The family of a 13-year-old girl sexually assaulted by an official and declared a prostitute by police, wept as her attacker received a 10-year jail sentence for rape yesterday.

The sentence handed to Lu Yumin, 47, head of Baihua branch office of Yibin city's taxation bureau in Sichuan province, overruled an initial police investigation that found that the official had paid the girl for sex.

Meanwhile, Mu Qiong, a small private business owner, and her underage niece, Mu Siting, who both forced the girl to have sex with Lu last December, were sentenced to nine and six years jail respectively.

The family of the victim, surnamed He, cried tears of joy when the sentence was handed down in a district court in Yibin city, the girl's lawyer, Wu Xiaolin, told China Daily. Court proceedings were closed to the public and media.

"I knew it. My girl was never a prostitute," said the young girl's aunt, who raised the child because her parents had to travel away from the city to find work.

Court records show that Lu asked the senior Mu to find him a virgin that he could have sex with. Mu then turned to her niece for help in searching for a girl.

The younger Mu propositioned He in school and told her that if she did not sell her virginity - a deal which He apparently did not understand at that time, according to the lawyer - then no one would protect her against bullies.

Lu paid the elder Mu 6,000 yuan on Dec 20. On the same day, the younger Mu took He to a hotel room where Lu forced her to have sex with him, court records show.

"They left the girl with a certain amount of money afterwards, and He used it for treatment of sexual diseases transmitted through the rape," the lawyer said.

The court records did not reveal how much money He was paid, but previous media reports said it was 1,000 yuan.

The police investigation began after students told a teacher about the rape. The school then told He's aunt, according to the lawyer. The family reported the case to police on March 3.

Lu was detained for 15 days and fined 5,000 yuan by police for hiring a prostitute in March.

Lu told police that he was not aware that the girl he paid for sex in a hotel room was underage.

The case then attracted a lot of interest, with many people questioning why Lu had paid so much money for He when a local adult prostitute would only cost about 100 yuan.

The local procuratorate launched its own investigation and later charged Lu with rape.

(China Daily August 4, 2009)