A COURT in Guizhou Province has sentenced one of two middle school teachers to death and the other to an 11 year jail term for their roles in a prostitution ring that was run by their wives. The prostitution ring forced more than 20 students to have sex with men seeking virgins. One of the two women was also sentenced to death.
Fourteen others, mostly hostel owners in Guizhou's Liupanshui City and Nanyong County where the teenagers were forced to sell sex, were jailed from one year to life imprisonment, the Guizhou Metropolis Daily reported yesterday. Zhao Qingmei, 28, the mastermind, was sentenced to death in Weining County last Friday, the report said. She sold snack food on campus after working as a temporary teacher at the Central Primary School in Xinfa township of Weining, the report said.
Her husband Chi Yao was a teacher at the township's middle school. In March , Zhao planned with a local woman identified as Wei Yaqin, who is still on the run, how to earn money by forcing teenage girls into prostitution. One of their first victims was Chi's niece. Zhao and Wei lured Chi's niece and another student into Zhao's home. They told the girls they would be helping with farm work or going on a tour, the report said. The next day the two girls were taken to the Yingbin hostel in Nayong County, about kilometers from Weining.
Zhao and Wei ordered the two girls not to tell their families about the prostitution. Several days after the first sexual encounter, Zhao and Li brought another four girls home and then took them to hostel in Liupanshui, between Weining and Nayong. Chi and Hai arrived at the hostel later that day. The hostel owner contacted a man who offered to pay for sex but left after discovering the two girls were under age. One of the four girls was forced to have sex with a man at another hostel.
After that, the two couples took two of the girls to the Yingbin hostel in Nayong again. The next day Chen, the original client, had sex with two of the girls and paid Zhao 4, yuan. By June , the ring had forced 23 girls, 22 of them students at local primary and middle schools, to have sex with men. Six of the girls were under Zhao's husband was given a death sentence but with a two year's probation period.
