The Luoyang sexual slavery case refers to the abduction, long-term captivity, and sexual enslavement of six women and teenagers between 2009 and 2011 in Luoyang, Henan, China. The victims were held in a makeshift underground dungeon, where the perpetrator, Li Hao, repeatedly raped the captives and forced them to appear on online pornography. Two of the women were murdered by Li, who forced the other victims to assist him in the killings. One of the victims escaped and alerted the authorities, leading to Li's arrest and the rescue of the surviving women.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Li Hao (Chinese:李浩; pinyin:Lǐ Hào; born February 1977) was originally from Xinye County, part of Nanyang, Henan, where he obtained a college degree. He moved to Luoyang to work as a firefighter for the city's fire bureau[11][12][13] and by 2009, he was employed as a clerk in the quality control sector of Henan's technology bureau.[14][15][16][17] At the time of his arrest, Li was married to a 24-year-old woman, with whom he had an eight-month-old son.[8][18]
According to Li, his wife had no knowledge of his dungeon and sex slaves.[19] Li lied to his wife saying he found a night time job. He spent two weeks a month with the women captives in his dungeon.[20] Li and his son lived somewhere other than the building with the dungeon in Luoyang.[21]
Victims
The six women, identified only by their surnames, were all karaoke bar workers, some of them hostesses, who had been lured to Li's residence under the belief that they would be paid in exchange for sex work.[12][22] Two were surnamed Zhang (张), one was surnamed Duan (段), one was surnamed Jiang (姜), one was surnamed Cai (蔡), and one was surnamed Ma (马).[18] The victims were 16 to 23 years old at the time, and kept in captivity between two and 21 months.[23] Three of the surviving women were local to Luoyang while one was from Xinxiang.[17]
Murder and rape case
Makeshift dungeon
In August 2009,[12] Li bought a residential compound in Luoyang's central Xigong district and dug a dungeon in his basement,[1][24] spending more than a year digging the cellar.[25][26] The dungeon has been described as a 'fortified underground cellar' and 'subterranean prison'.[27]
Li's cellar was located under a residential building. It had a space of less than 20 square meters (220sqft).[28][29] There was a tunnel connecting into the cellar with a diameter opening of 60cm and can only be crawled through by a person. The tunnel led to two bedrooms, 4 meters underneath the cellar.[28][11] Li Hao placed seven metal doors to prevent his captives from escaping.[20][30] The dungeon was 215 square meters.[21]
Li's intention was to make money from online pornography[2][11][31][32] and forcing them to engage in prostitution at nearby hotels, saying he was inspired by the financial success of porn websites he viewed in 2007.[33] Li forcibly kept his captives starved so that they would have little energy to escape. He would only feed them once every two days.[34] He later gave them computers so that they could watch movies and play games,[21] but they had no Internet access.[25] The only time they were allowed to leave was when Li needed money. Li would then force his captives to sleep with other men for cash.[25] The women ate and defecated in the rooms, and the cellars were described as 'dank' and 'smelly'. Apparently some of the women were competing for Li's attention.[19]
In October and December 2009, Li first lured two women, Zhang Xuanxuan (张宣宣 an alias) and Duan Moumou (段某某 aged 18 at the time), into his basement, detaining Zhang and Duan by violence, blackmail, and coercion.[24][35]
In December 2010, Li used the same method to detain nineteen-year-old Jiang Moumou in his dungeon.[24]
In March, May, and July 2011, Li successively brought three other women: twenty-year-old Zhang Moumou, Cai Moumou (aged 16 years old at time of death), and twenty-three-year-old Ma Moumou. He raped the women repeatedly, causing Zhang Moumou to become pregnant.[24][36]
He repeatedly abused and raped the six women, forcing them into prostitution. He filmed them and posted the pornography online for profit. He later forced three of the captives to kill two of the other women.[37][23][38][39][40][41][excessive citations]
Intentional homicide: Murder of Zhang Xuanxuan and Cai Moumou
In July and August 2010, Zhang Xuanxuan attacked Li from behind, taking advantage of his unprepared digging of the tunnel. Li handcuffed Zhang to the bed in anger. When Zhang Xuanxuan refused to give in, Li forced Duan Moumou to murder Zhang Xuanxuan in exchange for Duan's freedom. Li and Duan jointly strangled Zhang to death, and Li Hao buried her in a pit under the bed.[24][11]
Li beat Zhang to death to force the other women to 'obey'. Moreover, he buried Zhang's body close to where they slept to warn them.[11][42]
In May 2011, Cai Moumou was found to have gynecological disease and was unable to perform the obscene pornography Li Hao forced his captives to do. Li then saw Cai as useless and had the idea of killing Cai, revealing his plan to Duan, Jiang, Ma, and Zhang Moumou. Li forced the other women to beat up Cai, abusing, starving, and torturing her, as well as forcing Cai to eat feces and drink urine.[24]
One day at the end of July 2011, Li, Duan, and others beat up Cai again, and later that night she died. In order to cover up the crime, Li and Duan laid Cai's corpse in a concrete pool in a hole.[24][23][11][42]
Filmed pornography
Between March and April 2011, Li forced the women to perform in pornographic shows online.[43] Li purchased a computer and video head, opening a broadband connection to his dungeon. Li forced Duan, Jiang, Ma, Zhang Moumou and others to strip for 'customers'[44] in his dungeon. He filmed these performances and sold them to viewers on Tencent QQ for prices of "50 yuan for 30 minutes" and "100 yuan for 50 minutes". By the time of the incident, Li produced more than 50 obscene videos and collected thousands of yuan from viewing from Alipay and other forms of online banking.[24][23]
Organized prostitution
From August 2011 to 2 September 2011, Li forced the women to have sex with other men in exchange for money.[28][45] Li arranged for Duan and Zhang Moumou, who were under Li's control, to visit a hotel in Xigong district and the welfare lottery shop across the road from the hotel. Li forced Duan and Zhang into prostitution and made more than 700 yuan in money handed by the two. On the evening of 2 September 2011, Li forced Duan, Ma, and Zhang Moumou to go to the same place for prostitution. In the early morning of the next day, Ma seized the opportunity to escape and call for the police. With the cooperation of Ma, the public security personnel rescued Jiang Moumou, who was detained in Li's dungeon. Public security later rescued Duan and Zhang Moumou from the hotel and welfare lottery shop.[24][23]
Li tried to escape the city and went to his sister Li Yuan to borrow money, but the police caught him.[11] Li was arrested on 6 September.[21] Li Yuan gave Li Hao 1000 yuan to help him escape, but Li Yuan was also arrested and charged by the police for helping a criminal.[11]
Arrest and execution of Li Hao
In September 2011, a 23-year-old woman (Ma Moumou) escaped from his dungeon and reported Li to the police,[46] leading them to his basement.[37] Li was subsequently arrested.[14] A reporter named Ji Xuguang from Guangzhou was one of the first people to expose the case to the media.[12]
On 30 November 2012, Li was sentenced to death.[13][47] The Intermediate people's court of Luoyang found Li guilty of rape, murder, prostitution, illegal pornography, and illegal detention.[12][48][49][50] A higher court upheld the sentence, and the Supreme People's Court approved the death penalty.[28] Li was also deprived of his political rights and fined 10,000 yuan ($1640).[45][6] He was expelled from the party and public office.[51] Li's sister Li Yuan (李媛) was also charged for harboring a criminal[11] and sentenced to probation.[41]
On 21 January 2014, after meeting his relatives in a detention house, Li was executed, aged 36.[1][28][52][53][54]
Victims and captives
The two women who were murdered, Cai and Zhang Xuanxuan, had been dead for months by the time police had found their corpses. The remaining four women were convicted for working with Li to kill Cai and Zhang Xuanxuan.[2]
Duan, Jiang, and Zhang Moumou were charged with murder, but were given lighter punishments (shown leniency)[11] due to the situation Li forced them into.[55][56][32] According to Xinhua, two (Jiang and Zhang) were sentenced to probation, while the third (Duan) was jailed for three years.[37][4] The six KTV women had worked at nightclubs, hair salons, karaoke bars, and a massage shop.[14][28][57][58]
A lawyer from Changsha, Zhang Yan, tried to represent the women in court. Zhang said that Li's death penalty was predictable, but that she tried to lobby for lighter sentences for the three women who were forced by Li to kill the two other women.[12][59]
In 2011, Guo Congbin said that the delay between when Li abducted the women and when he was finally caught and arrested was too long and indicated that the local police were ineffective. Guo said that four police officers were suspended and that entertainment areas such as nightclubs and bars were to be more thoroughly inspected. Moreover, the internet was to be subject to intense cleansing of pornography sites.[2][18][5][60]
The Chinese nation was shocked and horrified by the details of the crime. Reporter Ji Xuguang, from the Southern Metropolis Daily, was one of the journalists who exposed Li's crimes. Ji Xuguang was detained for leaking 'state secrets'.[21][61] Ji originally traveled to Luoyang to report on the Li Xiang case, but then brought Li's story to national attention. For some time, local newspapers were forbidden from reporting on the case as officials feared it would tarnish the city's image and bid to win the 'Civilized City' award.[7] At the time local authorities were shocked, and very few high level officials knew of the case.[62]
Authorities denied such claims of coverup.[8][62] Later Li's story was widely covered and spread by national media, with Li's crimes terrifying and being severely condemned by the public.[7]
Resident Kou Yongxue, who lived in the building above the dungeon, said that Li's crimes were unimaginable and that they were still 'shuddering' at the sex slave case.[8]
The sex slave case is described in detail in a book written by Liu Baiju (刘白驹) titled "Sexual Offenders: Psychopathology and Control" (性犯罪：精神病理与控制).[35]
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