Father who molested his five-year-old daughter not guilty of any crime

The disturbing case of a middle-aged man caught on camera molesting an underage girl on train has come to a depressing end.

Today, after initiating a hunt for the man in the viral video, the Nanchang railway police in Jiangxi Province announced that the investigation had ended. The molester, 30, is confirmed to be the five-year-old’s father. And because the little girl is his daughter, what the man did to the child doesn’t constitute sexual assault.

“We appreciate internet users’ concerns about public security,” the police wrote in a statement (in Chinese) posted on Weibo.

The case was brought to the nation’s attention after Weibo user Xiǎoyǔ 小雨 filmed the incident and shared it on the Chinese internet. Before the results were released, many people believed that given the indifferent attitudes displayed by the girl’s mother and grandmother in the clip, the child could only be saved from her father’s heinous behaviour by the police.

Chinese social media commenters appeared unanimous in failing to find the police result credible. “I don’t know the definition of sexual assault anymore if this doesn’t count as molestation. I can’t put my anger into words. Chinese police just made me lost faith in humanity,” one Weibo user commented.