VietNamNet Bridge – The Ha Noi police on Monday decided to initiate criminal proceedings in the sexual abuse case involving an eight-year-old girl, following intense public pressure over a series of paedophile cases came to light of late.

Thu Duc District Police Chief, Colonel Le Anh Tuan, at the Monday press conference on the alleged sexual abuse of a 7-year-old girl in Thu Duc District, HCM City, last month. — Photo thoidai.com.vn

 The police held an urgent meeting on Monday to review the status of investigations that followed after the family of the victim Janie Doe, residents of Hoang Mai District’s Thinh Liet Ward, filed a complaint in January alleging that she was raped by a neighbour.

At the meeting, the investigation department was ordered to formally launch an investigation into the case. 

As per the family’s complaint, the incident took on January 8 when their 34-year-old neighbour offered to play hide-and- seek with the victim and her friends at around 7.30pm. 

Under the pretext of the game, the denunciated allegedly took the child to an isolated, dark alley and raped her. She was rescued by two of her friends, who saw what was happening and allegedly hit the man with a broom and their shoes. 

However, it was not until bath time that the child’s mother found out about the attack. The girl then told her that the neighbour had touched her several times earlier too. 

The Thinh Liet Ward police summoned the denunciated to the station on January 11, a day after the victim’s family filed the complaint, but he was not detained, though a medical examination stated that the girl had genital injuries and her hymen was ruptured. 

Though the police did not disclose the name of the denunciated, his personal information and photo (he’s been referred to as Cao) went viral on Facebook on Monday, causing public uproar about the slow pace of investigations – it is already more than two months since the complaint was filed. 

Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh on Monday ordered Ha Noi People’s Committee to “urgently look into the case” and report to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc. 

Slow progress 

The Hoang Mai assault is not the only case involving paedophiles nor the only case where slow investigations have outraged the public. Two more child sexual assaults have been reported, in HCM City and Vung Tau Province. These three are the rare cases that have been made public, serving as a wake-up call to all parents about the risk of child abuse, which is not even spoken about in Viet Nam. 

On February 14, a woman in Thu Duc District, HCM City, filed a complaint after she found multiple scratches and injuries on her seven-year-old daughter’s genital area and her pants bloodied. The child said she was attacked by a man in her school, which is located in the same district. 

The school and Thu Duc District Education and Training Division together denied that any sexual assault had taken place, despite one of the CCTV cameras in the school being suspiciously switched off for about an hour on the day of the incident. The district police, in a press conference on Monday, claimed that the camera had been “accidentally” turned off by a janitor. 

“The medical examination shows that the girl’s hymen was not ruptured and no semen was found inside her vagina. This is an accurate result,” said Senior Lieutenant Colonel Doan Van Phe, deputy chief of Thu Duc police. 

Thu Duc’s police chief Colonel Le Anh Tuan, however, admitted that “no intercourse does not necessarily mean no sexual assault”. “I assure that there will be no cover-up. We have yet to arrive at a conclusion in the case,” he said. 

Meanwhile, on Monday, President Tran Dai Quang ordered the public security ministry to urgently examine the sexual assault case in Vung Tau Province that has been under investigation for half a year. 

In 2016, a woman, Tran Thi Thu Thuy, filed a report against a 76-year-old man in Vung Tau City’s Nguyen An Ninh Ward, alleging that he had sexually abused her eight-year-old daughter during her summer vacations when she was home alone. 

The Vung Tau police initiated criminal proceedings against the accused following extensive investigations showed that the man had allegedly abused at least six other children between 2012 and 2016. Investigations, however, have not progressed since then. 

VNS