A man over 60 has been charged with raping a 12-year-old girl and forcing her into prostitution, making a profit of about 50,000 yuan (US$7,756), city prosecutors said yesterday.
The victim, from Guizhou Province, was compelled into acts of prostitution more than 100 times over six months since last November, according to an account notebook found by police.
According to police: One day in September 2010 while the girl was leaving her school, Wang Hua, who was a friend of the girl's father, told her to come with him to buy some new clothes, adding that her father knew and agreed.
Because the man was her father's friend, the girl was not suspicious and accepted a ride on Wang's motorcycle to Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province in southwest China, where Wang raped her.
Wang then brought the young victim to Shanghai and settled into an apartment in Gucun area of Baoshan District, where he forced her to be a street girl.
Prosecutors said the girl was found by a policeman on patrol. She told the officer repeatedly that she wanted to go home and then began to reveal her nightmare.
Baoshan police said Wang was an escaped convict, wanted by Guizhou police after he raped a woman in his hometown in 2003, and his two daughters long ago broke up their relationship with him.
Wu Hualiang, a lawyer, said the crime of raping a child under 14 can draw a sentence of 10 years in prison.