No place for molesters in education sector

The Beijing Haidian District People's Court has sentenced a man surnamed Wang to jail for molesting young girls. According to the verdict delivered on Tuesday, Wang used to molest girl students during one-to-one classes he held while employed as an extracurricular teacher at a school.

Sometime in March the parents of a 10-year-old girl called the police to say that Wang had touched her private parts. Wang was arrested and now the court has found him guilty. Apart from imprisonment, the court has also imposed a lifetime ban on Wang from working in the education sector.

Wang is reportedly the first person to be sentenced after the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Education jointly released a document on Nov 11 providing guidance on implementing the ban on molesters from entering the teaching profession. The provision came into effect on Nov 15, the day Wang was sentenced.

It is a common practice to ban those with a molestation record from entering the teaching profession, and the domestic Juvenile Protection Law has long been prohibiting those with a sexual offense record from taking up teaching jobs. A teacher who commits a sexual offense ruins the reputation of the profession as a whole, and an occupational ban is the most effective way to deal with that.

Besides, barring someone with a molestation record from entering the teaching profession is also the most effective way of keeping them away from children.

However, implementing the ban has been a problem because the sentenced criminal could apply for a teaching position in a city far away from the city where he/she was found guilty. The document has taken care of this by requiring the courts to send their verdicts to the education departments and the organization where the criminal served, so that his re-employment in the sector becomes impossible.