Three men jailed for sex with underage girl in Vietnam’s Central Highlands
Thursday, April 19, 2018, 14:10 GMT+7
Three men in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum were on Wednesday given jail terms from four to 13 years for having sex with a local girl, who became a mother at the age of 14.
Trieu Van Tien, 28, Vi Van Hung, 21, and Hoang Van Dien, 47, all residing in Ia HDrai District, were found guilty of having sex with the 2002-born girl, referred to only as Y.L., during the first-instance trial in a local court in September 2017.
The court then sentenced Tien to 13 years, Hung to nine years, and Dien to four years in prison for “statutory rape” and “sexual intercourse with a child.”
The girl’s mother, Y Loan, was also slapped with a 15-month non-custodial reform for failing to report the crime.
The four lodged an appeal and appeared in the second-instance trial in the central city of Da Nang on Wednesday, where all their sentences were upheld.
According to the indictment, Y.L. had a romantic relationship with Tien and the couple eventually moved in to live together as husband and wife, with the consent of her mother, Loan.
On September 13, 2016, L. gave birth to her daughter when she was only 14 years old.
As Tien paid no attention to and took little care of his ‘wife’ and ‘daughter,' Loan decided to report the situation to local authorities.
In November 2016, Kon Tum police arrested Tien for rape and child sex offenses after concluding that the man had sex with L. multiple times between August 2015 and April 2016, when she was under 13 years old and legally considered a minor.
However, police were stunned to see that DNA paternity tests showed that Tien was not the father of L.’s daughter.
The girl later admitted that she had had sex with Hung during her cohabitation with Tien.
Another DNA test was taken and the result showed that even Hung was not the child’s father.
L. had waited until then to make her final revelation, saying that she also had sex with a third man, Dien, who is her stepfather.
The confession was backed by a DNA test.
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