Chinese police have arrested a teacher linked to the rape and sexual assault of 16 schoolgirls, more than a year after he went on the run.

Huang Shiming, a primary school teacher in Huima, a village in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was accused of raping six girls aged between eight and 11 between April 2004 and last September, Beijing Times reported yesterday.

He was also accused of sexually assaulting 10 other girls, and threatening victims with violence "to scare them so they would not tell."

Huang disappeared after a victim's family reported him to police, and he eluded authorities for more than a year before being identified in the southern province of Guangdong.

Huang had been taken back to the province of Sichuan and would face trial, the paper said.

Last month, a court in Sichuan's neighboring Chongqing Municipality sentenced a primary school teacher to death for raping 23 girls.

In January, a former national legislator was jailed for life for raping dozens of schoolgirls after a fortune teller advised him to have sex with virgins.

(Shanghai Daily April 1, 2008)