Hidden Pain at 66: Three Sexual Assaults of a Rural Woman

The 66-year-old Ding Hongling knows few characters and can barely write her own name. 

When Ding Hongling was at the police station to report a second sexual assault and had to sign some papers, a policeman had to write the characters of her name in such a large size so that she could copy them, one stroke after another. Still, she could not do it. Her son Li Jun had to take over the task and sign on her behalf. 

When Ding Hongling was presenting her case to the lawyer, she could not even figure out some very basic information. The name of the residential neighborhood where the assaults took place was called Fengya Mingyuan, but she mispronounced it. She did not know the full name of the security company, which was “Changsha Yutian Property Management Co., Ltd.” There, she had worked as a security guard. She did not even know the full name of the security chief Yu Mouyan until she filed her case with the police, “I only know his nickname is Shorty Yu. I usually call him Chief Yu.” 

Before coming to Changsha, Ding Hongling had never been away from her village for so long. She only spoke a rural dialect and could not speak or understand rudimentary Mandarin. 

In her dialect, breasts were called “jì jì,” and since they were scratched, Ding Hongling said: “jì jì were scratched.” She did not even know the precise terms for organs like “vagina.” Instead, she would say: “where pee comes out.”

The difficulties in communication were the biggest obstacle in the whole process. When the police took her statement, her family members were not allowed to be present and translate for her. The only thing her daughter Li Rong could do was to remind them beforehand to speak slowly. 

It was already a challenge for Ding Hongling to report to the police. On the early morning of February 25th, after the assault took place, she just sat on the floor of her dormitory and sobbed. Her first reaction was: “I had better kill myself.” Then, she thought of her family and her children who would never know how she died.

In the end, she did not commit suicide. 

As Ding Hongling first walked into the police station with the help of her colleagues, she was not able to utter the word “rape,” and even nearly a month after reporting it to the police, she had not told her children about two prior assaults. 

From the very beginning, Ding Hongling was shrouded in a strong sense of shame. She kept repeating: “It’s nasty. I have grandchildren who are already so tall. It is so shameful and nasty.”

At the property management school where Ding Hongling’s daughter Li Rong worked, there were trainings for the prevention of sexual assault. Li Rong used to warn her mother not to let strangers approach and get too close to the grandchildren, be it a grandson or a granddaughter.

However, there was little public discourse on the sexual assault of the elderly. At least, Li Rong had never heard of it, so she never thought of reminding her mother to remember to protect herself. Between mother and daughter, there had never been any mention of the word “sex.” 

Calling the police, gathering evidence, defending legal rights…Before the assaults happened, these advanced concepts, the civilized language, and the legal provisions had never appeared in Ding Hongling’s world. What prevented her from making her voice heard was not only some calculating perpetrator, but also the shackles of shame on women, the deprivation of women’s rights to be educated in our age, and the neglect of public discourse on sexual assault of the elderly. 

1.The Dark Pump Room

The residents of the Fengya Mingyuan neighborhood in Changsha often took the elevator in the underground garage and went straight to their floors. They would never expect the pump rooms between the second and third units of the fourth building to be a place of assault. 

There were two pump rooms in the building. The one farther away from the elevator had a sensor light on the ceiling, and one needed to stomp nonstop to make it light up. The other room closer to the elevator had no light, almost completely dark, and only with some dim light from the surrounding area could one see a rusty iron door, whose center had four big words in red paint: “Pump Room. No Entry.” 

Only the security chief Yu Mouyan had the key to this pump room. A normal security guard was not authorized to enter, except once when a security guard followed an engineer inside. The security guard said that there was the coil whine mixed with the sound of water currents and that the noise was loud and unpleasant. 

In mid-April, the door to this pump room was locked. There was a lot of noise coming from the pump equipment inside and the uninterrupted sound of cars outside. It was so noisy that one would not be able to hear from the outside someone shouting inside. This was an excellent setup for crime. 

It was behind this gray iron door that Ding Hongling was sexually assaulted by Yu Mouyan with violent force. 

There was a hunch, long before the assault happened. Ding Hongling had been putting up fire signs in the buildings, though it was not really her job as a security guard at the east gate post. Right after she started this job, Chief Yu assigned her to follow him around and put fire signs on fire hydrants in various parts of the neighborhood that included hallways and the underground garage. 

When Li Rong visited her mother, she saw several large bags of fire seals and inspection forms in the dormitory. Ding Hongling needed to check off and sign before using the seals. Ding Hongling couldn’t write, so her daughter did the writing and signing for her. Once, Yu Mouyan came in without knocking the door. As soon as he saw Li Rong, he said to her: “Sorry to bother you to fill up the forms for your mother.”

For her task, Ding Hongling first went up to the top 18th floor and then came down one floor after another as she put up the fire signs. She was meticulous, and it took her almost two hours to finish all the work in one building. The residential neighborhood had altogether four buildings. Chief Yu once reprimanded her: “You are too slow. I am going to fire you if you don’t speed up.” That day, Chief Yu gave her only 15 minutes for lunch and ordered her to pick up the shift to watch over the driveways immediately after. 

Chief Yu spoke to her quickly in his dialect, and Ding Hongling did not quite understand what he was saying and thought she was supposed to continue posting signs. And she did that. The security guard for the driveways missed his lunch hour because nobody came to pick up the shift and started to curse Chief Yu. Later, Chief Yu berated Ding Hongling who said: “It was as if he was about to eat me alive.” 

Chief Yu gave Ding Hongling the impression of being a hot-tempered superior. Li Rong felt the same way. When she was helping her parents to move into the dormitory, this security chief stormed inside and yelled: “What’s the fuss? Why do you make so much noise?”

A security guard who has worked in the neighborhood for two years told me, a journalist at the Phoenix Weekly, that it was supposed to be the job of a male security guard on patrol to put up fire signs, not that of a security guard at the post. Before Ding Hongling took up the job, Chief Yu had also taken a female security guard in her 60s to put up fire signs. It was in the summer of 2022. 

Ding Hongling, new to the city, was not aware of these things. She only knew that she needed to do her best, whatever her superiors assigned her to do. At around 10am on January 13th, Chief Yu notified her out of the blue that she should go to the underground garage immediately. Ding Hongling took it as an order and did what she was told to do. Chief Yu took her to the pump room, opened it with his key, and ordered her to put up fire signs there. 

The room seemed so dark, and Ding Hongling did not want to go in. 

Chief Yu violently grabbed her wrists and forced her inside. In the dark, he pounced on her, and she smelled a heavy odor of alcohol on him. He was so strong that he left red marks on her wrists. His long fingernails scratched her breasts. Meanwhile, he kept threatening her, “If you cry out loud now or tell anyone about it later, I’ll choke you to death.”

Ding Hongling instinctively cried for help, but no one came to her rescue. 

After this assault, Ding Hongling went to the surveillance room and warned Chief Yu, “If you keep harassing me, I’ll sue you.” Yu Mouyan couldn’t care less and said, “It’s nobody’s business. Everything’s private and just between us.” 

2. Repeated Sexual Assault

The warning didn’t work. Only a week later, Ding Hongling was assaulted again. 

On January 20th, Ding Hongling’s husband Li Jianguo was on duty during the day, while she had the night shift. In the morning, she took a nap in the dormitory. After the nightmarish experience, Ding Hongling was scared. She had asked her husband to make sure to lock up the dormitory when he left for his shift. She also put a kitchen knife that her daughter had given her to cut fruits next to her pillow. 

As she was still napping, the door suddenly opened. Yu Mouyan rushed inside and pounced on her in bed. She wanted to grab the knife to “chop him up” but was restrained by Yu. Like the first time, Yu warned her, “If you cry out loud now or tell anyone about it later, I’ll choke you to death.” By the time she was able to get hold of the knife, Yu Mouyan was already gone. She was not able to catch him. 

Ding Hongling noticed from the very beginning that Yu Mouyan had arranged a staggered schedule: Her husband always had the day shift while she had the night shift. 

In the month after the second assault, nothing suspicious had happened, which led to Ding Hongling’s delusion that Chief Yu would stop. She never expected a third assault. 

On the afternoon of February 23rd, Ding Hongling and Li Jianguo went to their daughter’s place in Changsha after a holiday visit home in the countryside. In the evening, Li Jianguo received a call about the death of his brother-in-law. Before “they had a moment to sit,” the family of five wanted to go home again for the funeral. The old couple first went to the dormitory to change clothes and shoes and asked the project manager Zhang Li for a leave. Then, Li Jianguo tried to get hold of Yu Mouyan, who only picked up the phone after several calls. One could hear people playing cards in the background. 

On the phone, Yu Mouyan said that only one of them could be granted the leave, because there were not enough security guards around. Thus, only Li Jianguo was able to go back.

For the Lantern Festival that year on February 24th, Ding Hongling stayed at her daughter’s. She was supposed to go back to work on the following day, but at 16:12 and 17:55 that afternoon, Yu Mouyan called her twice and demanded that she return to her dormitory that evening. Ding Hongling yielded to his insistence. After dinner, it was already very dark, and her son-in-law took her back to the dormitory. 

Before going to bed, Ding Hongling took a series of precautionary measures—locking the door from the inside, propping a brownish wooden chair against the door, placing a knife next to her pillow. At 23:24, Yu Mouyan gave her a call. It rang for 6 seconds, but she did not pick it up.

At around 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning on February 25th, Yu Mouyan once again broken into Ding Hongling’s dormitory. This time, he even turned on the light. She woke up. Before she was able to grab the knife, Yu Mouyan restrained her. During the assault, her breasts and private parts were scratched. 

After the assault, a security guard named Fang Yuzhou recalled the night and suspected that Yu Mouyan had planned it for a long time. 

The first clue was the key. At almost 10 o’clock on the night of February 24th, Yu Mouyan suddenly went into the surveillance room and asked Fang Yuzhou to leave. Fang Yuzhou was not willing and called the project manager Zhang Li. Zhang Li told him to ignore Yu Mouyan. Then, Yu Mouyan left with a bunch of keys, including the keys to the main gate and the dormitories. 

Later, a resident went to the security guard Ma Ming, asking him to open the fire exit gate in order to drive in with some furniture. Ma Ming went to the surveillance room to get the keys but did not find them, so Fang Yuzhou called Yu Mouyan who said he left the keys at the east gate post. Fang Yuzhou fand it strange because the keys were usually returned to the surveillance room. 

The other clue was the timing of the assault. Fang Yuzhou patrolled every two hours that night until about 2 o’clock in the morning before ending his shift. Yu Mouyan was of course aware of his night shift schedule, and the assault took place around 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, right after the patrol hours. 

Wang Bin, another security guard, lived across the floor, barely two meters from Ding Hongling’s dormitory. Next to their dormitories lived Yu Mouyan. Later, Fang Yuzhou asked Wang Bin, “Do you know what happened in Ding Hongling’s dormitory on the early morning of February 25th?”

Wang Bin said he didn’t hear anything but remembered that he played cards with Yu Mouyan until around 1 o’clock in the morning. Yu Mouyan lost 400 yuan to him. Since he had a day shift the following day, Wang Bin went to bed right afterwards. 

3. The Double Face of the Security Chief 

On January 6th, Ding Hongling and her husband Li Jianguo joined the Yu Mouyan team, and Ding Honglign became the only female security guard in the team.

It did not take long before Ding Hongling found the 53-year-old Chief Yu “somewhat frivolous.” Once in the canteen, as everyone lined up, Ding Hongling saw Chief Yu touching the buttocks of a cleaning lady. Later, Chief Yu often sent pornographic photos to Ding Hongling and even to the chat group of the security team. “These photos were nasty. I wouldn’t want to look at them.” Since her little grandson usually fiddled with her cellphone, Ding Hongling deleted the photos, so that her grandson would not see them. 

Chief Yu’s image first appeared in the New Year’s Eve team photo. In the photo, he was about 5’, wearing a black down jacket, chino pants, black shoes, and a shirt with a dragon pattern under his jacket, a cigarette in hand, his fingernails yellowish and long. When Ding Hongling’s son LI Jun first saw him, Li Jun noticed shiny dandruffs all over Yu’s shoulders. 

The dormitories were not so great. Ding Hongling had simple bunk beds with metal frames and a few sheets of pasted newspaper as curtains, which only covered half of the window. It was dark and damp. The wallpapers peeled. One had to wash socks in a water bucket and hang clothes outside to dry. Though there was a canteen for staff members, the food was awful. In the common area for the security team, there was just a small fridge and no AC or water cooker.

In this “small territory,” Yu Mouyan was the authority figure. 

He usually had a team of 6 to 8 security guards and made decisions on their shifts, leaves, and assignments. He even had all the keys to all the rooms and dormitories. He earned a salary of 2,700 yuan per month and had a legal contract with social security benefits, whereas a normal security guard earned 2,300 yuan per month with a renewable agreement that could be terminated any time and that included no insurance benefits. 

One of the security guards once mentioned that Yu Mouyan loved to brag: “He boasts how rich he is and how much more power he has over everyone else and that he can detain anyone as he wishes.” 

Not long after her parents started the job, Li Rong heard her father mention that Yu Mouyan often came to the dormitories to demand “money, cigarettes, and such.” And Yu Mouyan accepted everything—eggs, towels, a tube of toothpaste, or Baisha brand cigarettes that were worth a dozen yuan per pack…If someone did not give him anything, he would make things hard for them. For instance, he would take away the remote control for the AC from someone having a shift in the post or forbid them to use hot water to wash clothes. 

The security guard Fang Yuzhou’s daughter went to school in Changsha. He sometimes needed to ask for a leave to pick her up or drop her off at school. It was easier when Fang Yuzhou bribed Yu Mouyan with 5 or 10 yuan or a couple packs of cigarettes. Otherwise, Yu Mouyan would make it difficult or impossible. It’s said that some security guard once gave him a red packet of 100 yuan. 

A former security guard Zhou Lili and Fang Yuzhou once talked about Yu Mouyan. Both found him very greedy. Yu Mouyan received all kinds of gifts, like pork, fish, and bags after bags of rice, “If you give him something, he will smile at you. If not, he shows another face (making things difficult for you).”

Zhou Lili mentioned a detail: All the security guards on the night shift were paid a monthly subsidy of 90 yuan, and Yu Mouyan paid that by the day. But Ding Hongling and Li Jianguo had never received the overtime payment. Zhou Lili figured, “He (Yu Mouyan) must have taken it himself.” 

Fang Yuzhou didn’t like the way Yu Mouyan treated his team and fought with him often. The security guard Ma Ming shared the same dormitory with Fang Yuzhou. If Yu Mouyan bullied either of them, they would team up and fight back. Li Jianguo quarreled with Yu Mouyan once. Yu Mouyan then warned Ding Hongling in private, “Your husband should watch out his big mouth and shut up more.”

In the dormitories, Yu Mouyan could “block out the sky with one hand” but once out of his territory, he showed a different face. 

During patrol, he greeted the residents with a smile—Most of the residents here were civil servants in the municipal office for education or teachers in the nearby Changxian High school. An elderly man in his 80s once mentioned that Yu Mouyan was usually quite gentle with him and that he had never seen him lose his temper or become irritated. 

For another resident, who was among the first group to move in, Yu Mouyan has been here for 10 years and turned out to be a trustworthy old friend. All the residents liked to go to him. Yu Mouyan also paid visits to whoever had a family issue or an injury. For the business owner of a chess room in the neighborhood, a middle-aged woman, “Yu Mouyan is honest, responsible, easy-going, and gets along with all.” She mentioned that Yu Mouyan occasionally came to her business to play cards but seemed not so good at it. She also mentioned that earlier on, Yu Mouyan’s wife came often and that the couple seemed to have a harmonious relationship. 

In the neighborhood, all the residents and security guards have heard rumors that “Yu Mouyan has connections.” The proof was this: About half a year ago, Yu Mouyan and his wife went into a fight with another couple who worked in the canteen, and all of them were taken by the police. Later, the canteen couple was fired, and Yu Mouyan’s wife moved out of the dormitory. But Yu Mouyan came back to resume his position of the security chief not long after. 

4. “It is not your fault.”

On the early morning of the third assault, Ding Hongling “lost her soul,” and was not able to go back to sleep again. It was only by chance that she reached for help. 

On February 25th, Ding Hongling went to her day shift. At 10:46am., Yu Mouyan sent her a red packet on WeChat. She did not accept it, and it expired. At around 6pm, the security guard Ma Ming brought the co-signed complaint letter against Yu Mouyan to the east gate post and asked Ding Hongling to sign it on behalf of herself and her husband. 

Ding Hongling could not read but understood what it was for, “to bring down Yu Mouyan.” She suddenly gathered her courage, “There is something nasty that I am afraid to tell anyone. Dear Ma Ming, you are a man of integrity, so I am going to tell you.” She continued to say that the night before, someone had broken into her dormitory, and it turned out to be Shorty Yu who had stormed inside. She then showed Ma Ming the photo of a chair against the door and the red packet that Yu Mouyan had sent her. Ma Ming immediately understood what had happened, “Don’t be afraid. I will fight for justice on your behalf.” 

Ma Ming called the security guard Fang Yuzhou right away, “There’s no need for a complaint letter. Something big happened.” At the basketball court by the surveillance room, Ma Ming told Fang Yuzhou that Yu Mouyan had raped Ding Hongling. Afterwards, they hailed a cab to take Ding Hongling to the nearest police station. When they arrived, it was already after 7pm.

Fang Yuzhou recalled that at the police station, Ding Hongling was shivering all the time. A young male police officer took her statement. In front of the police officer, Ding Hongling only mentioned some fragments: Chief Yu ripped off her pants, pressed her on the bed, and scratched all over her body. When it came to the most crucial part, Ding Hongling was not able to utter the word. By her side, Fang Yuzhou was anxious and wanted to help but could not. 

Ding Hongling recalled that the police did not look at her injuries but asked to take photos. She refused out of embarrassment. She said when Yu Mouyan was taken to the police station, he tried to deny everything but then kneeled twice, once to say to her, “Even if you have a problem with me, you shouldn’t talk about me like this,” and the second time, “Sister Ding, please stop saying that.” 

During the conversation with the lawyer, Ding Hongling said that Yu Mouyan wanted to give her a compensation of 1,500 yuan but she disagreed. A bystander told her, “Nothing serious happened. You should accept the 1,500 yuan.” So, the bystander used her cellphone to receive the 1,500 yuan from Yu Mouyan. As for signing, Ding Hongling learned to “draw” her own name but had no idea about the terms she signed for. 

That evening, Yu Mouyan’s wife came to the police station and said that it was so shameless for Ding Hongling at such an advanced age to seduce her husband. As she was about to beat the scared Ding Hongling, four policemen restrained her and dragged her out of the police station. For safety reasons, the police let Ding Hongling use the backdoor to go home. After the mediation, Yu Mouyan was released. 

Before he took Ding Hongling to the police station, Fang Yuzhou informed the project manager Zhang Li, who reported this to the deputy general manager Xie Wei of the mother company Yutian, but the company did not notify Ding Hongling’s family. 

It was not until about 10:10pm, after Ding Hongling returned from the police station, that she called her son Li Jun at the funeral service in their village. She first called his son by his nickname and became emotional: “The bastard Yu Mouyan came into my room…”

“Mom, don’t worry…” Li Jun tried to calm down his mother. After hanging up the phone, he called his sister Li Rong out of the funeral hall and relayed what their mother had said. Both thought of the worst-case scenario. 

After she walked out of the backdoor of the police station, Ding Hongling was unable to find her way back, so she took a photo of her surroundings and sent it to her daughter. When she first arrived in Changsha, her daughter said it didn’t matter that she couldn’t read but insisted that she should learn to take photos. If lost, she should send her photos of her surroundings.

The rain was freezing. Ding Hongling hid under the bridge in front of the police station, soaked to the skin. Fang Yuzhou and Ma Ming then found her and took her back to the main gate of the neighborhood. Afterwards, her son-in-law drove her home. 

Back in the village, there was a thick layer of ice on the rural roads. It was dangerous to drive, so Li Jun and Li Rong gave up the plan to return to Changsha that night. Both stayed up all night for the wake of the funeral service. First thing on the morning of the following day, they went to the crematorium and then “sent their uncle up to the mountain.” After that, they rushed back to Changsha. 

The three children planned to leave their father out of this. They agreed that the first thing to do was to ask their mother what had happened. Before that, the word “sex” had never come up in any family conversations, let alone sexual assault. It was difficult for them to talk about it. It fell on Li Rong, the youngest daughter, to approach their mother about it, since she’s close to their mother and also a woman. 

For the 2.5-hour drive, everyone remained uncharacteristically silent, since their father Li Jianguo was there. Li Rong’s mind exploded—How to phrase it? How to raise the question? How to put it in a way that would help their mother understand? Did their mother realize how serious the matter was? 

They arrived in Changsha just short of 1pm. Ding Hongling was on duty at the east gate post. Li Jun took their father back to the dormitory. Li Rong asked their mother whether she was hurt. She denied it. Li Rong then took their mother to the car and asked again whether Yu hurt her. Their mother still wouldn’t want to tell the truth, though she had wounds on her breasts and private parts. 

Li Jun learned from friends who were familiar with the judicial process that according to the legal process, neither sexual harassment nor sexual assault fell within the range of civil mediation. Li Jun and Li Rong went to the police station, requesting to see the statements for the closed case but were denied access. The only option would be to re-file the case. 

For two days, Li Rong tried everything to get her mother to talk. “I am your daughter. You can tell me anything.” “Mom, it’s okay. Be brave. It is what it is.” 

“So nasty. So humiliating.” Her mother repeated. 

Li Rong wanted to reassure her: “Don’t be afraid. It is okay. You are the victim. It is not your fault.”

Li Rong went on to share her opinion: “In our extended family, most family members are women. What if your granddaughter or daughter or daughter-in-law were hurt this way, what would you say?” She also went from the social angle: “There are so many children in the neighborhood. If we let him out and about, it is easy to imagine what will happen. If we don’t let people like him pay the price for their behavior, then our community will be put at risk. What about the girls in our community if they are met with such a situation?”

And legally, “Mom, you are the victim. If you don’t tell the truth and put him in jail, he may accuse you of making a false charge, and you’ll go to jail.” 

After all’s said, Li Rong asked her mother in a way that she had thought about for a long time and that her mother might be able to understand: “Has he ever done the same thing to you as dad does to you?” Ding Hongling nodded. 

“Were you hurt?” Li Rong pressed further. 

“When I go to the bathroom, my lower body part stings.” Ding Hongling replied. 

On the morning of February 27th, Li Rong and Li Jun took their mother to the police station to re-file the case. At around 2pm, the police found Yu Mouyan at the bus stop close to the Fengya Mingyuan neighborhood and took him to the police station. On April 3rd, the police arrested Yu Mouyan as a suspect of an assault. Before this article went into print, the case was still under investigation. 

5. The Neglected Plea for Help

The important facts about Ding Hongling’s three sexual assaults only surfaced nearly a month after her case was filed at the police station. 

On March 19th, Ding Hongling agreed to talk to her lawyer Zhu Dan. Zhu Dan wore a black-yellow sweatshirt with a light pink vest on top. As Ding Hongling sat on the black leather chair in the office, Li Rong raised her cell phone to record her mother and the whole process. 

Seen from the camera, Ding Hongling looked serious. Her wrinkles were deep, her body stiff. From time to time, she rubbed her thumbs and forefingers. During the conversation, her body shivered, and she shed many a tear. 

Li Rong looked away, leaning backward and avoiding her mother’s gaze. It was difficult for her to describe the conflicting emotions coursing through her at the time, “I am sad and upset because I get to know the truth. I am also happy because I get to know the truth.” 

The lawyer asked about the details when the police took the first statement from her. Ding Hongling admitted not having told the truth. Later, she confided in her daughter, “At the time, you and your brother were not by my side. And I was questioned by a man.”

On the two occasions when Ding Hongling was assisted by her colleagues and children to report to the police, there was no policewoman involved in the process. The Opinions on Handling Criminal Cases of Sexual Assaults of Minors stipulated that only female staff members should be involved in interviewing female minor victims. However, there’s currently no mandatory requirement in terms of the gender of the staff handing sexual assault cases of adults and the elderly. For the lawyer Zhou Dan, this has been one of the many hurdles that elderly female victims would have to face when seeking justice. 

Later, Li Rong tried to retrace, from her own perspective, any clues before and after her mother’s three sexual assaults. 

On the day of the first assault, Li Rong did not receive any message from her mother. At 22:49 the following day, her mother sent her a video of the little grandson singing, which was taken while she took care of the grandson. At 2:15am, Li Rong received four more messages from her mother, all of them videos of the child. 

Ding Hongling often looked through these videos. Li Rong didn’t think there was anything strange about that. As Li Rong went through their WeChat records, she realized her mother had been thinking about the grandchild after the assault. 

What made Li Rong and Li Jun feel guilty about their mother’s sexual assaults was that their mother did reach for help, albeit in a way that was not easily discernable, between just before the first assault and the second assault. Her plea for help was unfortunately ignored.

Before January 11th, Ding Hongling had sent Li Rong a message, saying that others could enter the dormitory whenever they wanted and that because of this inconvenience, she wanted to install a latch on the door. Li Rong did not think much about it and assumed that someone had stolen her parents’ money. Since the old couple did not know any hardware store where they could buy a latch, Li Rong sent them two latches and a lock. The old couple tried the screws of various sizes and found that with the screws, they could only install one latch on the outside. 

Li Rong and Li Jianguo thought the problem was solved, but Ding Hongling was not satisfied. She wanted to install a latch on the inside and kept mentioning it. Li Jianguo got impatient, “What’s the fuss? One latch will do. When you lock from the outside, nobody can come in.” The old couple even quarreled about it a few times because of this. 

In the next few days, Ding Hongling did not stop her plea for help. She was anxious and called her son and daughter but never explained the real reason. 

During the two months after the assaults, Ding Hongling and Li Rong seldom had occasions to talk in private. Whenever Ding Hongling went to Li Rong’s, the son-in-law and the grandson were always there. Whenever Li Rong came to visit Ding Hongling at her dormitory, as soon as she walked in, Yu Mouyan also came in without knocking the door, as if he knew about Li Rong’s whereabouts. 

During that time in Hunan Province, there was freezing rain. Some trees in the school were blown down. Li Rong was busy cleaning up the snow and ice with other school workers. She had to get up at 6am and didn’t get back home until midnight. Li Jun’s store just opened, and he was busy with the new business. Neither of them had the time to care about their mother’s needs. They thought that their mother was asking for too much. Thus, Ding Hongling’s plea for help was neglected. 

Afterwards, Li Jun realized what his mother really wanted to say was that a latch on the inside would be more important than one on the outside. 

6. No Precedent

After the first assault was settled through mediation, Yu Mouyan soon returned to the neighborhood. Ding Hongling heard him shouting in the living quarters for the security guards, “I am back again. At the Yutian company, nobody can do anything to me. I have strong connections.” 

These words made Ding Hongling “scared to death.” 

Li Rong also worked for Yutian as manager of property management. The deputy general manager Xie Wei once told Li Rong that he complained to the company “how annoying Yu Mouyan” was. Later, the project manager Zhang Li also told Li Rong that he forwarded the joint complaint letter from the security guards to his superiors. 

On February 20th, Xie Wei talked to Li Rong in person and wanted her to take on the position of project manager at Fengya Mingyuan. Li Rong asked Xie Wei why Yu Mouyan was not moved elsewhere. Xie Wei smiled and said, “There’s no way. We can move everybody, except him.” 

Two months following the assault, Ding Hongling’s children have become dissatisfied with the Yutian company. When Li Rong learned of her mother’s problem while still in the countryside for the funeral, she immediately gave Xie Wei a call, but Xie Wei replied, “This is all personal and has nothing to do with the company.”

Li Rong and Li Jun believed that the company turned a blind eye to their responsibilities as soon as they could. Later, Xie Wei apologized to them at the request of the executive vice president Yi Dazhou. 

On March 1st, during the communication between the company and Ding Hongling’s children, Li Jun questioned why the company did not notify the family when they received the news and before their mother went to the police station, and what kind of “connections” Yu Mouyan had at the company. Yi Dazhou did not respond to these questions directly. After this communication, Li Rong was promised a month’s leave to “appease the mother.” 

In the next half month, the attitude of the Yutian company made a drastic turn. At 11:18am on March 6th, Ding Hongling’s husband Li Jianguo suddenly received a text message: “Due to the company’s effort to optimize the personnel, we’d like to inform you that you have been dismissed.” Since then, Li Jianguo has not received another paycheck from them. 

The leave that the company had promised Li Rong was not granted, and worse still, Li Rong lost her job. 

On March 13th, without any prior communication, the company asked Li Rong to move to a new project within two days. Since the new project would mean a commute of an hour and forty minutes, Li Rong objected. Her social security payment was stopped on the same day. The next day, she received a document stating, “Tardiness results in an automatic dismissal.” On March 19th, the company notified her that “the employment agreement has been terminated.” 

Three days later, Yi Dazhou sent Li Rong a letter, accusing her of embezzlement. Lawyer Zhu Dan later confirmed that the accusation was false. In her reply to Yi Dazhou, Li Rong wrote: “Please don’t expect my mother and our family to forgo our legitimate rights by putting pressure on me.” 

By mid-April, Li Rong had realized that the company had not paid her and her mother “a single penny” for their work. 

According to public records, Changsha Yutian Property Management Co., Ltd. was a state-owned enterprise with more than 40 property service projects in the region. The company’s series of actions made Li Rong and her family disappointed and angry. 

Li Rong commissioned the lawyer Zhu Dan to follow up with a lawsuit against the company and pursue the company’s responsibility in the case of her mother’s sexual assaults. According to Article 25 of the newly revised Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women and Article 16 of the Special Provisions on Labor Protection for Female Employees in Hunan Province, the employers should take measures to prevent and deter sexual harassment of female employees. 

“The company’s inaction has led to a series of tragedies. The company is not the main instigator, but is surely an accomplice,” said Zhu Dan. 

Zhu Dan also noticed that the judicial practice and public discourse had never taken the difficult situation of older women into consideration after their sexual assaults at the workplace. Zhu Dan has been practicing law for 16 years and has represented nearly 700 labor disputes, but this was the first case of a female worker who has been sexually assaulted. She expected the subsequent prosecution to be the first of its kind that involved an older female worker who had been sexually assaulted and wanted to hold the company responsible. 

In an interview with The Paper, the legal representative of the Yutian company and chairman of the board of directors Huang Chang responded: “This is not a case of dismissal. Once above the age of 60, one is no longer a normal employee but a temporary worker and signs only the labor agreement. It is common for a worker to come for a month and leave after half a year.”

For Zhu Dan, this was exactly where the dilemma lay in terms of fighting for the rights of older female workers—The business strategy of such companies was to establish only a labor agreement without any social security benefits, “They don’t treat these elderly workers at the bottom of the society as human beings or as legal employees but as consumables. As soon as something goes wrong, they write off the relationship immediately.” 

On the website of Judgements on the Internet, there were 6 labor disputes involving Changsha Yutian Property Management Co., Ltd that spanned 2016 to 2022. The plaintiffs in these cases were mostly security guards, janitors, and project managers, whereas the subject matters were usually unpaid wages, delayed insurance premiums, and workplace injuries. When Li Rong was a project manager, one of her cleaning ladies under her supervision suffered a comminuted facture of her foot. After she was hospitalized, the Yutian company refused to compensate and dismissed her. It was only after Li Rong appealed on her behalf that the worker was given an extra month of salary.  

On the afternoon of April 14th, as I, a journalist from Phoenix Weekly, was interviewing a cleaning staff, a new security chief came over to stop the interview and warned the cleaning staff: “Never mention anything to outsiders.” The security guard Fang Yuzhou told me that they had a meeting earlier that afternoon. The higher-ups of the company told everyone to put the matter to rest and not to disclose any information to the outside world.

On the afternoon of April 16th, I went to Hunan Education and Construction Group, to which Changsha Yutian Property Management Co., Ltd belonged. In front of the office, a staff member told me that after internal discussions, they declined to be interviewed on this matter. 

On the afternoon of May 5th, the executive vice general manager Yi Dazhou of Changsha Yutian Property Management Co.,Ltd, replied to the Phoenix Weekly in a phone call that the matter was under negotiation and he would not disclose any further information. 

7. Hidden Pain

In the past, the tall green plants in the ramie fields in rural Hunan used to cover figures of women busy working during the summer and fall seasons. 

The women used their tanned hands to break apart the ramies full of prickly hairs. The white and slippery cortex was then exposed and processed to extract the fiber. The fiber was then soaked in a vat of water, dried, and rubbed together to create skeins, which were worth around 10 yuan per 500 grams at the marketplace.  

The women sometimes got cut from the sharp edges of the ramie plant, their hands swollen and full of pain from soaking in water year after year. 

The best time of Ding Hongling’s life was spent repeating the steps of processing the ramies. 

It has always been Ding Hongling’s regret that she had never been to school. She was the youngest of eight siblings in her family, her eldest sister more than 20 years older than her. The second eldest sister gave birth to three or four children and was not able to take care of them all. As soon as Ding Hongling was on the way to school, she was immediately called back to help babysit her sister’s children. Then, she simply stopped going to school. It was normal to think around the time that girls didn’t have to go to school much, as they were sooner or later to marry and leave the family. 

Ding Hongling’s married life was no different than that of other women in the village. She decorticated the ramies, while her husband Li Jianguo planted rice and occasionally drove piles for foundations at constructions sites to earn extra money. In 1996 and 1998, Hunan was hit by a 100-year flood that destroyed their patties, and their loss was immense. Before the abolition of the agricultural tax in 2006, the couple earned no more than 3,000 or 4,000 yuan per year. Their children often heard them complain that they suffered because they’d never gone to school. 

After they had children, their only obsession was to send their children to college. They succeeded this with all their three children. After college, both their son Li Jun and their daughter Li Rong had a stable job, settled in Changsha, married, and had their own children. Life was getting better and more hopeful. Ding Hongling and Li Jianguo were getting older and weaker and could no longer take on hard manual labor in the fields, and they had no pensions. So, if they did not continue to work, they would have no income. 

It was a way for Li Jun and Li Rong to pay back their parents in hope of an extended family union when they brought their parents to Changsha. Nobody would have guessed that in just two months, devastating assaults would drop on their mother without any warning and shatter the good life of the whole family. 

During the days after the visits to the police station, Ding Hongling could not eat, drink, or sleep. Li Rong saw that her mother suddenly had a hunched back and that her dyed black hair had a glitter of white here and there. Whenever she talked to her family, Ding Hongling avoided looking them in the eye. She did not want to hear Yu Mouyan’s name. If she did, an expression of revulsion appeared on her face: “I hate him to the bone.” Even after Li Rong shared with her the new of Yu Mouyan’s arrest, Ding Hongling did not seem to have any joy and just said, “that’s good.”

To bring the truth to the light, Ding Hongling had to recall and recount the assaults repeatedly. She had to read the perpetrator’s name and tell everything to the police, the lawyers, and the journalists. The lawyers had to verify the details—How did she recognize him? Was the light on? Did she resist? Memory hurt. Suddenly, Ding Hongling became emotional and burst out crying, calling Yu “a bastard.” 

A few days after Ding Hongling went to the police station the second time, some colleague from the Yutian company came to ask Li Rong in a gossipy tone, “What’s happened to your mother?” This made Li Rong very uncomfortable. 

In the close-knit rural community of acquaintances, the pressure of public opinion was greater. One had to “hide,” in order not to become dinner party-material. The lawyer Zhu Dan suggested that Ding Hongling should not return to the countryside immediately, “Gossips can bring one over the edge. Even if people don’t talk about it before her, she will still feel that strange kind of gaze.”

Back to their family, the person the whole family tried to avoid was the father. 

After their mother’s assaults, Li Rong and Li Jun avoided discussing them when their father was around. Their father had never communicated anything substantial with them. Li Jun was worried that his father would hear rumors had he stayed in Changsha, so he sent him back to the countryside. 

Li Rong kept watch of her father through a CCTV camera to make sure that he’s safe. Li Rong and Li Jun figured that from the limited information that he had, their father might not take the matter too seriously, it was just “some flirt and a bit of body contact.” Then the police came to take Li Jianguo’s statement. Li Rong felt helpless, “To put it bluntly, this is driving our family to death.”

Li Rong knew that her father would do things recklessly. When her mother was pregnant with her, the third child of the family, the family policy was still in effect, and the village party branch secretary dragged her mother out for an abortion. Her father found it unfair because the village secretary also had three children. Why couldn’t he? In a fit of rage, the father dragged the village secretary’s three children to the river and threatened the village secretary, “If you don’t bring my wife back by a certain hour at night, I’ll take the life of your three children and pay with my one life.” 

When the legal system was still imperfect, the father had to “use violence against violence” to protect his family, something he took granted for survival. Therefore, when Li Jianguo learned that Yu Mouyan had come into his wife’s room some early morning, his first reaction was to kill him, “not to let him get away easily.” Li Rong advised her father not to meddle, but to let his son handle the problem. 

Ding Hongling did not know how to face her husband. 

One day in early March, the family was having breakfast together. Li Jianguo was sitting on the sofa while Ding Hongling made breakfast in the kitchen. She fried rice with scrambled eggs and deferentially brought a bowl of it to Li Jianguo. Li Jianguo joked, “I’m still able to move around.”

Their children were surprised. In their more than 40 years of marriage, Ding Hongling had never been so polite to Li Jianguo before. Usually, it was the children who brought him drinks and food. The daughter believed that her mother felt guilty; the son thought that his mother was submissive. 

Li Rong was very sad and said to her mother in a tone that seemed to criticize her father instead, “Mom, that’s not necessary. Dad still has his arms and legs. Why did you have to bring the bowl to him yourself?”

Ding Hongling did not say anything but turned around and went back to the kitchen. 

(Zhu Dan, Huang Chang, Xie Wei, and Yi Dazhou are real names; the names of the other interviewees are pseudonyms. The interns Lü Yihan and Wu Keqin have contributed to this article.)