to take the nine-year-old, along with another 12-year-old girl, on a trip from Xuzhou, a city in Jiangsu Province, to Shanghai Disneyland Park last Saturday. Zhou reportedly knows the girls' parents well. Police said the woman sent the two girls to the hotel instead.
Hospital examination revealed the girl sustained a vaginal tear and minor injury.
A sign of Seazen Holdings Co, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, July 4, 2019. /VCG Photo
The 57-year-old suspect heads a real estate empire with total assets of more than 300 billion yuan. The accusations against him have sparked anger in China.
Discussions online have focused on the severity of the allegations, the possible punishments to child molesters and whether the fact that there was an intermediary indicates that Wang is a serial sexual aggressor.
In South Korea, parts of Northern Europe, and some U.S. states, laws allow for chemical castration of criminals who habitually abuse children. In China, people have been debating for years whether the country should adopt similar laws.
Chairman Wang Zhenhua attends the 25th anniversary celebration of Seazen Holdings Co at a sports center in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, July 7, 2018. /VCG Photo
The high-profile scandal is only one of thousands of reported cases of child sexual abuse in China.
Between 2015 and 2018, Chinese courts heard 11,519 cases involving allegations of child molestation, according to the Supreme People's Court.
"These cases by no means represent the real number," says Sun Xuemei, head of Girls' Protection Foundation, an NGO dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse.
The organization had released an annual report in the past six years based on the cases of child sex abuse exposed by the media.
Sun said the numbers "are just the tip of an iceberg," noting that "very few cases make it to court due to the stigma attached to it."