Parents Fined for Childs Sexual Crime
By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
A Seoul district court has held parents accountable for their teenage boy's sexual crime, slapping them with tens of millions of won in fines for failing to give him proper sex education.
The court ordered the parents of a 18-year-old boy, who was indicted for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl, to pay a 83 million won ($60,000) in compensation. The girl's parents filed the damages suit, claiming the boy's parents neglected their duty to protect and supervise him.
``The boy has seen obscene video clips through the Internet since he was 13, and he imitated what he had seen in committing the crime. Taking this into consideration, his parents should have prevented him from having obscene material and paid extra attention to giving him sex education,'' the court said in the ruling.
The boy has repeatedly run away from home and returned and committed minor crimes when he was away. ``Considering that he committed the sexual assault when he left home this time again, the parents neglected to prevent him from running away and take care of him properly,'' the court said.
The boy, who has an intellectual disability with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was indicted for sexually assaulting the girl at a playground of an apartment complex in Seoul in September 2006.
A local court earlier sentenced him to 10 years in prison. The girl's parents afterward filed the compensation suit against the boy's parents, demanding 225 million won in compensation.