High blood pressure gets sex pest out of jail in China
- Man ordered to serve 15 days in detention for trying to kiss a girl in a lift but sentence overturned on medical grounds
A man who cornered a young girl in the lift of a block of flats in southern China and tried to kiss her avoided detention because of high blood pressure, Chinese media reported.
Security video taken in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Thursday, appeared on Thepaper.cn, Thecover.cn and The Beijing News showing the 63-year-old looming over the child, a neighbour, as he reached out to touch her and attempted to kiss her.
The girl’s parents reported the incident to police and the man was taken into custody, Thecover.cn reported.
He was ordered to serve 15 days in detention for child molestation but the order was overturned after a medical examination found the man suffered from hypertension.
Nanning police could not be reached for comment, and it was not clear if the man apologised or paid compensation to the child, whose age was not given in the report.
Han Xiao, a lawyer at Beijing Kangda law firm who was not involved in the case, said that according to regulations, detention facilities could not hold people with a serious illness.
“High blood pressure is prevalent among the elderly, but the decision [not to hold him] was reasonable if the man was in serious condition,” Han said.
He said obscenity offences could attract 10 to 15 days of administrative detention or more than five years in jail, but police could decide if either administrative or criminal punishment was warranted.
China ‘must do more’ to protect its children from sex offenders
The decision sparked anger on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, with users asking if the victim got justice.
“I’m so disappointed at the rule of law in China,” one user said.
“So many people in this world have high blood pressure,” another said. “Does it mean they can all commit crimes at zero cost?”
Weibo users suggested the man’s health insurance and pensions should be suspended, while others said the 15-day detention was not enough.
