Beijing court issues report on juvenile offenders

Most teenage offenders punished by a Beijing court in the last three years were found to have committed crimes on their own, instead of working with others, according to a report issued by the court on Wednesday.

The Beijing Chaoyang District People's Court said it penalized a total of 24 juveniles between 2020 and 2022, 18 of whom were discovered to have committed their offenses alone.

The crimes in question were mainly theft, rape, disturbance of public order and blackmail.

Twenty of the offenders were male, and most were not well-educated, the court said.

During the same period, the court also solved 90 cases in which juveniles were harmed, with victims under the age of 14, accounting for more than 60 percent of the total.

The court found that victims were harmed by those close with children or in the education sector, and some defendants were found to have lured and sexually assaulted juveniles through the internet.

In one case, a man surnamed Xu was given a prison term by the court for raping and molesting a girl he was meant to be caring for.

Xu, a friend of the victim's parents, was sometimes asked by the couple to help look after their daughter, and he was discovered to have committed the offenses in his car or residence multiple times in 2016, 2018 and 2019.

While handling the case, the court said it also offered psychological aid for the victim and communicated with her parents.

In addition to criminal cases, the court heard 1,274 civil lawsuits involving children, with most related to child custody, guardianship and visitation.