Stealing an 11-Year-Old Girl from Her Family

This case took place in Zhengzhou, Henan Province: In 2021, a girl was sexually assaulted at the age of 11, suffered more assaults over the next three years, was lured into prostitution at the age of 13, and at the age of 14, turned from a victim into a perpetrator of prostitution and violence. 

This girl’s assaults had to do with her social circle. She dropped out of school at the age of 9 and met a group of dropout minors via the internet. In this circle, violence and sexual abuse happened often; girls as young as 12 or 13 betrayed and pimped each other to men.

The mothers of three girls in this circle have tried to “get their daughters out” and have done what they could, but with little success. 

This is a complex yet important case. From a judicial perspective, the story goes like this: In February 2021, Chen Yue, age 11, was introduced by a 13-year-old girl to a 17-year-old young man and was sexually assaulted by this man. One month later, a 12-year-old girl introduced her to a 31-year-old man, and she was again sexually assaulted. Half a year later, Chen Yue was forced into prostitution. Two years later, now the 13-year-old Chen Yue was twice part of a prostitution gang and was suspected of repeated violence against others. 

In March 2024, I traveled to Zhengzhou, Henan Province and saw the 14-year-old Chen Yue in a hotel room in the northwestern part of the city, close to her home. We stayed together for three weeks. During this time, I saw Chen Yue’s mother, Zhang Jing. Zhang Jing was busy advocating for her daughter’s rights. I went with her to three police stations, as her daughter’s three cases fell in the responsibility of different police stations. 

After a week in the area, I met the 14-year-old girl Xiao Yu and the 16-year-old girl An An, both involved in the cases, and their mothers. I was impressed by the similar mannerism of the two girls and by An An’s mother’s description of her daughter, which was just a copy-and-paste version of Chen Yue. Both mothers mentioned that their daughters spent their time in the “circle.” The “circle” was a small world of at least a dozen dropout minors who met to play games, sing in karaoke bars, have meals together, fall in love, and steal electric motorcycles. It also happened that they engaged in violence, sexual assault, and betrayal. Chen Yue came to this parallel world at the age of 11 and had seen other girls around her being violated by their favorite boys, beaten up at times, or betrayed by their “sisters” who forced them to sell sex to strangers. In this circle, these situations were merely called “bad luck.” After their “bad luck,” the girls cried, got tattoos, cut themselves with knives, and continued to spend their time in the circle as if it never bothered them one bit. Over the course of two years, three mothers in turn wanted to “get their daughters out” and did what they could, but with little success—The girls cared more about their “friends” in the circle who raised and grew up with them than what their mothers had to say. 

For additional information and cross-checking, I have also intermittently visited Chen Yue’s father Chen Hao, her brother Chen Shu, her 17-year-old boyfriend A Zhe, her good circle friend Xiao Hao, and a client who tried to buy sex from her. 

Five months later, the following article took shape. The story is about how malice affects children at home via the internet, inflicts its harm (without their parents’ knowledge), steals them from their family, and sends them into the world of adult crimes (while the parents can do nothing about it) until the children become those very people who have unleashed malice in the first place? 

How does malice affect children at home via the internet?

In March 2024, I met Chen Yue for the first time. She followed her mother into the room of an express hotel close to her home with the restraint of a child being led by an adult to see a stranger. Her head lowered; she didn’t know where to look. She was 14 years old, 5’4’’, her figure well-proportioned, with straight long hair and a little baby fat. She nodded, said in a low voice, “Hello, Sister,” then pursed her lips and smiled. She looked exactly her age, a normal girl still in school, which made her outfit—a red jacket with two imp horns on the hat and jeans—look like that of a child. 

After we exchanged greetings, Chen Yue stood still. Her mother and I sat on the bed. When her mother asked her to sit down, she sat down on the couch next to the bed. Her legs put together and her hands on her knees, she looked as if she was sitting squarely in a classroom as instructed to. 

Chen Yue was born in Zhengzhou in 2009. Her parents ran two general stores in a small wholesale market. She had an older brother, who was 6 years older, and a younger brother, who was 10 years younger. The family lived on the top floor of a six-story building with no elevator in an ordinary neighborhood of a wealthy district, a 20-minute drive from the city center.

A woman who has known the family for years recalled when Chen Yue was still a child, she loved to talk and laugh, was not afraid of strangers, and they all thought of her as eloquent for a child her age. Chen Yue loved to swim and sometimes went to a swimming pool close to her home. After kindergarten, she entered elementary school. 

During fourth grade, Chen Yue dropped out of school. I asked Chen Yue many times: “Why didn’t you complete 9 years of compulsory education?” Chen Yue, her father, mother, and brother gave the same answer: Her grades were too poor. She could not memorize pinyin or words so was discouraged from attending school. It was a private school. Chen Yue’s mother mentioned that she sent Chen Yue there because there were courses on Classic Chinese Studies. She thought a program with such courses wouldn’t have campus violence. 

The family of four also mentioned that after Chen Yue was forced to drop out of school, her mother Zhang Jing took her to a public school, but she failed the entrance exam. Of course, she could attend another private school instead. But her father Chen Hao said that private schools were too hands-off, and that her daughter could learn nothing there. Additionally, it was not worth paying the tuition fees of 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per year.

Chen Yue, the dropout at the age of 9, was assigned by her parents to help out at the family stores. The stores were in an open-air market of more than 500 stores, and pieces of clothing, slippers, plastic and paint buckets piled up outside the doors, while motorcycles zipped through. After going there for a while, she’d rather stay at home. 

Her parents had to look after the stores and had no time to take care of Chen Yue. Soon, Zhang Jing gave birth to a son. Chen Yue’s parents agreed to let her stay at home and gave her a cellphone. 

The only other person around her age in the family was her older brother Chen Shu, who was in middle school at the time and did not get along well with her. In this family, the parents neglected all their children. Whenever there was a newborn, there was a clear preference for the youngest child. Chen Shu said that he was always jealous of Chen Yue. Because of that, he had ran away from home three times and interrupted his studies. Later, he went to a vocational school. 

Chen Yue said she really wanted to go back to school at the time because “all my peers were going to school, what was I doing at home alone?” She lost her school friends and had only a cellphone to play with. After two years being out of school, the 11-year-old Chen Yue discovered “TT Chat” (an voice app for gaming and socializing) and found some friends there. 

Her friends brought her into the “circle.” There were about 12 to 30 minors in the “circle” between the age of 11 and 17. They all had different family backgrounds, but most of them had dropped out of school. They lived near Chen Yue’s home along Road A. Road A was nearly 6 kilometers long, and it took an hour to walk the whole length of the road. These dropout minors, who were scatted along this road, were brought together through a network. 

The “network” referred specifically to TT Chat and the “local” function of “Kwai,” the latter of which used algorithms to recommend nearby peers with common interests (manicures, tattoos, motorcycles, billiards). The “Contact Card” function on “WeChat” further helped them to find each other, a socializing method that became popular among the post-00s five or six years ago and that involved posting or group-sending profile pictures and WeChat QR codes in “Moments” in order to attract whoever’s interested to add them as friends. 

New friends brought Chen Yue into a new world. They took her to internet cafes, bars, discos, and karaoke bars at night. The girls under the age of 14 used the side door or a fake ID to make it into the bar. Following the other girls, Chen Yue gradually learned to put on heavy makeup and black lace panties. She played drinking games with boys while music blasted in her ears. She could drink more than half a liter of baijiu. 

No one in her family noticed Chen Yue’s changes. She went out in the evening by locking her bedroom from the inside and climbing over the window and into the bathroom next door via a connected balcony. She usually came back after midnight when her parents were fast asleep.  

According to China.org.cn, there were a large number of chatrooms on TT Chat that had such impersonal introductions as “13 years old…ready to go,” and the chats usually contained adult contents. Many male users used the app to prey on underage girls. 

After joining TT Chat, the 11-year-old Chen Yue “fell in love” for the first time though she did not understand what that meant. The other party wanted “ready to go,” and she took it as going out together. After chatting with the 19-year-old young man, she found out that he wanted to have sex immediately and threatened to find someone to beat her up if she wanted “a breakup.” Chen Yue had had no sexual experience. She knew nothing about it, was “scared,” and reached out to a girlfriend for help, who was barely two or three years older. Encouraged by this girlfriend, she deleted the man on the app. 

Of course, Chen Yue didn’t dare to tell her parents about the “bad incident,” worried that if they found out, they would lock her up, and she would lose her hard-won friends. Thus, her family did not get the early signal that an assault was dangerously close. Chen Yue continued to socialize with people in her circle and made more friends. 

I could feel Chen Yue’s desperate need for friends. Whenever we met, she seemed to automatically treat me as someone she had known for a long time and told me about her recent troubles, complains, fights with her mother, and the estrangement from a close girlfriend. Once, I forgot about a detail, and there was sadness in her tone: “I have told you about it. And you have forgotten.” What interested her the most was to talk about falling in love. She described herself as “lovestruck.” When sitting on her bed, walking, or lounging against the pool wall during a break, she liked to talk about boys she had fallen in love with. She also asked me: “Do you have a boyfriend? At your age, what kind of boys do you like?”

A few months after she entered the circle, a 13-year-old girl wanted to “introduce” her to someone. Chen Yue went out with her. 

It was February 19th, 2021. According to a later court decision, this 13-year-old girl introduced Chen Yue to a 17-year-old young man who took her to a hotel, a 10-minute drive from her home, and sexually assaulted her. 

How does malice steal children from their family?

Afterwards, no one told Chen Yue that it was called “sexual assault.” She never thought about reporting it to the police. That’s just not something that she wanted to recall. 

That day, she caught a glimpse of a picture of a girl on the young man’s cellphone wallpaper. She asked, “Is that your girlfriend?” The young man said, “Just a picture from the internet.” She didn’t believe him. “By dating etiquettes, I was cheated on, and I had given him my virginity.” 

Chen Yue misinterpreted this assault as a “failed relationship,” a view that was indoctrinated by her circle. 

Three minors in the circle all mentioned a term called “fast-food romance,” which was popular among them and meant immediate sex upon meeting if they were happy with each other’s profile photos. As a result, many relationships lasted only a day and ended right after sex. 

“Why don’t you spend some time together before going into a relationship?” Chen Yue’s good friend, the 17-year-old Xiao Hao, started laughing upon hearing this question and explained to me: Because some girls were “(unwilling to have sex) before committing themselves to a relationship.” In fact, the boys mainly wanted to have sex. Chen Yue and another 14-year-old girl said when they first entered the circle, they thought they could start a serious relationship after having sex. 

A month after the first sexual assault, in March 2021, another 12-year-old girl asked Chen Yue to go out, again saying she wanted to introduce someone to her. Chen Yue refused, but the girl insisted that it was just for her to get acquainted with that person. So, Chen Yue went. According to a court decision, on that day, Chen Yue was introduced via this 12-year-old girl to a 31-year-old man who took her to a hotel in the city, where she was sexually assaulted.  

It was a trend in the circle for girls to trick each other into having sex with men. Chen Yue later found out that some girls did it to exchange favors, while others wanted to earn up to 1,000 yuan of “introduction fees.”  There were other girls who did it out of jealousy—Chen Yue said, since there were “very few virgins” in the circle, “Most girls would be jealous of you if you were a virgin.” Once, she watched a girlfriend trick another girl into having sex with a boy in a hotel. The girlfriend took Chen Yue to the bathroom to listen to them having sex. The girlfriend said, “Why is she still a virgin? I want her to lose her virginity.”

This was essentially a kind of transfer of trauma. After the girls were maliciously hurt, nobody helped them to recognize and work through the problems. So, these girls went on hurting others. Meanwhile, “sexual assault” was mistakenly taken as a “love act,” thus, this accomplice behavior became nothing more than moral deception. Chen Yue called the betrayal of her fellow girls, “gaslighting me.” When gaslighted, she would feel very sad and get a hotel room in the suburb, “to disappear for a couple of days,” watching TV all day without contacting anybody. 

Afterwards, she still maintained her relationship with these girls. I asked her many times: “Do you hate them? Why do you still hang out with them?” Chen Yue sometimes said that it was hard for her to say no. Other times, she said that she was just too young then, “I really don’t understand what I was thinking then.” However, she did recall that she didn’t want to lose any friends at the time, “These friends are anchors for my feelings.”

Later on, I came to realize that after Chen Yue dropped out at the age of 9, she didn’t have any ties to the school anymore, besides being not close to her family. What company she had at the time were mostly similar dropouts in the same circle. They hurt her, but emotionally, she didn’t have another choice.

In April 2021, another month after the second sexual assault, Chen Yue said she was lied to again by a girl who had betrayed her:

It was the 13-year-old girl who had tricked her into her first sexual assault. This time, she invited Chen Yue to hang out in her hotel room. Then, she left with an excuse, leaving Chen Yue in the room to be gang-raped by two men. (Since Chen Yue could not remember the name or address of the hotel where the rape took place, this could not be judicially confirmed.)

I didn’t know how Chen Yue had thought about it. Her mother Zhang Jing said Chen Yue had refused to talk about it. What was certain was that the family remained unaware of the escalation of the assault—Chen Yue hadn’t sought help from them. She chose to continue living among her “friends.”

Another month passed. In May 2021, after being betrayed three times within three months, Chen Yue thought she had found her “true love” for the first time: A 13-year-old boy named L, whom she had met in the circle, offered to rent a place with her. Chen Yue began to dream about running away from her family and sharing a home with L. In the circle, many 12- and 13-year-olds often ran away from home and rented their own place. They could simply call up the number of a rent ad on the street. Even if they reported their real age, the real estate agents would still agree to rent out to them. Chen Yue said, “As middlemen, they don’t care too much about it.” In the name of love, Chen Yue had sex with L. 

Unlike the previous three assaults, Chen Yue saw the sex with L as a result of love. It was consensual. However, she was 12 years old and had not reached the age of sexual consent (14 years old), and legally, her sex with L was still seen as sexual assault. That way, this turned out to be the fourth time within four months that Chen Yue had been sexually assaulted. 

Two months later, L had a new girlfriend. Chen Yue said that she was jealous and anxious as L meant a lot to her. These two months were the “longest relationship” she had ever had. Another two months later, she finally had the opportunity to see L again and wanted to spend a bit more time with him in the hope of winning him back. That day, there were three other girls. The five of them wanted to go to a restaurant together. L complained that he had no money. Two of the girls then stole a motorcycle and sold it. With the money, they went to the hotpot chain Haidilao. Afterwards, L complained again that he did not have the money for a hotel. L suggested that Chen Yue should pawn her cellphone and get it back once they had the money. Chen Yue agreed. The five of them took the money from pawning Chen Yue’s cellphone and got a room at a hotel.

On the evening of the next day, L said he had spent all the money again. He somehow found a few clients and wanted to trick one of the girls into prostitution. The girl said she’s going to call the police and ran away. L wanted Chen Yue to take her place and said, “If you do it once, you can get your cellphone back. Otherwise, you’ll never see it again.” 

“I really cannot remember why I agreed. My father bought me this cellphone. I was afraid that he wouldn’t buy me a new one.” Chen Yue said. 

It was September 21st, 2021. The assault had escalated from rape to gang-rape to forced prostitution. That night, Chen Yue was assaulted by three men until the police came in the early morning. 

Failed Intervention

Chen Yue had already suffered four sexual assaults when her mother Zhang Jing first caught the problem. It was May 2021. On that day, her eldest son Chen Shu told Zhang Jiang to “be brave” and showed her his cellphone—Chen Yue had posted a video of her sleeping with a boy on Snapchat. That boy was L. By then, the forced prostitution had not yet occurred, and Chen Yue and L had just “fallen in love.”

Zhang Jing was “shocked” by the video. After she calmed down a bit, she asked Chen Yue whether she had had sex with boys. At first, Chen Yue denied. Zhang Jing wanted to take her to the hospital for a check-up and found out about the four sexual assaults Chen Yue had gone through. Chen Yue also mentioned that the second time she was tricked by a 12-year-old girl. Zhang Jing knew the girl, who often came to her house to hang out with Chen Yue a couple months ago and sometimes stayed overnight. Zhang Jing had also cooked for her. Zhang Jing remembered that the two girls often wore heavy make-up. She thought the two girls had been tricked and got in touch with the other girl’s mother. The two mothers called the police. 

The perpetrators for the first two sexual assaults were quickly arrested and sentenced to one year and six months and three years and six months respectively. The third case could not be filed due to lack of evidence. The fourth case could not be filed because L was under 14 years old. 

Zhang Jing said the police told her that the 12-year-old girl was not tricked, and in fact, she tricked Chen Yue and had circulated a video of Chen Yue in her circle of friends, “whoever likes this baby, give a shout,” and took a fee of 1,000 yuan. The girl wouldn’t get punished because she was under 14 years old. 

Zhang Jing went to find the girl’s mother in a fit and wanted a response. The girl’s mother said: “Yes, we’ve done wrong. Now, what do you want?” Zhang Jing also went to L’s parents. Their answer was: “Our son is not yet 14 years old. No one can do anything about him. 

What made Zhang Jing explode was her daughter’s reaction: Chen Yue did not seem to understand what had happened. When the police were taking evidence at the hotel, Chen Yue acted as if it had nothing to do with her and continued to play with the girl who had tricked her. It was as if she still took that girl as a friend. At the police station, the policemen bought Chen Yue a milk tea, but she wanted to give it to the girl. 

Chen Yue said at the time (before her forced prostitution), she still felt that L “really loved me,” but “my mother got angry and seemed to want to sue him.”

After the case was heard, Chen Yue came back home. Zhang Jing kept an eye on her daughter and believed that life would return to normal under her watch. But Chen Yue could not stand being isolated at home. Zhang Jing recalled that during those days, Chen Yue often cried out loud and used a knife to scratch on the sofa, the bed sheets, the tables, the chairs, and even on her own wrists, leaving bloodstains all over. Zhang Jing tried to talk to her daughter, to ask how she thought, but her daughter ignored her. 

I asked Chen Yue how she felt at the time. Chen Yue said, at the moment, I was “very depressed,” but could not remember why, “There are a lot of memories. I just can’t connect them.” She remembered being in a state of “trance,” as if “there were two small people living in my mind. One was saying she’s going to kill herself; the other was saying not to.”

For days, Zhang Jing was trying to find solutions on TikTok. She discovered an “Inspiration Junior Military Academy” in the eastern part of the city. “Something similar to a youth detention center,” said Zhang Jing. The official website stated that this was a boarding school, specializing in behavior modification and management for 10- to 18-year-old young people with problems, including “disobedience, school burnout, obsession with cellphones, social awkwardness, selfishness, rebelliousness, early maturity, early affectation, introversion, withdrawal, indifference toward intimacy, blind consumerism, physical violence against parents, laziness, escape from home, and so forth.” Their teaching objectives included the “Four Laws” (studying the law, knowing the law, abiding by the law, and using the law) and “Three Graces” (grace of knowledge, grace of thanks, grace of giving back). As a woman of action, Zhang Jing enrolled her daughter immediately. 

Before the approval of enrolment, the school asked Zhang Jing to take Chen Yue to the hospital for a mental health test. According to the Eighth People’s Hospital of Zhengzhou City, Chen Yue was diagnosed with severe depression. Upon receiving the diagnosis, the school still would like to accept her. Zhang Jing’s response to the diagnosis was to ask the teachers at the military academy to give her daughter psychological counseling. 

Three days later, a police officer who had learned about the situation told Zhang Jing that it would be detrimental to send her daughter there. Zhang Jing listened and went with the police officer to take her out of school. When Chen Yue came out, she was walking unsteadily and was suspected of having been physically punished in the military academy. 

When the school plan failed, Zhang Jing listened to her friend’s recommendation and sent her daughter to a monastery in Fujian Province, hoping that the monastery would help to discipline her daughter. As she ran across a cooking lady who happened to come from her hometown in Henan Province, Zhang Jing wanted this lady to take her daughter as goddaughter and left her with a few hundred yuan. Chen Yue stayed at the monastery for two months, washing dishes, cleaning vegetables, and listening to Buddhist chants. 

Two months went by quickly. Upon her return, Chen Yue was once again confined to her home. Zhang Jing was very busy and arranged for her oldest son, Chen Shu, who was 18 years old at the time, to accompany and discipline Chen Yue. Chen Shu told me that Chen Yue cursed, smoked, and was full of bad habits. “There is no way to reason with her. She says one thing but means another, and is sometimes very stubborn. She throws things around like crazy. If too angry, I’ll beat her, whipping her with a belt or a cable, so that she will learn a lesson.” 

For Chen Yue, life under her older brother was the worst she had ever experienced, much worse than the monastery or the military academy. She thought she had no choice but to run away. “Outside, I got hurt once every couple of months. But at home, I got beaten all the time if I wasn’t being careful.” 

One day in March 2023, Chen Yue fell in love with a boy on an app and denied it when her brother found out. He was so angry that he beat her again. Her father Chen Hao recalled that it made his heart ache, so he stopped his son. Previously, Chen Hao was rarely involved in his daughter’s education but this time, he held a special family meeting. Chen Hao criticized his son for beating his sister and forbade him to defend himself. Chen Hao and his son had a fallout. Chen Shu said that from then on, there was no such sister for him. Chen Hao said that he would take care of his daughter then. 

When her brother failed to discipline her, Chen Yue was passed onto her father Chen Hao. The next day, Chen Hao took Chen Yue to move back to their family’s old house and confiscated her cellphone. 

A few days later, Chen Hao discovered that the confiscated iPhone had been switched by a plastic model. Chen Hao was so furious that he snatched Chen Yue’s iPhone and threw it on the ground in front of her. 

Chen Yue picked her iPhone, now with a broken screen, and shouted, “Hey Siri!” and called a friend named Xiao Rong. Xiao Rong was 13 years old, who also hung out in the circle and had lots of experience in running away from home. Chen Yue said, “Xiao Rong can run away by just going to the bathroom.”

Xiao Rong came and said she was there to deliver dinner to Chen Yue. Chen Yue’s father believed her and was even worried that it would be too late for Xiao Rong to go home, so he let her stay overnight. 

In the evening, Xiao Rong said to Chen Yue, “Why do you still stay at home after all this?” She said she could take Chen Yue to “run away without sex,” meaning they would find clients online, pretend to be ready to serve them, and at the meeting, collect the money and run away without having sex with them. This was the way many girls in the circle earned pocket money (another way was to steal motorcycles). It sounded exciting, and there was nothing to lose. Besides, once she had money, Chen Yue wouldn’t have to come home to be under watch anymore. So, she agreed. 

The two girls ran away that night. In the morning, Chen Hao realized that his daughter had disappeared from under his nose. 

After that, Xiao Rong did not take Chen Yue to “run away without sex.” Chen Yue was tricked again by a “good friend.” And this time, it escalated to another level. The malice had thrown her into the world of adult crimes—a prostitution gang. 

Mother

Zhang Jing was 47 years old, with hair tied to a high ponytail. She wore a black gauze top, white pants, and high heels. The red color of her lipstick made her look competent. Only upon a closer look could you see that her face was waxy and gaunt. Long-term insomnia did not do her much good. With me, policemen, lawyers, and other figures on her road to justice, Zhang Jing always said the same thing as soon as she started to talk: “So much has happened to me for the past two years.” Then, she spared no detail about how it all began and how much her daughter had suffered. As she spoke, there was no gaps, so after a while, she’s out of breath and had to take deep breaths, as if she was about to pass out. 

She also spoke of other things that haunted her: She lost up to 1,000,000 yuan in the past two years in a failed business venture; she and her husband got a divorce at the end of last year; her father had terminal cancer; her brother was hospitalized for kidney disease; she herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 but did not go for treatment because she could not “calm herself down.”

Zhang Jing came from rural Xinxiang of Henan Province, worked as a laborer in her early years, then set up a stall to sell goods, married Chen Hao who came from an even poorer area and worked as a security guard at the time, and opened two general stores. It was only after she got married that Zhang Jing learned that her mother-in-law, who was paralyzed and mentally ill, would often come to live with them, cursing them and throwing her feces on the floor. It was Zhang Jing who usually had to take care of this mother-in-law. Thus, the couple hadn’t been on good terms ever since. 

Zhang Jing said she had always wanted a divorce but could not make up her mind. Feeling “desperate,” she gave herself “hope” by giving birth to two children. She was addicted to direct sales because there were “inspirational courses.” Seven or eight years ago, she lost an apartment that was worth 500,000 yuan due to direct sales. Two years ago, she invested in a start-up project by one of the direct sales teachers and lost another apartment worth 500,000 yuan, the result of which was that her family had to rent a place to live and carried a large debut of tens of thousands of yuan. Chen Hao said he divorced Zhang Jing because he was afraid of being affected by Zhang Jing’s debt. But even so, Zhan Jing had no regrets. Without the encouragement from the direct sales courses, she could not “continue to live.” Even these days, she still chatted with a female teacher of her age, saying the latter could give her “positive energy.” 

Chen Hao told me in private that he found Zhang Jing and Chen Yue quite similar. Both relied on their friends and trusted people easily. “After exchanging three sentences, others become friends for them; after four, friends for life; after two, everything’s fine. Being gullible is the greatest trait in their nature.” This was how Chen Hao described Zhang Jing and Chen Yue. 

What Zhang Jing regretted was that she had spent too little time with her own children. Besides earning a living, she was most focused on solving her own emotional problems. Out of her own initiative, she said that she often could not control her emotions and let it all out on Chen Shu and beat him when he was younger. She sent workers at their stores to attend all of Chen Shu’s parents’ meetings. When Chen Yue was young, Zhang Jing usually came home late after her direct sales classes and did not have the time to help Chen Yue with her homework. 

Zhang Jing had to take care of her mother-in-law until the latter passed away at the end of 2020. She thought she could “finally take a deep breath.” Soon after, she learned about her daughter’s four sexual assaults. She recalled during the previous four months, she did notice that her daughter began to swear and smoke but thought, at the time, that “My daughter is still my daughter,” meaning like contracting a viral cold, her daughter was just temporarily infected with bad habits. 

Zhang Jing’s feelings changed after having to face her crying and self-hurting daughter who had just gone through a fourth sexual assault. Like Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which a family member turned into an insect overnight, Zhang Jing began to feel estranged from and fearful of her daughter, “Her body is still my child’s body, but her heart is no longer my child’s heart.”

She didn’t know how to make sense of it all and even suspected that her daughter was “possessed by ghosts.” As a woman of action, Zhang Jing took her daughter to a temple in Anyang right away and let a “master” there take a look. The “master” touched Chen Yue’s hands and said she was “possessed,” which had led to the phenomenon that “she wouldn’t know what she’s been doing.” Zhang Jing was consoled a bit, but the problem was still not solved. 

After meeting the master, Zhang Jing once again fell into a state of helplessness. She was even afraid to spend time alone with her daughter, “I don’t know how to face her.”

Zhang Jing could not watch her daughter all the time. She could not stay at home 24 hours a day. If someone at home was away for a minute, Chen Yue would take the opportunity to go out and return only in the next morning. 

Zhang Jing finally fell into depression herself. When she couldn’t find Chen Yue, she had sleepless nights and occasionally also nightmares. When she dreamt, it was always about her daughter being killed or not to be found. Once, she dreamt that her daughter was dead, so she opened the grave and found her daughter wearing no pants. She cried and asked why she wore no pants even after death.

On the street during the day, whenever she saw a girl, she was afraid that the girl had been sexually assaulted. Afterwards, she wondered why girls from other families were not in trouble. Whenever she saw a boy, she thought that none of them was any good. She suspected that all the men on the street had assaulted her daughter. 

Zhang Jing also blamed herself, especially after having seen the scratches on Chen Yue’s wrists. She believed that she failed to protect her daughter, “I really don’t deserve to be a mother. I don’t deserve to be a woman.” 

But stronger than the blame on herself was her sense of humiliation and the resulting rage for revenge. Without a sign, a heathy child was taken away from her. The child’s self-esteem and her life were trampled on the ground—So far, none of the perpetrators had apologized to her. She also found the verdicts unfair. For the two sexual assaults in 2021, the two perpetrators were sentenced to one year and six months and three years and six months respectively. Zhang Jing thought the sentences were too lenient. 

The court ordered the two perpetrators to pay 542.5 yuan, which made her feel even more humiliated. The prosecutors advised her to apply for further compensation, which could be up to a few thousand yuan, but she did not apply. 

This was how the 542.5 yuan were calculated: 

Contrary to how people might feel about it, mental harm was not compensated in criminal cases. Only medical expenses were compensated. After Zhang Jing discovered that her daughter had been sexually assaulted, she took Chen Yue to the hospital for a checkup, which cost a total of 1,085 yuan. When equally divided between the two perpetrators, it came to 542.5 yuan each. 

According to Criminal Law, the sentence for raping an underage girl ranged from 4 to 7 years. However, since both offenders, under 17 years old, had reported themselves, they received a more lenient sentence. 

Zhang Jing could not accept this. She decided to appeal, but the second trial upheld the original sentence. She stopped working for the next three years and devoted all her time to demanding a change of sentence. She also demanded that the other two sexual assaults in 2021 (meaning the third assault that lacked evidence and the fourth in which the perpetrator L was under 14 years old) should be filed. 

She repeatedly emphasized to me that “this is a matter of dignity.” Not long ago, a phone call broke her self-esteem again—The mother of the 31-year-old sex offender called as she forgot to pay 542.5 yuan and proposed to “transfer via WeChat.”

Zhang Jing took me to three police stations that were responsible for three different cases. She told every police officer at the three police stations what had happened to her daughter. She also called the other police officers she had contacted and repeated the account. As Zhang Jing went out for a call, a policeman told me: “She talks a lot. But you don’t get what she really wants to say.” On another occasion, when I was in my hotel room with Zhang Jing, a police officer interrupted her on the phone and asked her to be concise. Her tone changed from that of confiding to accusing, and the two of them argued. 

The long road to justice made no progress but took almost all of Zhang Jing’s attention. 

Meanwhile, Chen Yue was alone by herself, walking further into the abyss. On an early morning in March 2023, Zhang Jing received a call from her husband at their old house: Once again, their daughter had disappeared. 

Two months later, Zhang Jing received a call from the police: Chen Yue had been tricked into a prostitution gang. 

The World of Adult Crimes 1.0:

The Price of Leisure and Freedom

It was the evening of March 19th, 2023. After successfully running away from the old house, Xiao Rong took Chen Yue to see her “big brother.” The big brother was called ‘Brother Tao,” 36 years old, and from Xichuan County of Henan Province. Brother Tao asked the girls to join him and took care of them. He put the two girls into a love hotel called “Beautiful & Chic.” 

When I got to the area, the hotel had already been closed and ceased operation. The hotel was located on a street lined with stores, just a 10-minute drive from Chen Yue’s house. The lobby had gold walls, purple leather sofas, and advertisements for painless abortions. In front of the hotel was a sign that read “Hotel with Top Security.” 

According to the verdict, Brother Tao had organized prostitution of underage girls at the hotel. Three underage girls were involved and there had been 24 cases of prostitution. 

This gang had a complete system run by adults. In addition to the organizer Brother Tao, the hotel owner also participated by providing rooms and clients. Besides, there was the owner of a nearby foot spa, also a karaoke club manager, who had supplied clients. These three accomplices were all male. 

Most of the clients were middle-aged male residents of the neighborhood, including acquaintances that the girls often ran into. (Chen Yue once discovered that a client was the owner of a store neighboring her parents’ stores in the market. As soon as she saw him, she “ran away in fear.”)

“Sex work” entered the world of the 13-year-old Chen Yue for the first time. Chen Yue said, at the time, she “did not resist, because it didn’t make sense,” because Brother Tao had a 17-year-old henchman. She recognized the young man from her circle. She didn’t want to get beaten up or return home because she would get beaten up by her older brother. 

She was also thinking about making ends meet. Being away from home meant that she needed to earn the rent and living expenses. This was also a problem she had often faced in the past when she ran away from home. So, when Brother Tao offered to pay her 100 yuan a day, plus food and a room, she thought that “that’s good enough.” She had no idea about money until she had a glance at the transfer records on Brother Tao’s cellphone three weeks later and realized that the actual fee per client was 600 to 700 yuan. 

For a long time, I couldn’t understand why Chen Yue took up sex work for such a small amount of “favors.” Then, I read the statements from girls of her age in the judicial records. For instance, there was a 12-year-old girl who went to the hotel to hang out with Chen Yue and Xiao Rong after the latter two began to take clients. Similarly, Brother Tao said he would take care of her and then seduced her. The girl had no prior sexual experience before. But when she talked about what had happened, it felt so easy and didn’t matter much.

“I thought he would get me a cellphone and some money. So, I had sex with him.”

I began to understand that from the perspective of a child without a sex education, freedom and leisure were very important, which satisfied practical needs and were worth paying for. Chen Yue had no idea of the price that she had to pay—She didn’t know a thing about transactional sex or what it entailed. As long as she could play and use her cellphone, Chen Yue had no problems about anything else. 

Meanwhile, Chen Yue and Xiao Rong’s “career” in the circle had damaged part of their immune systems. Both had experienced betrayal in the circle between girlfriends and boyfriends. Chen Yue said she felt that “girls selling girls” was not good but “normal” because “a lot of people around me do it.” 

The 13-year-old Chen Yue started to “go to work,” one client per day. Physically and mentally, she encountered far more serious harm than before. As a result of taking too many birth control pills, her period became irregular after a week and came every ten days. Brother Tao thought that she was earning too little money and required her to pick up clients before her period was over. 

During their “off-hours,” Brother Tao and his henchman also forced the girls to have sex with them, often in front of the other girls. The verdict from the court showed that their behavior was considered as rape. Around midnight one day, the henchman brought two “friends,” and they took Chen Yue to a pavilion in a small forest. The two “friends” (both 18 years old with criminal records, one for stealing motorcycles, the other for telemarketing fraud) wanted to have sex with Chen Yue. Chen Yue fought. Their attempts failed, not because of Chen Yue’s fight, but rather they received a call from the henchman: “The clients are coming. Hurry up, bring her back to work!” 

Chen Yue said to me after two or three weeks of work, she wondered whether she should run away, “You can always run away if you want.” But after all this, she was afraid to go home and to face Zhang Jing, Chen Hao, and Chen Shu. Running away from the hotel would mean no home to go back to and no money to live on. Meanwhile, Zhang Jing had been asking her every day on WeChat where she was since she ran away from home. Chen Yue lied that she’d been staying with friends. Zhang Jing said sorry to her and promised that Chen Shu would never beat her again. Sometimes, Zhang Jing begged Chen Yue to come home; other times, she threatened, “If you don’t come back now, the whole family will disown you.”

However, Zhang Jing did not call the police right away. During the past two years, Chen Yue had run away from home too many times. At first, Zhang Jing called the police immediately. Then, it was no longer a shock, like a thunderbolt, though she was still so worried that she could not sleep the night through. In a way, she had gradually accepted the fact that she had failed at being a mother and had a daughter who would not come back home. Zhang Jing said that her husband Chen Hao often said to her, “Maybe Chen Yue is having a good time and living a good life.” So, she continued to send her daughter a daily WeChat message while reminding herself to “let it go and let her do what she wants to do. Once she has had enough, she will surely come back.”

At the hotel, Chen Yue was hurt almost every day. Repetition had blunted her feelings. She no longer felt the shock but accepted it as a way of life as she had done since she was 11 years old. Chen Yue said that later on, she didn’t “care about sex” anymore, “It happens so frequently that nobody would be too happy about it.”

There were moments when she was determined to run away. Brother Tao’s henchman usually noticed that and asked: “Aren’t you worried that Brother Tao will be sad? Is he not nice to you?” For an adult, this was a ridiculous question, but it prevented the 13-year-old Chen Yue from taking a further step. She said she then thought about these moments when Brother Tao was nice to her—Every time she had a fight with Xiao Rong, Brother Tao was always on her side, “unfair support for me.” 

One day in May 2025, Zhang Jing found it hard to “put it down” and called the police.

The month-long forced prostitution finally came to an end. Brother Tao fled before the police arrived. The manhunt lasted a few days. After nearly a week of inhuman life on the run with Brother Tao—sim cards pulled out, sleeping on construction sites at night, and providing sexual services to Brother Tao and his henchman—Chen Yue was rescued by the police. Brother Tao was sentenced to fifteen years for rape and organizing prostitution, and the henchman was sentenced to two years and five months. Chen Yue followed her mother home. 

The World of Adult Crimes 2.0:

After a Violent Cognitive Distortion

The first time Chen Yue joined a prostitution gang, she had no idea what was going on. But by the second time, she thought she had come to know “the rules of the adult world.”

A few months after being rescued by the police, Chen Yue’s friend Xiao Rong, who had gone through a lot with her, took her to another big brother, “Brother Long.” Brother Long was about 23 or 24 years old, physically fit but often looked unhappy. In addition to organizing prostitution, he also did contract work. Chen Yue said that Xiao Rong had run away from home too often, was given up by her parents, and went into prostitution to make a living. Chen Yue was different: She didn’t want to stay at home. But Brother Long was not as easygoing as Brother Tao. As soon as Chen Yue met Brother Long, he almost beat her, forcing her “to pick up clients.” Chen Yue said she was afraid of being beaten up so agreed to take one client after another. The two girls again fell into the world of adult crimes. 

A 17-year-old member in the gang told me that big brothers had 5 different ways of controlling the girls:

1.      Hire good-looking henchmen who trick the girls into falling in love with them and “making money for love.”

2.      Adopt the girls as “younger sisters.” Trick them into believing that they would protect them and give them money, and then force them “to make money and pay back.”

3.      Let these “younger sisters” use their friendships to trick other girls (like how Xiao Rong tricked Chen Yue).

4.      Stick (beating and shaming) and carrot (dinners and gifts) on repeat, so that the girls fall into a state of confusion. 

The four methods sugarcoated aggression as companionship and care which these girls craved for and were blinded by. And the last one was this:

5.      Take nude photos of the girls and videos of them being beaten or having sex, a most effective way of controlling them.

In fact, this was like the means used by prostitution organizations to manipulate adult women. Compared to adult women, these girls were easy to control and barely fought back.

I saw two videos from last summer through the mother of Xiao Yu, a 14-year-old girl who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Brother Long but was not forced into prostitution.

In the first video, two girls (Long’s “younger sisters”) pushed Xiao Yu down on the rooftop, stomped on her with their feet, hit her in the face with their slippers, pushed her back and forth, and said, “Do you still want to call the police?” “Let her take off her clothes.” They counted down from three to one. Xiao Yu, undressed, stood up. 

In the second video, the two girls repeated what they did last time to Xiao Yu at night in the grass. Brother Long stood next to them and told them to stop. The two girls smiled and looked for their shoes. Brother Long then said this was her first time to be beaten up, there’s more to come. Xiao Yu lay on her back in the grass. 

Having been in an environment where her perception had been violently distorted for a long time and people around her changed their attitudes back and forth, Chen Yue was no longer able to distinguish between “feelings” and “aggressions.” When her mother was not around, Chen Yue said that she had a bit of feelings for Brother Tao. Chen Yue’s current boyfriend A Zhe told me that Chen Yue said that she had had feelings for Brother Tao’s henchman. I believed what he said because Chen Yue signed a letter of understanding with the henchman in secret, and her mother knew nothing about it. Since both parties were still underage, this letter was not legally valid. 

As we got to know each other better, Chen Yue told me a secret: She had once fallen in love with a client, a 22-year-old man who also worked as a pimp. Chen Yue fell in love with him because the man said he wanted to “fall in love with her.” For Chen Yue, this man knew so many girls but only chose her, which meant “What he finds attractive is not my body but my soul.” She felt seen and valued. When they first met (for sex), the man was trying to convince Chen Yue to “do it (prostitution) with me,” but a few days later, he started to say that he “loved her.” Chen Yue believed him. After “falling in love” for one day, the man was arrested for raping another girl. Chen Yue couldn’t believe it. She felt the pain of losing her “love.” Later, she heard rumors from her girlfriends in the circle that the girl had made a false accusation, a claim that eased her pain. Chen Yue also believed it. She blamed the girl for her failed love affair, “If I see xxx (the girl), I’ll beat her up.”

Similar things happened repeatedly to these girls, each of which was, in their eyes, a love story or a story of lost love. 

After meeting Chen Yue and Xiao Yu, I saw the mother of the 16-year-old girl An An. An An was also tricked into Brother Tao’s gang (though she did not participate in prostitution) and was sexually assaulted by Brother Tao. When she arrived at the police station, she still insisted that she was in a relationship with the henchman. The police told me helplessly, “She’s still trying to protect some people.” Like any mother with such a daughter, An An’s mother was so traumatized by her daughter’s assaults and then by her daughter’s reaction that she couldn’t stop repeating herself, “I really don’t know why.”

On her Kwai page, An An still had photos to prove her love for the boy—his name on her fingernails and tattooed on one of her wrists, while the other wrist was tattooed with these words: “In this life, I will only marry xxx.” 

“Gregor Samsa woke up from his dream and found himself transformed into a giant insect.” 

Chen Yue gradually accepted sex work as a way of life. In the eyes of her family, she became even “stranger,” difficult, even an object of fear and rejection. 

Zhang Jing told me that she first learned of Chen Yue’s sex work in May 2023. After rescuing Chen Yue from Brother Tao’s gang, they told Zhang Jing to pick Chen Yue up at the police station. Zhang Jing admitted to me that she did not want to go at the time. For a second, she thought, “I don’t want this child anymore. Physically and mentally, she’s simply unclean.” 

After seeing her daughter at the police station, she put her arms around her daughter and burst out crying. They shared the same bed at night. Chen Yue took the initiative to hug and kiss her mother. Zhang Jing said she did not respond, feeling that “my heart is already dead.”

A few days later, as she turned 14, Chen Yue proposed to go on her own, rent a place to live, and pick up work at the hair salon. Her family did not object this time. Chen Yue recalled that she could feel that her family didn’t know what to do with her, “The atmosphere was just too depressing.” Chen Yue decided to rely on herself. After that day, whenever she was unable to support herself, she resorted to “running away without sex,” or worst came to worst, she “took clients.” 

Meanwhile, Zhang Jing was tormented by the word “prostitution.” She told me many times that when a lawyer defended a perpetrator and called Chen Yue “a prostitute,” Zhang Jing “almost fainted.” “I have lost my face. I cannot face anybody. I want to leave this city.” Every time she remembered the word, her face looked painfully twisted. 

Zhang Jing said, to be fair, she was also hurt by her daughter. “What Chen Yue did has brought me a lifetime of shame and mental damage.” Sometimes, she let out this feeling at home. Chen Yue told me that she once put on a JK uniform. As soon as her mother saw her, she said Chen Yue looked like “a Japanese prostitute.” It was the first time she had heard her mother speak in such a tone. The pain caused her to fall on her knees, and she cried. 

At other times, Zhang Jing showed some understanding. She told me that she had experienced sexual violence herself before she got married. A friend of her fiancé’s took her to a hotel while she was drunk. As he was about to assault her, she threatened to jump off the building. As a result, she saved herself. Many years later, her husband told her that he had arranged all this to test whether she was a casual woman because they were about to get married so quickly. Zhang Jing said, “The pain of all this will last a lifetime.” 

However, as Chen Yue drifted further away from the image of the “perfect victim,” Zhang Jing became more and more verbally abusive. She recounted to me that after she learned that her daughter had sex with underage boys, she scolded her daughter for “harming the boys,” and that “You’re not only harming your own family but also others. Look at what you’ve become. And you still hook up with boys everywhere. They are still underage and don’t know that this is a crime.” 

After Zhang Jing blurted out these words, she became “strange” and difficult for Chen Yue. Perhaps as an act of defiance, Chen Yue began to mention “selling sex” all the time. When she introduced me to her girlfriends, she said: “She sells sex. She has sold sex as well.” When asked what she was doing at a certain point in time, she said, “I was selling sex with xx.” 

During the three weeks I was there, Zhang Jing’s attitude was like a rollercoaster ride. When we first met, she said she’d never been so happy because her daughter was at home. “The person she loves the most is me. The person I love the most is her.” She said she would tell her daughter that no matter what happened, she would never give up on her. But not even two days had passed, she said that whenever she saw her daughter, “I don’t like her.” Later, she said, “I sometimes wish that she was dead.” 

Every time Chen Yue ran away from home, Zhang Jing repeatedly sent polarizing messages to her. Sometimes, Zhang Jing begged, “Give mommy another chance…I cannot live without you!” 

Sometimes, she sent a long message like this:

“Why are you never home? …Are you ready for the news of my death? Or are you waiting for my husband and son to lose face completely? … My dear daughter is dead. I have let go all of my grudges with you… It’s over now!” 

No matter what, Zhang Jing’s vengeful fury never waned. She continued to act. At the end of last year, she confiscated Chen Yue’s cellphone and found 18 suspected clients in her WeChat address book—All of the names were marked with a “v” before them, likely labeled by Chen Yue as clients. All of them also left transfer records. Zhang Jing decided to track them down one by one. 

On the afternoon of the 13th day of our acquaintance, Zhang Jing suddenly asked me: “Could you accompany me to meet one of her clients?” She showed me Chen Yue’s chat records with that client—During the past few months, the man frequently sent messages to Chen Yue, up to 16 messages a day, asking her to introduce him to other girls around her age, but who should be at least 14 years old. Zhang Jing pretended to be Chen Yue and replied: “But I’m only 13.” The man responded: “You want to screw up my life?” Zhang Jing eventually made an appointment with him and fixed the time and place. 

The man appeared at 2pm on March 19th, 2024 in front of a hotel near Wanda Plaza. He looked close to 50. Like a middle-aged businessman, he wore glasses and a polo shirt. His social media information showed that he was a sales agent for liquors, married, and had two sons, one of whom in middle school and the other in college. He walked out of the hotel and was ready to drive his car to the underground garage. Zhang Jing gave him a call: “I am Chen Yue’s mother. Come back with your car and we’ll talk. Or else, I’ll call the police!” 

“What?” He answered and then hung up. His car never came back. Zhang Jing sent him another WeChat message, asking him to “come out and talk.” The next day, the man blocked her on WeChat. 

One day, I learned that, in fact, as early as the end of last year, Zhang Jing successfully met a client of her daughter’s. The man was a 60-year-old business owner of a traditional Chinese medicine center. When Zhang Jing went to question him, he knelt before her and took the initiative to put forward a compensation plan. Once they got to know each other, Zhang Jing cooperated with him in the fireworks business. 

I asked to meet this man. Zhang Jing agreed and drove me to the center in a small concrete bungalow in the neighborhood. There was a sign on the wall: “Fumigation for weight loss and breast nodules.” The door was closed. The man did not pick up the phone. As we waited, Zhang Jing said that the man gave her a pig leg and a fish for Chinese New Year, saying he would treat Chen Yue as his own child. 

I lost control of my emotions: “Don’t you find it disgusting when you see him?”

“Yes, disgusting.” Then, Zhang Jing fell into silence. After a while, she seemed to gather all her strength to say this:

“From 2021 until now, I have wanted to kill myself so many times. But no one comes to save me, absolutely no one.”

“He compensates me. Then, it is written off. I can move on to find the next. I don’t know how many people have had sex with my daughter.”

With that said, she started the car.

Two Men in the Family

In my imagination, the men in the family should have had stronger reactions and been more aggressive in fighting for the rights. After I arrived, I soon realized that Chen Yue’s father Chen Hao had not been involved in such a fight for justice. Zhang Jing said her husband did not know much about their daughter’s situation. She had tried to tell him about it so many times, but Chen Hao’s reply was always this: “I don’t want to hear it.” After Chen Yue had run away from home, Zhang Jing had insomnia. Chen Hao then advised her: “You should take better care of yourself. It is fine as long as we know she (Chen Yue) is alive.”

The first time I met Chen Hao was at a party with his family and friends, but I didn’t know that he was at the party. There were eight people sitting around the round table that day. Across me was a tall, chubby man who didn’t say a word and kept his head buried in his bowl. He didn’t communicate with Zhang Jing or Chen Yue. I thought he was just a friend whom they were not close to. Two days later, I asked Zhang Jing whether I could meet Chen Hao. Zhang Jing said, “But you’ve already met him.” Then I realized that the quiet “friend” was Chen Hao. 

From Zhang Jing’s, Chen Yue’s, and Chen Shu’s descriptions, I got the same image of Chen Hao: He was always busy with his business and was seldom involved in family matters. He gave his children material support (to the extent that he was spoiling them with pocket money and cellphones) but did not take care of their other needs. After they found out about Chen Yue’s assaults, Zhang Jing was busy with Chen Yue’s problems and had no time to spend time at the stores. Thus, Chen Hao had to take care of two stores and spent most of his time on his business. 

One evening, Chen Hao was home and agreed to have a chat with me. Wearing a navy-blue T-shirt, he seemed down-to-earth. I asked him whether he thought he was absent from Chen Yue’s education. Chen Hao said, “It’s not that I don’t care about her. I’ve tried it, stick or carrot, nothing has worked.” Later, when he saw the scratches on his daughter’s wrists, “I don’t know where the boundary is.”

He then put more emphasis: “As a man, I must take care of the big things. I don’t want to meddle with womanly things.” 

I mentioned that Chen Yue was still a 14-year-old girl and could get easily hurt. “Of course. I get that,” he nodded. Then, he went on to say that he had an inkling that there was something wrong with Chen Yue, but “I don’t want to know about it. I hope what has happened is not true.”

The other man in the family, Chen Yue’s older brother Chen Shu, was 21 and stayed at home. He usually locked himself up in his bedroom all day long, playing games or running his TikTok account. I wanted to know how Chen Shu felt about his sister’s assaults. One afternoon, Zhang Jing helped me to get Chen Shu out of his bedroom. It was hard to associate him with “the brother who beats his younger sister.” He was thin, wore glasses, and had a quiet look. He didn’t talk much and said he was shy because he had received little love and care from his parents. When he was young, his shoes had holes and his clothes were dirty, so he grew up with low self-esteem. 

Chen Shu didn’t feel bad about Chen Yue’s assaults. He said he did not know exactly what had happened but knew that she was involved in some circle. “I am disgusted with the harm she did to mom. Mom worries about her every day and cannot sleep at night.” He said he had never had a good relationship with Chen Yue and that his parents preferred Chen Yue, “It makes my head explode when I hear her name.” In a way, he was forced to mature early. He was always on the side of the adults, treating Chen Yue as a “problem girl.”

To this day, he still believed that he did the right thing in disciplining Chen Yue (by beating her), but in the end, it didn’t work. Now he didn’t want to be responsible for her or even talk to her. “For me, she has really nothing to do with me.”

During the three weeks I was in Zhengzhou, Chen Yue rarely saw her family. She went to bed at dawn every day and didn’t get up until three or four in the afternoon. She told me that she did it deliberately to avoid her family. One afternoon, I walked into her bedroom. There were Hello Kitty toys everywhere—on the ashtray, the full-length mirror, and the bed. There was only a single bed and a desk in the room and not much space. There were clothes from the whole family hanging by the window, which blocked out the light, so that the room at 3pm looked so dark as if it was night. 

When she left the gang and moved back home, Chen Yue faced the same environment—Her father was not around; her brother avoided her, her mother kept an eye on her and wouldn’t let her leave the house. Chen Yue and her mother argued frequently. Her family was very different from the circle she was in before—There was nobody watching her in the circle, but something was similar—She always had someone with her. 

As soon as Chen Yue woke up, she started scrolling through TikTok and Kwai and watched funny videos in bed. Sometimes, she also did her nails. Soon after that, it was dark, and she went to the living room to have dinner with her family. She only ate dinner. If she was hungry, she went to the convenience store to get instant noodles and ham sausages. After dinner, she went downstairs to walk her corgi in the neighborhood. Then, she went back to bed and continued to hold her cellphone and watch short videos and films throughout the night. She picked her films randomly and forgot their titles the next day and their plots in a few more days.

One of the very few films whose title she remembered was called Deep Sea. It was about a girl who was neglected at home and dreamt for consolation. “It feels like the captain (in the protagonist’s dream) cares more about her than her own father.” Chen Yue said she slept so much because she didn’t want to accept reality. 

Sometimes, she secretly took a high dose of a cough medication that caused hallucination. She said after taking it, she felt like she was in the film and that she was dreaming. Once, she took 24 pills, and afterwards, her room turned into a maze that she couldn’t walk out of, and her ex, who had just broken up with her, flew in a helicopter to pick her up, “the kind of hallucination, the kind of bliss, it lasts throughout the night.” 

The Underage Lover Takes Revenge 

At the end of 2023, violence entered Chen Yue’s daily life for the first time. She dated a 17-year-old young man called A Zhe, whose father domestically abused him and his mother, and who himself had violent tendencies. 

Once, A Zhe suspected Chen Yue of cheating on him. As he was about to hit her, Chen Yue jumped from the second floor of an internet café and ran away with a limp. A Zhe chased her down and choked her. Another time, A Zhe suspected her of prostitution and chocked her again. Both times, they went to the police station. 

Chen Yue felt it was wrong to beat someone but was unwilling to break up with A Zhe. Her rationale was that she had not yet found a successor. In her world, she needed a lover every day because she needed “someone to talk to when I am sad,” as much as she needed to eat and sleep. At the time, she was stuck at home with her mother, unable to go out alone, and had no friends; the only thing she relied on was love. 

One night, a week after I arrived, Zhang Jing drove me to meet A Zhe. By this time, he and Chen Yue had been together for over three months. In the car, Zhang Jing started to introduce A Zhe: He was in the same circle as Chen Yue. A big brother took him under his wings, and A Zhe did the same to a dozen other girls and boys. A Zhe knew that Chen Yue had been assaulted. Zhang Jing often asked him about the circle and to help her to investigate her daughter’s cases, “through making friends and drinking together with her perpetrators and those close to them,” and find evidence that could lead to a less lenient sentence. A Zhe was always willing to cooperate. 

The car stopped at the roadside. A Zhe got into the car. He was about 5’6 and had thick eyebrows and big eyes. He just finished work at the reception desk of a hot spring hotel—This was the first normal job that he had just found. Soon after he got into the car, he said he had been trying to “fix” all those who had had sex with Chen Yue—Wearing a cap and a mask, he ambushed and beat them. Afterwards, he told me if they called the police, he’s going to sue them for rape. This had been going on for about a month. He said he had beaten four people, and none of them had called the police. 

A Zhe admitted that he had beaten Chen Yue. What he learned from his family, the internet, and the circle was a set of worldviews that put emphasis on morality. For him, physical violence was ok and even normal and not in conflict with “love.” To assault girls and organize prostitution was “beastly,” something he would never do. But he would take girls to help sell liquors (saying he had done that) and found it acceptable, “just a regular job.”

A Zhe dropped out of vocational school at the beginning of the school year. At school, he felt “not in the same world as his classmates,” who had clothes and snacks in their suitcase while there was a stun gun, a throwing stick, and a machete in his. He left school and entered society. 

Two weeks later, Chen Yue and A Zhe’s relationship ended after a fight. A Zhe asked me for a drink at a bar in the evening to talk it through. He handed me a set of newly purchased pajamas and asked me to pass it onto Chen Yue but insisted that I should not tell her that he bought it. After an hour of drinking, he said in a sad tone that even if he and Chen Yue had not broken up, there was no future for them because he had stolen motorcycles, smashed up a store, and helped transport laughing gas, laundered money for a Burmese telemarketing scam, and stabbed a man though himself hadn’t been caught yet. It was hard to tell whether his words were true. 

He said he wanted to take revenge on the perpetrators that had assaulted Chen Yue. Then, he would report himself to the police. 

“Do you know what it means to go to jail?”

“I was sent to a detention center because of a fight. People inside were so nice to me. There was one burglar who even taught us how to open locks. When I was about to get out, they applauded me and said, ‘Don’t let us ever see you again.’”

“But the jail is not the same as the detention center.”

“The detention center has beds in one big room. The jail has bunkbeds and is more comfortable.”

Malice

Chen Yue followed her girlfriends and beat others at the age of 13 and more frequently so after the age of 14.

Before the age of 13, she was only beaten by others. When she first entered the circle at the age of 11, she was beaten twice a month. The first time was when a girl suspected that she was having an affair with her boyfriend and called on her girlfriends to drag her to a private theatre and slapped her from 7pm to 10 pm. The second time was when her parents were not home, three 14- or 15-year-old boys stormed into her house and beat her up. These two incidents of violence were interspersed with her four sexual assaults in 2021. 

In terms of violence, what the 11-year-old Chen Yue had learned was that “If you look weak, anyone can step on you. When you can fight back, you have become stronger.” Around the age of 12, she bought a knife and took her two girlfriends to beat up a boy who had been bullying her dog. The boy broke his brow ridge. 

In order to appear strong, the 13-year-old Chen Yue began to have tattoos all over body. The first time, she had a tattoo of a small red dot, “a vermillion mole” on her wrist, “that way, I remain a virgin.” The second time, she had a tattoo of Hello Kitty with the middle finger up, which covered her wrist. Her girlfriends taunted her for getting such a small tattoo. Thus, the third time, she had a tattoo over one leg: a giant Hello Kitty entwined by a snake. A year later, she had dozens of tattoos, big or small, all over her body. 

When she turned 14, Chen Yue began to participate frequently in group fights. Always the same rationale—Chen Yue said, if she didn’t go, she would be isolated from the circle and lose her friends. 

In October 2023, in the underpass of a shopping mall, Chen Yue and her two girlfriends beat a junior high school girl until her right eye was bloodshot, her lips nearly black, her face swollen, and there were bruises all over her body. Afterwards, Chen Yue said, in fact, she did not know the girl. She just followed her girlfriends. If she didn’t join them, they would think her as “not much of a friend.”

A few days later, the girl’s father called the police and launched a search online for the perpetrators. Some netizens found out about Zhang Jing’s TikTok account. Zhang Jing, Chen Hao, and Chen Shu thus received constant abusive messages. 

Zhang Jing, as the parent of a perpetrator, was interviewed by the media, to which she said: “I can’t do anything about it. Instead, I hope the police will detain her, even if that means she may be sent to a juvenile detention center.” 

After becoming the relatives of a perpetrator, the swing scale in the heart of Chen Yue’s family members completely tipped to one side. Chen Hao said something like this: “Don’t worry about her. She’s hurting other children!” Chen Shu also thought Chen Yue was not a victim, “She just wanted to be that kind of person herself.” 

After three weeks of intensive interviews and reviews of judicial materials, I was able to confirm that at least five of the underage girls I had come in touch with followed the exact same trajectory as Chen Yue—from the first contact with the circle via the internet, to joining the circle, to being beaten, assaulted, to being tricked into a prostitution gang, to becoming a perpetrator. Li Jian, an expert in adolescent psychology, whom I consulted, said that the transformation from a victim to a perpetrator was an extremely common phenomenon in youth violence. Once the children got hurt but received no support and could not get out of a violent environment, they were likely to transfer that damage onto others, as it became unbearable, “If it does not break out in silence, it will die in silence.” 

These children have never received any protection or support for a long time. They grew up in the circle for a year or two and became perpetrators, for which they must bear the consequences alone—They were legally held responsible for beating people after they reached the age of 16. Chen Yue said, including An An, many of her old friends “got sucked in.” 

“I chose it myself.”

After I came to Zhengzhou for a full week, Zhang Jing said to me on March 10th, 2024: “Can you find someone to help us? My child needs a school and psychological support now.”

From March 11th to March 22nd, I contacted an aid organization for children, an aid organization for girls, an aid organization for sexual assault victims, the city’s mental health hotline, social workers working with the prosecutors’ office, and the judges in charge of Chen Yue’s cases, but for various reasons, none of them was able to offer help. 

The Zhengzhou Municipal Women’s Federation said they could send someone from the community office for a family visit and provide some psychological assistance. But Zhang Jing lost the phone number she was given. 

Some of the support could not get through because of money and professional competence. A public welfare organization said what the girls needed was a comprehensive package of help that included psychological assistance, schooling, family education until the age of 18, but there were very few institutions which could handle such individual cases and many of them also lacked funding. 

Some of the support could not get through because of bureaucracy and regulations. The social worker said that they could do case follow-ups, but only when the case was still at the prosecutors’ office as they only collaborated with them. But Chen Yue’s cases were already passed onto the court. 

In early May, Chen Yue turned 15. She was paying the price for these past four years, including physical problems—Too many birth control pills during her time as a prostitute harmed her health. Moreover, at the beginning of the year, she fell in love with a 16-year-old young man (before A Zhe) and got pregnant. She had gone through an abortion. 

There was also the mental toll—Her depression has not abated and to this day she has been injuring herself by slashing her wrists with a pocketknife. 

And there’s the price of her whole life—Chen Yue said this year, she started to “regret being in the circle” as she saw her friends went into jail one after another. “I used to think it was ‘normal’ for girls to drag each other to sell sex,” she also found domestic violence normal at the time and it was nothing for people who were 13 or 14 to fall in love and live together. Now she has learned that all of these were not normal. However, she still didn’t know how to spell. One day, she talked about the “Graceful Brilliance Market” that she frequented. She asked me which character it was: “Is graceful as in grace? Maybe. Is brilliance as in brilliant? Maybe.” and then fell silent. 

One day at midnight, when we were walking home and talking about these four years of ‘detours,’” Chen Yue insisted that she should take all the responsibilities. 

She also talked about her former girlfriend Xiao Rong who had run away from home and nowhere to live and slowly embarked on the path of prostitution, “Her situation was of her own making.” 

I said no, it was not the responsibility of a 13-year-old girl. 

Then, Chen Yue told me two more stories, both about how Xiao Rong “initiated” sex with the boys. “Why did she want to sleep with them? That must be that she wanted it.”

“And what about you? Do you think your situation is also of your own choosing?”

Chen Yue looked ahead without saying anything. After a while, she said: “It’s all my own choice. There’s no one else to blame.”

I relayed the conversation to the psychologist Li Jian. Li Jian said that Chen Yue also felt hurt now, but her understanding of it was very different than that of us adults. At the age of 14, she didn’t know that she should have an education and grow up as a healthy human being. What she had gone through had deprived her of the most basic rights she should have enjoyed. She still didn’t know that these things should have been safeguarded by her family and the society. But she would understand that when she’s older. By that time, the damage would surface and engulf her. 

* To protect the privacy of minors, all the names, except that of Li Jian, are pseudonyms.