Genital contact with a girl aged 14 or younger is deemed to be rape and vaginal intercourse is not a necessary precondition in such cases, according to a post on the micro blog of Tong Zongjin, an associate professor at the China University of Political Science and Law whose main areas of study area is legal history.

"Therefore, it is inappropriate to determine a rape case based on whether the six girls' hymens are still intact," he wrote.

Liu of CASS echoed that point and added that even if the girls are still virgo intacta, that fact alone does not prove that they weren't raped. However, he also pointed out that although the law sets a wider definition for child rape, evidence of genital contact without intercourse is usually hard to produce. "That's why some commentators have said the police had been slapdash in quickly announcing that there had been no rape in the case," he said.

In Liu's opinion, one of the biggest flaws in the current criminal law is the definition of rape: "Vaginal, oral, anal intercourse, and a lot of other situations, are already recognized as rape, or, in some cases, compulsive sexual behavior, in the laws of many other countries."

Parents 'disappear'

The mother of one of the girls during an interview. [Photo by Hai Nan / for China Daily]

Li Min who runs "Wanning Online" visited the two schools and one of the hotels on Wednesday to seek further developments. However, the hotel staff remained tightlipped after it was fined 50,000 yuan for allowing Chen to book two rooms using one ID card.

Surprisingly, the parents of all six girls have suddenly "disappeared" and no one has been able to talk with them to gain new information, said Li. "The city is very small and we should have found them very easily today, but surprisingly they are nowhere to be found," said Li.

In Wanning, the incident is not the first crisis the local education system has faced. Two years ago, dozens of primary school teachers left the city after allegations that it had 200 primary teachers on the payroll, around double the number of positions available. "Many teachers were relatives and friends of officials at the education bureau, those 100 teachers didn't even take one class during the period of their employment. Therefore the quality of education was far from satisfactory," said Li.

One teacher, who asked not to be named, wrote on Li's website that Wanning's educational services should be overhauled in light of last week's events. "Although we are sorry for the incident, it's a good opportunity to get rid of the teachers who didn't actually contribute to the education of the kids," she said.

Zhang Yuchen contributed to this story.