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It would be appreciated if this story. could
13 bɛ given full news coverage.
The Editor, News Room,
Dear Sir,
216 Prince Edward Road,
Kowloon.
13th. July, 1971.
For eight months I have been struggling to get justice for a child through the Legal Department, but have failed. I now appeal to public opinion. Perhaps in Hong Kong there may be a solicitor who will take up the case since neither the child nor her parents have money; and she cannot get Legal Aid.
The girl's name cannot be given, as she is only 14 years old now, and was only 12 at the time of the offence against her;
This child was working in a factory in Tsimshatsui, starting at the age of ten; she worked 12 hours a day and received board and lodgings and $20 which was paid to her parents. Two years after she began to work there, her employer's son, aged 30, began to rape her, threatening her not to shout or make a noise. The alleged rape was only discovered when the child became sick and the father noticed her condition. She was well advanced in pregnancy before this was discovered, and her mother had to explain what had happened to her as she did not understand. She identified the alleged rapist at a Police Identification Parade in October 1970, and the man was charged. The case made headlines in some of the press
For some reason that has never been explained; the Tsimshatsui Police sent the file to the Public Prosecutor, who decided not to make a charge.
I wrote to the Attorney General, Legal Department, in November, 1970, asking why no charge had been laid, and the Solicitor General replied in a very rude letter, "I do not propose going into the reasons why it was considered not to be in the public interest to prosecute in this case. #7 He also scolded me for sending the child personally to him: indeed, I wanted him to see the pitiful little victim of his decision.
I then obtained the original statements made by the child and her father to the Police, and was satisfied that they had told the same story to me, and that there was a case to answer. I failed to get Legal Aid as this is not given in cases of rape. The regulations appear to need changing on this point since most cases of rape involve poor children in Hong Kong:
The little girl entered hospital in December and had her baby: I believe it was by Caesarian operation. Reports from the Social Welfare Department confirm that the girl was an innocent little child, and that her parents were depressed on her behalf; The father threatened in my presence to jump from the Magistracy Building in protest against the injustice to the child, but he was persuaded instead to continue the struggle en her behalf.
In my negotiations with the Legal Department I met a stone wall. The Acting Attorney General pleaded that "it would be very wrong to subject her (the girl) to the ordeal of recounting her experience in a public court unless it was considered absolutely necessary: known to be the innocent victim:
having such a man sleeping on the
This is a clear admission that the child was And what about the danger to other gils of premises where young girls were housed?