Editor's note: A few days ago, the All-China Women's Federation issued the "Decision of the All-China Women's Federation on Commending the Advanced Collectives and Advanced Individuals for Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Women and Children in the Whole Country", and 30 units and 31 individuals in Hunan Province were awarded the honorary titles of National Advanced Collectives and Advanced Individuals for Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Women and Children. In order to commend the advanced, set up a model, further guide and encourage all sectors of society to actively participate in the protection of women's and children's rights and interests, and form a good social trend of respecting and protecting the rights and interests of women and children, the Rights and Interests Department of the Hunan Provincial Women's Federation and the Today Women's Newspaper Rong Media Center jointly launched a series of reports on the "Sanxiang Women's and Children's Rights Protection Pioneers" to show the advanced and typical deeds of safeguarding the rights and interests of women and children throughout the country.
Today's Women's Daily/Fengwang Reporter Zhang Qiuying Correspondent Zhu Min
A cup of strong tea, half a room of case files, lights lit up late at night. This is standard in the office of the Ninth Procuratorial Department of the Hunan Provincial People's Procuratorate (hereinafter referred to as the "Nine Procuratorates").
The Ninth Procuratorate, also known internally as the Juvenile Procuratorate, is the procuratorial department that handles cases of abuse against minors and juvenile crimes. Due to the large impact of the case, the large number of special procedures, and the heavy social investigation and help and education work after the case, the Ninth Procuratorial Department has become a typical example of overtime in the procuratorate building. At 12 o'clock at night, the lights of the nine inspections in the office building are often on. On several occasions, security patrols passed by, and they would see prosecutors who couldn't help but sleep, squinting at the table for a while.
"The matter of one child involves at least two families and hurts the whole society." Liu Zhihong, director of the Ninth Procuratorial Department and secretary of the party branch, said that providing strong judicial guarantees for safeguarding the rights and interests of women and children is a heavy responsibility that weighs heavily on them. A few days ago, the Ninth Procuratorial Department of the Hunan Provincial People's Procuratorate was awarded the National Advanced Collective for Safeguarding the Rights and Interests of Women and Children.
In the face of juvenile delinquency, tolerate but not condone
"Tolerance but not connivance" is a golden rule for the Ninth Procuratorate to handle juvenile delinquency cases.
In the course of handling cases, for juveniles whose subjective malignancy is not large, whose criminal circumstances are relatively minor, who have committed first-time crimes, or who have occasionally committed crimes, the procurators of the Provincial Ninth Procuratorate insist on arresting less and taking them into custody, and integrate them into the education, reform, and rescue policies, and cooperate with relevant departments such as the Women's Federation, the Youth League Committee, the Civil Affairs, and the Judiciary to tailor a help and education rescue plan for each juvenile involved in a crime.
"For each case, we will study the cause of the crime and find the focus of help and education." Liu Zhihong said that procurators handling juvenile cases should not only deal with the game at the legal level, but also think about what the cause of the crime is, what is the social background of the victims and defendants, and how to curb the occurrence of similar incidents.
In 2021, the Provincial Ninth Procuratorate guided the People's Procuratorate of Furong District of Changsha City to carry out family education counseling, group psychological counseling and other help and education measures for 14 juveniles involved in crimes, helping 14 people to return to society. Of these, 3 returned to school and 11 found jobs.
Of course, even minors must not condone violent crimes with heinous subjective circumstances and serious crimes. In the 16 cases involving evil forces handled by the Changde Municipal People's Procuratorate, although the 3 members of the evil forces criminal group were minors, they comprehensively considered their subjective viciousness, the circumstances and consequences of the crime, etc., and the procuratorate put forward accurate sentencing recommendations for 7 to 11 years, all of which were adopted by the court.
"In recent years, the state's protection of minors has become more and more intense, and the special procedures for juvenile cases have become more and more stringent." Liu Zhihong said, for example, juveniles should be accompanied by parents, psychological counselors should be brought, and in the face of minors, one sentence should be divided into ten sentences to ask, and new questions should be found and be questioned again.
In 2021, the Ninth Procuratorate conducted a one-by-one review of sexual assault cases that occurred in the province in the past three years, handled 50 difficult and complicated cases for lower-level procuratorates, and procurators traveled dozens of times to cities and prefectures. "There are many cases with fewer people, the social influence of cases is large, the task of guiding the subordinates is heavy, and there are more cases." Liu Zhihong said that the team often eats a box lunch at noon, eats a box lunch at night, eats and then works, and does not go home until one or two o'clock in the morning.
In order to avoid secondary harm to victims of sexual assault cases, the Ninth Procuratorate has also established a one-stop interrogation and treatment area, and promoted the procuratorial organs of the province, together with the Women's Federation and public security units, to establish 25 one-stop interrogation and rescue areas that integrate victims' interrogation, physical examination, biological sample extraction, psychological counseling, rule of law publicity, legal aid, and judicial assistance, to solve the problems of difficulty in interrogating victims, making strong accusations, and difficulty in caring for and assisting sexual assault cases.
Sometimes, the cases handled are too challenging to the legal and ethical bottom line, and prosecutors will shoot the case. If the case causes death or serious injury, they also need to endure the heartache to repeatedly check the video and other relevant evidence. "We prosecutors are also parents, and it is also cruel for us to repeatedly look at this evidence of minors' harm, especially pictures, videos, etc." Liu Zhihong said that procurators are also a profession that requires constant adjustment of psychological state, "We go back and forth almost every day between the righteous indignation of parents and the rationality of a prosecutor." Only with the love of the mother and the rationality of the prosecutor can we accurately grasp the case. ”
In the face of crimes that infringe on the rights and interests of minors, adhere to zero tolerance
In 2020, the Ninth Procuratorate handled a case of violence against women and children organized, forced prostitution, and rape by defendant Long and others.
The case was complex, involving 9 defendants and 33 victims, all of whom were minors. Five of the victims were under the age of 14, involving more than 40 criminal facts such as rape, insult, indecency, and injury.
The details of the case are even more heinous. In order to organize prostitution for profit, the mafia organization headed by Long Mou targeted young girls, lured minors in the name of falling in love and helping to find jobs, restricted their personal freedom and forced them into prostitution. In order to carry out the prostitution plan, extremely bad crimes such as gang rape have also been committed, and young girls who do not listen to the arrangement are also beaten and insulted. The first trial in this case sentenced three defendants to death and two defendants to a suspended death. The defendant then appealed.
Due to the large number of criminal facts and heinous circumstances, there are many victims and defendants involved, and they also have to face a team of defense lawyers. Liao Fangmin, the prosecutor of the Ninth Prosecutorial Department who undertook the case, had to "show twelve points of strength."
"In general, such cases should be 6 prosecutors, 3 post prosecutors, 3 assistants. However, due to the actual situation of the number of people in our department, she was the main person in this case, and then an assistant was brought. Liu Zhihong said. The case 188 case file can not be put in the cabinet, and several large boxes can only be stacked on the ground. Prosecutor Liao Fangmin reads cases and makes forms every day, and her eyes are always in a state of stinging. During that time, she always got up at 6 o'clock in the morning and slept at more than 12 o'clock at night, all relying on a cup of strong tea to lift her spirits.
The main dispute in the second instance of the case was that the defense lawyer in the case believed that the case did not cause death and that the defendant should not be sentenced to death. Moreover, the defendant retracted his confession in the second instance and refused to admit more than 30 rapes.
"In sexual assault cases, the evidence system is built with the victim's statement as the core, which is to solve the problem of evidence protection such as the lack of direct evidence, objective evidence, and common defendants' retraction of confessions in sexual assault cases." Liao Fangmin said. In order to fix the evidence, she went to the scene of the crime several times and obtained a large amount of evidentiary materials through the victims' separate statements to each other, as well as the testimony of other witnesses.
In order to make her memory clearer and fight this battle, Liao Fangmin also had a comprehensive grasp of the victim's information, the family situation of birth, when she was deceived, forced into prostitution, rape, gang rape, pregnancy, the number of miscarriages, and her physical health. On the day of the second-instance trial, the trial time continued from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and Liao Fangmin refuted the views of the defense lawyer group and the defendants' retracted confessions one by one. In her view, although there was no death in the case, the circumstances were particularly heinous, and the number of people, subjective malignancy and facts of the crime had reached the death penalty standard of the maximum penalty prescribed by law. She also presented circumstantial evidence from landlords, neighbours, etc., combined with the victims' statements. In the end, Long Mou and three others were sentenced to death. In the rape case of Peng X in the case, the defendant repeatedly raped the young girl and became pregnant, the original trial judge only sentenced him to four years' imprisonment, and after review, the case-handling personnel submitted it to the procuratorial committee for study, filed a protest with the provincial high court, and the court retried and sentenced Peng to nine years' imprisonment.
The protection of minors should create a general pattern of socialized protection
The verdict does not mean the end of the case. Through an in-depth analysis of the causes of the case, the prosecutor found that in the case, the criminals consciously looked for the underage girls who lacked parental supervision to give them the opportunity to take advantage of it.
In addition to the lack of family education, at the school level, although these young girls who have dropped out of school have also been persuaded, the intensity is not large, and many children have not even completed the nine-year compulsory education. At the social level, the supervision of bars, Internet cafes and hotels is not enough. These murdered children lingered all day in Internet cafes and bars and "shook" through mobile phones, QQ communications, Kuaishou software, etc. To understand the criminals, and in the process of the criminals leading these children to the hotel to open the room, they were not interrogated or blocked by any interrogation, and these business entities did not effectively perform the mandatory reporting responsibility.
As a result, the procurator issued procuratorial suggestions to various departments, asking for rectification. In January 2021, the procuratorial suggestions in this case were rated as the top ten outstanding procuratorial suggestions for social governance of the procuratorial organs in the province.
"After reading these cases, we prosecutors feel very heartbroken, and some parents are too irresponsible." Liu Zhihong said that it is very important to supervise family education from the level of rule of law and promote the rule of law into schools.
In the past three years, the Ninth Procuratorial Department has supervised a total of 841 procurators to serve as vice principals for the rule of law, and has deliberately selected schools with many left-behind children in rural areas.
"The work of protecting minors is not a one-time work, we are still on the road. The protection of minors is not a work that a department can do, it requires all parts and links of the whole society to unite to form a socialized co-governance in order to provide a more clean and healthy environment for children to grow up. Liu Zhihong said.
EDIT: Yiyi