'Raping prostitutes less harmful,' says law professor, drawing huge condemnation

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A screen grab shows Yi Yanyou's microblog accout.

Published: 1:26pm, 17 Jul 2013Updated: 3:37pm, 17 Jul 2013

A comment by a Tsinghua University law professor that "raping prostitutes is less harmful than raping ordinary women" has sparked a widespread online backlash.

Yi Yanyou, director of the university’s Evidence Law Research Centre, was commenting on a highly anticipated criminal case involving the 17-year-old son of a PLA celebrity singer. The teenager, surnamed Li, has been accused with four others of gang-raping a woman in a Beijing hotel room in February. Li’s family had reportedly suspected the victim to be in the escort service and claimed she did not resist.

Yi wrote on his Sina microblog on Tuesday: “Underscoring the fact that the victim is an escort girl … is relevant because they tend to consent to sex more easily. In addition, raping escorts is less harmful than raping ordinary women.”

In another post, he later sought to revise his remark to: “Raping ordinary women is more harmful than raping escort girls in bars and nightclubs, and prostitutes.”

The comments were soon spotted by bloggers and internet users. Many of them said Yi's posts not only showed explicit support of the defendant, but also legal discrimination towards sex workers. Yi's Weibo page quickly drew tens of thousands of comments questioning his rationale.