A bleak picture

According to Wang Ling, the deeply traditional nature of rural Chinese society means that many seniors who have lost their spouses, or have long stopped engaging in sex with them, find it extremely difficult to fulfill their desires. Some turned to children as young as 2 or 3. In January, a 13-year-old "left-behind" girl in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region in the south of the country was reported to have been sexually abused since the age of 11 by at least 16 people, 11 of whom were older than 60.

In the spring of 2013, right in the middle of the Maple Center's six-month program at Changxinying, two cases of child sex abuse came to light in a neighboring village. As a result, Wang Ling and her team were invited there - the first invitation in the project's history - to hold classes at the only primary school in the village. "And also for the first time, we were we allowed to hang a banner on the campus saying unequivocally why we were there," Wang Ling said.

During the past three years, helped by funding from Vital Voices Global Partnership, a United States-based non-governmental organization that focuses on empowering women worldwide, the center has visited 17 primary and middle schools scattered across the country's vast rural areas to host classes warning of the danger of sexual abuse.

To Hou Zhiming, a 64-year-old expert at the center, the more children she talked to, and the deeper she went into their worlds, the more worried she became by the bleak picture that gradually started to emerge.

"At the end of a two-hour class, I once asked a group of 13-year-olds to write down on little pieces of paper their impressions of sex. My heart began to sink the minute I unrolled the first slip, which read: 'pain, fear and regret'," Hou recalled. "My instant reaction was that something must have happened."

A stream of equally disturbing descriptions followed, including "anxious", "depressing", "horrible", "sickening", and the one that appeared most frequently, "shameful".

"Shame - that's what sexually abused children in China are taught, or made, to feel about themselves," said Hou, who joined the Maple Center in 1988, the year it was founded.

Liu Fengqin, who worked as a psychiatrist before joining the Maple Center in 1998, knows all about that. "I remember being a third-grader at a primary school in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region when rumors suddenly started to circulate about one of my best friends. From the conversations of the adults, I overheard things such as 'ruined by the teacher'. I didn't understand exactly what it meant, but my parents told me not to play with her any more, because she was 'silly and loose'," said the 57-year-old with a deep sigh. "So she just disappeared from my life, but I can never forget the way she eyed me from a distance, like a wounded little creature."

The most-heartbreaking aspect for Liu is the realization that things haven't changed much during the past 50 years, at least in the rural areas. "Only last year, one of our volunteer experts asked her class: what would you do if you were sexually abused? One little girl sitting below instinctively shouted 'SUICIDE!' Many of the others nodded in agreement," she said.

Tip of the iceberg

Reactions such as these have led Liu to believe that the abuse that has been uncovered represents just the tip of the iceberg. "The duration and the frequency of the abuse we eventually discovered only points to the existence of a vast number of unreported cases," she said.

That explains the deep frustration felt by Guo Yongshui, despite his crucial breakthrough. "We could only be at a limited number of places for a relatively short period of time. Without systematic training for local teachers and the continuing push for a fundamental change of attitude, what we have accomplished so far could easily be undone," he said. "The implementation of a long-term project such as this one needs consistent financial support, which we haven't found so far."

The Maple Center has just 15 paid staff. Guo, seeing the project as "having little chance of going deeper", has decided to leave in March. Realizing the inadequacy of their human resources, Wang Xingjuan has planned to put the classroom in what she called "a caravan". "With the vehicle we'll be able to transport our teachers, plus lots of pamphlets and other materials, everywhere," she said. "However, we are still trying to find someone who will donate a van."

The center is not alone in encountering problems. Four years ago, the Beijing-based NGO Rural Women engaged in a similar project, helped by funding from the United Nations' Elimination of Violence Against Women Fund. But, according to Guo Ruixiang who's responsible for monitoring the project on behalf of the UN, the money was a launch fund and, therefore, a one-off donation. "The Chinese government, at both the central and local levels, should really start working with them in a significant way," Guo said. "The difficulties we face, insurmountable as they may sometimes appear, are as nothing compared with what a sexually abused child has to overcome, to not allow his or her age of innocence to end in a most disruptive way."

That innocence will not end, said Na Lixin, whose time with Meng Meng was what she described as "a self-revealing and self-healing process".

"In our third and last encounter, she picked up the same doll she'd had in our previous meetings, the one she'd pronounced dead," Na said. Then, the little girl began to pat and fondle the doll with her chubby fingers.

"Hasn't she already died?" Na asked.

Without looking up, the child answered in a faint whisper, as if talking to herself, "Yes, but, I could give her some milk, or maybe some fruit. She can be saved."

Contact the writer at zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn

Zhang Yuchen contributed to this story.