Seventeen-year-old Li Guanfeng -- alternately called Li Tianyi, problem child, brat, and rapist -- was found guilty of gang rape by Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing earlier this morning. His high-level connections -- his father is renowned PLA singer Li Shuangjiang, and his mother is singer Meng Ge -- apparently weren't enough to get him off the hook for allegedly sexually assaulting a young woman with four of his friends in a Beijing hotel on February 17.
Li Tianyi -- who is now being called Li Guanfeng in an official capacity, which means we'll probably start doing that as well -- is the only of five defendants to plead not guilty in the high-profile gang-rape trial that ended yesterday in Beijing.
Li Tianyi, 17, son of PLA singers Li Shuangjiang and Meng Ge, pleaded not guilty to gang rape on Wednesday as his trial kicked off in Beijing's Haidian People's Court.
An "insider" told Beijing News that Li said he was sleepy on February 17 after a night of drinking, so when he and four friends brought the alleged victim, a 23-year-old woman surnamed Yang, up to a hotel room -- where they took turns raping / having sex with her (depending on who you believe) -- he was not up to task.
One high-profile trial ends, and another begins.
Hearings for Li Tianyi, son of famous PLA singer Li Shuangjiang, commenced this morning from Beijing's Haidian People's Court.
Li, who is also known as Li Guanfeng, and four others are accused of gang-raping a woman surnamed Yang on the night of February 17 in a hotel.
On Tuesday, Tsinghua University law professor Yi Yanyou wrote on his Sina Weibo, “Raping a chaste woman is more harmful than raping a bar girl, a dancing girl, a sanpeinu or a prostitute." Because you know, in this world, some people just have it better than others, and deserve to be treated better because of it.
That Yi's statement was in relation to the Li Tianyi gang rape case quickly became lost in the outcry and massively loud sighs against Yi. How could a law professor -- at one of China's most prestigious universities, no less -- say such a dimwitted thing?
Li Tianyi, accused of participating in a gang rape, has a new lawyer -- one that lashed out at media recently -- and now has a new defense: the girl worked at a bar, so, you know... you know. You get my drift, don't you? Oh, you don't?
Let's let Yi Yanyou, law professor and director of Tsinghua Evidence Act Center at Tsinghua University, explicate.
Since allegations emerged in February that Li Tianyi participated in a gang rape of a girl in a Beijing hotel, his name has been connected with his father, Li Shuangjiang, a famous PLA tenor. The fact that he's the son of a well regarded celebrity with connections to the Party should have spared Li fils from the worst of media scrutiny, but for whatever reason, that hasn't happened. And his new lawyers -- new because his old ones were fired -- are pissed about that.
Li Tianyi, sometimes known as Li Guanfeng, is the 17-year-old son of well-known People's Liberation Army singer Li Shuangjiang, which was why it was so shocking, in February, when he was accused of participating in a gang rape. The public quickly judged him guilty, and predictably renewed curses of the country's privileged youth while anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop, the Chinese justice system to fail.
Li Tianyi, who was arrested last month for allegedly participating in a gang rape with four other people in a Beijing hotel, may have used his famous parents’ connections to falsify records to make himself seem younger than he actually is, according to a blockbuster exclusive from the South China Morning Post. Li’s parents, father... Read more »
Earlier today, the People's Daily reported that five people were detained in connection with a gang rape that happened Sunday in a Beijing hotel.
A source has just informed the South China Morning Post one of those detainees is the 17-year-old son of a famous PLA singer.
