hankyoreh

By Heo Jae-hyun, staff reporter

A man in his 40’s living in a rural village in South Chungcheong Province was arrested by the police last year for sexually assaulting his intellectually disabled foster daughter over a period of five years. Through this case, the process of intellectually disabled women being exposed to sexual assaults, the social structure designed to cover up these horrible crimes, and the problem of protection systems implemented by the government for intellectually disabled people etc. were examined.

[Seven years of Hell] Yeo Guk-hwa (not her real name), was born in 1985 as the youngest of three siblings. She was intellectually disabled from birth. Her mother ran away, and her father died when she was 6 years old. Yeo grew up in an orphanage located in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province with her older brother, who also had an intellectual disability. In July 2007, Yeo had to leave the facility because she had reached adulthood.

Yeo‘s older sister, 37, who was married, was not able to take care of her. Yeo had to stay in several places, most of which were homes of her friends from the facility. In the autumn of 2007, Yeo’s friend introduced her to a farmhouse in South Chungcheong Province which Yeo had no preexisting connections to. That was when her ‘seven years of hell’ started.

Yeo’s foster father, Mr. Im, 49 and foster mother Mrs. Cho, 64, forced her to work. She would wake up at five in the morning and work on a 10,000 pyeong (355 thousand sq ft) field, carrying straw, cultivating cucumbers and cleaning the house.

In 2007, Yeo turned 22. Her foster father called her to a fishing spot located at a nearby reservoir and took her to a pedestal in the middle of the reservoir by boat. She did not know the meaning of her foster father saying ‘Give me a hug’. He turned into an animal, while Yeo had nowhere to run and no one to ask for help. Her father’s harassment became routine. Yeo did not understand what she was going through and would only cry. Then one day her belly began to grow. Her father told her to say “Tell your mother that one of the fishing customers did it”. Yeo‘s mother took her to the hospital where Yeo was told she was four months pregnant.

“I went to the hospital. After an examination I took some medicine and was lying down but my stomach hurt. I had an abortion. A circular thing came out in the bathroom…” Yeo, who has the intellectual capacity of a 7-year-old, trembled as she retold these memories.

The staff member responsible for welfare at the township office in Yeo’s town had barely visited her house. An office spokesperson said, “There are 270 people receiving public assistance in our township. Even if we visit one person’s house every day we can only see them each once a year”. The intellectually disabled are administrated with the people receiving public assistance. From October 2005, for seven years, Yeo received 500 thousand won (US$450) each month from the government but her foster parents used the money for their own purposes, unbeknownst to the local officials.

South Chungcheong Province ‘D’ precinct sergeant Lim Jong-wan, 49, received orders from South Chungcheong district police agency to look into the conditions faced by the disabled people in the jurisdiction. On a rainy August evening last year, Lim visited Yeo’s house, which was in a remote location at the foot of a mountain. Yeo was quietly collecting cucumbers with her father in the greenhouse. She was obedient, listening to her father’s orders. Yeo’s mother was well dressed and wearing dark colored nail polish. On the other hand, Yeo was dressed in rags and her hands were as rough as tree bark.

Sergeant Lim started to investigate life in the village the next day, and a neighbor of Yeo confessed, “Oh, I shouldn’t be saying this…he only makes her work and doesn’t even let her get married. It seems like Mr. Im is sexually abusing her”. After hearing that, Sergeant Lim went directly Mr. Im’s house.

After isolating Im from his daughter, sergeant Lim and a welfare officer from the township office talked to Yeo. At first Yeo only cried with her head down. When sergeant Lim opened Yeo’s closet, he found a maternity belt. From then, Yeo began to slowly talk about her painful past 7 years.

After Im was imprisoned, neighbors in the village clicked their tongues but also tried to defend him. An elderly woman from the village carefully said, “I’m sorry for the young man. Maybe he tried to make some children because he didn’t have any. It would be good if you let him off easy…”

Over ten years ago, Im moved to the village from another place and helped the neighbors with his farming equipment. In a village with few young people, Mr. Im was a valuable worker. Head of the village, Lee, 60, even went far as to receive 20 signatures for a petition defending Im.

The most urgent measure needed is to find disabled women like Yeo who are victims of on-going sexual abuse. Dr. Lee Hyun-hye of the Korean Institute for Gender Equality Promotion and Education said, “Intellectually disabled people generally do not understand what constitutes sexual abuse, so reporting these cases is hard. The government should provide sex education for the intellectually disabled”.

According to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s (MOGEF) 2010 ‘Sexual abuse fact-finding survey’, 37% of participants of the survey said ‘just suffered without resistance’. Of these people the reason for their actions, 25% said ‘did not understand what was being done to me’, and 22.2% said ‘resistance seemed futile’.

The judiciary is being criticized for the lack of awareness of sexual abuse against disabled people. If the disabled person cannot prove their ‘inability to resist’ the defendants’ claim that the sexual intercourse was consensual is often accepted. In a first court ruling on Jan. 16, the Cheonan Branch of Daejeon District Court sentenced Im to four years in prison. The prosecutors demanded a ten-year jail sentence for assault and blackmailing, but the Department of Justice saw the case as ‘adultery under deception’, a crime that warrants lighter punishment.

After Yeo’s case was made public, she was sent to a welfare facility where she was allowed to stay indefinitely. ‘Father’ Im left the court ten million won (US$8969) as compensation for damage and demanded reconciliation.

As of December 2011, there were 167,000 intellectually disabled people in Korea.

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