The recent sentencing of a high school physics teacher in China to 18 years’ imprisonment offers cold comfort to the parents of the 23-year-old woman whom he drove to suicide. The teacher had started raping her soon after she came to his class as a 15-year-old county topper. Within six months, she started skipping class, keeping to herself, even harming herself. Ironically, it was the teacher who would inform her parents about her attempts at self-harm. But because she continued scoring high marks, her classmates and parents wrote all this off as an extreme reaction to academic pressure that often leads to depression.
When gossip about the teacher and the student reached the latter's mother, she confronted them both. He denied everything; the girl kept silent. But not once did the parents think of complaining to the school, not even when the teacher caressed her hair in front of her father. "I thought he was showing concern," said the father.
So toxic was the teacher’s hold that a reprimand by him made the girl break down as she was about to give the all-important pre-university exam. On her second try a year later, despite her depression, she got into a prestigious university. Alas! Her trauma, which included schizophrenia, dogged her there, too, making her drop out.
Finally, having found a boyfriend in whom she could confide, she dared to accuse her tormentor after he won a teaching award of having done "gross, disgusting things" to her in high school, on an online school alumni chat group. But the accusation was soon forgotten as the teacher deleted the message and dissolved the group.
Unable to fight the darkness, the girl, now 23, committed suicide in January last year. Her parents would have continued blaming academic pressure had her cousin not discovered her diary days later. It included the detailed record of the sexual abuse that she had suffered over the years as well as her own shame and self-hate.
This story caught the country’s attention not just because it could have happened to anyone’s daughter but also because it was reminiscent of another suicide which took place in public. In 2018, a 17-year-old had jumped to her death, egged on by a crowd both online and offline, for the same reason: two years of battling depression after her high school class teacher molested her. Her trauma was worse: the police had refused to investigate her complaint. Only after her public suicide was the teacher arrested, but the court refused to make the crucial link between her suicide and the assault. He was sentenced to two years and had to pay compensation to the parents.
Her family now lives with memories of how a daughter who loved cooking new dishes for her father and helping her brother with his studies, became a recluse, going from hospital to hospital, only to be given the same diagnosis: depression. "Dad, don’t save me, it hurts too much,’’ she would tell her distraught father.
As students prepare for the pre-university exam, high school becomes their second home and teachers become their guardians. In fact, this girl was molested by her teacher while she was resting in his house, a common enough practice. One of his colleagues suspected something was wrong as he passed by; when he called out to the girl, she replied with a sob. Yet, he dismissed his own suspicions. In the other case, the physics teacher would lock the door when he called the girl to the staff room, yet nobody complained.
What will it take for this silence to be broken and for daughters to be safe in school?