Luo Wei was the first victim of the Yuzhang Academy incident to report to the police. After escaping from Yuzhang Academy, Luo Wei has been seeking an apology. Unfortunately, neither his parents, who sent him to Yuzhang Academy with their own hands, nor the people he accuses of violence against him, have responded to his request directly.
Luo Wei is just an ordinary man who, in the past six and a half years, has been persistently crying out for justice against his father’s fists, the temptation of reconciliation from his abusers, and the withdrawal of his allies. In his view, this is the only way to take responsibility for the life and dignity that was torn apart seven years ago.
The following is Luo Wei’s dictation.
One
When the verdict in the first trial of the Yuzhang Academy case was announced, six and a half years had passed since I first reported the case.
On the morning of July 3, 2020, at the Nanchang Qingshan Lake District People’s Court, I attended the second session of the first trial of the Yuzhang Academy case.
The first time I went to court, I was so excited and nervous that I couldn’t help but keep snapping my fingers. Wu Junbao and the other defendants were all in the detention center that day, participating in the trial via real-time video.
The first time I saw Wu Junbao on the screen, my anger still poured out. He and the principal, Ren Weiqiang, were sitting on chairs in the detention center, laughing and talking, seemingly unconcerned.
I didn’t say anything, but I yelled at him in my heart: I’ve been suing you for seven years, and today I can finally end it.
For the past six and a half years, I’ve often asked myself before I went to bed when it would be over. I thought that day would be the end, but unfortunately it didn’t turn out as smoothly as I thought.
During the trial, Wu Junbao continued to cunningly argue and refute, and most absurdly, he fabricated facts to get away with his crimes. In court, Wu Junbao argued to the court that I had been suffering from Internet addiction and depression since before I entered the Yuzhang Academy. But long before the trial, my mother said in a media interview that I never played online games. When my father signed the enrollment agreement with them, there was a question confirming whether I had a history of mental illness and other physical illnesses, and he filled in “no”. These are enough to prove that I was a normal person before I entered Yuzhang Academy, not addicted to the Internet, and did not suffer from depression.
In order to get away with it, Wu Junbao also seized on a clerical error in the evidence I submitted. When I described my experience to the psychiatrist, I said, “There’s a place called Yuzhang College, and it’s like a prison in there. Yuzhang College was written as “Yuzhang Prison”. As it turned out, there really was a “Yuzhang Prison” in reality, and Wu Junbao caught this clerical mistake and asserted that he had nothing to do with it.
On that day, my aunt and grandmother testified as my witnesses, but because they had a stake in my case, the court did not accept their testimony. Fortunately, Wu Junbao’s testimony was not accepted either.
On the same day, the court sentenced Wu Junbao to two years and ten months in prison, and our requests for a public apology and compensation for medical and transportation expenses were all denied.
After the trial was over, the lawyers felt that there was little room for improvement in the second trial, and most of my fellow victims chose to give up.
But I was not satisfied. I had been litigating for more than seven years, and now that we had reached the final step, I could not give up halfway.
I have decided to pursue my appeal to the end.
II
The process of litigating with Yuzhang Academy was very difficult. In six and a half years, I reported the case three times and changed three lawyers.
The first time I reported the case was on September 1, 2014, the one-year anniversary of my escape from Yuzhang Academy.
The Yuzhang Academy is in an urban-rural area, and I didn’t know the way, so I called 911 and took a police car to the Luojia Town Police Station in Nanchang City’s Qingshan Lake District.
I was greeted by two young police officers who were in disbelief when they heard that someone posing as a police officer had tied me up in the Yuzhang Academy and beaten and abused me. They had the impression that the Yuzhang Academy was just a school for practicing calligraphy.
The police wanted me to produce substantial evidence to prove that I had been abused at Yuzhang Academy, such as the results of an injury test, but I couldn’t. When I was kidnapped by my parents and the fake police officers, I was beaten and abused. After I was lured into the school by my parents and an instructor disguised as a policeman, I spent three months in hell. At one point, I was beaten 20 times a day for a month with a steel ruler because of a rotten quilt that was not neatly folded. When I was being beaten, they asked me to hold out my hand, and if I couldn’t help retracting it, they would add the number of times I was beaten.
Like all students, I turned in my cell phone when I entered Yuzhang Academy, and could not take pictures of it after being beaten. In addition, the academy’s closed management, I did not have the opportunity to go to the hospital to examine my injuries. The police asked me if I could provide proof of my enrollment, at least to prove that I had actually been there. I told the police that my parents had the admission agreement and other documents, and the police called my parents to assist in the investigation.
As soon as she saw me, she pulled me out and said to me, “You’re causing trouble here, and they’re going to lock you up. The mother came from the countryside, had no sense of the law, and said a lot of things that had no basis in reason or fact, such as “the police can’t be messed with! The people can’t fight the officer,” and so on.
After an hour of tussling with my mother in front of the police station, I thought about what the officer said, that I had to provide evidence in order to investigate, so I planned to go home with her and ask my father for evidence. When I got home, my father ignored my request, thinking that I had just been beaten by the teacher and that it was no big deal, but he wouldn’t give me the evidence.
My parents didn’t know what kind of place the Yuzhang Academy was, and the Academy was very good at whitewashing parents. When I was in there, I had my 20th birthday. At that time, they put together a group of students who had had birthdays in recent months and had a 10-inch cake to celebrate it with.
There were several of us, and we were asked to take turns taking pictures in front of the cake, and to smile along with it. The instructor would send the pictures to the parents and it would look as if we each got a cake and had a good time.
During this time, my grandmother visited me once. Since the academy only allowed parents who signed the admission agreement to visit me in person, my grandmother could only see me from a distance through the gate. She asked me why I had become so dark and thin, and why I couldn’t walk properly. She wanted to get me out, but she couldn’t do anything about it because the school’s policy was that only parents who signed the agreement could release students. Luckily, she went back and immediately told my parents what I looked like at Yu Zhang Academy, so they could come and see me.
Finally, it was my mother who came. I folded the SOS note I had written in the toilet into a small square and put it in my pocket, taking the opportunity to slip it to my mother. A few days later, my mother came back with a contract.
When I looked at it, I saw that it was written by my father and listed several major conditions that I had to agree to. First, I had to honor my parents; second, I had to not quarrel with my parents; third, I had to go to a college or university to finish my education; fourth, I had to learn a skill; and fifth, I had to support my parents.
They meant that if I signed, they would let me go, but if I didn’t sign, I would stay here. In order to get out, I tried my best to look like I was desperate to go to a college or university. In order to convince them that I had been successfully brainwashed, I could not wait to show them my head, which was full of the virtues they wanted.
After I got out of the Yuzhang Academy, I had frequent nightmares, my face turned yellow, and I lost more than 20 pounds. My grandmother noticed my abnormality, and together with my aunt sent me to a psychiatrist. In the hospital, I was diagnosed with mild depression and anxiety. When I was sick, I lay in bed as if I were dead, thinking of only one thing: to put those people in jail. It was the only way I could feel better, otherwise I couldn’t live a normal life.
My parents did not allow me to go to the police, and they hid the evidence of my enrollment, which I could never find. Without substantial evidence, I could not successfully report the crime.
For this reason, my parents and I had many arguments. Once, my father scolded me: “You beast, I’ll call someone to lock you up in the Yuzhang Academy again. I was completely enraged and wrestled with him. In the process, he jumped up and punched me in the head, and I instantly fainted.
The swelling on my head that my father had punched out went down after a few months, but the punch left a permanent dent in the area at the back of my head.
III
In October 2017, I read an article written by the online author “Gentle” in Qzone, “How Many Yang Yongshin Are There in China? It was only then that I learned that the matter had come to light.
I contacted other victims and went to the police a second time with the help of a pro bono attorney.
The report went well because we were able to provide a photo of the victim’s injuries. In the photo, the girl’s buttocks were beaten purple. It was the only visual evidence of the injury that we all found.
Coincidentally, the girl had just been beaten the day before, and the next day her parents suddenly returned from overseas and picked her up, leaving this crucial piece of evidence behind.
Because of this crucial photo, I finally received a call in December 2017, informing me to go and get a notice of success.
I went there, and as soon as I came out of the police station, I noticed a silver gray sedan following me, and as soon as I stopped, it felt very wrong.
I immediately hid in the next alley and took pictures to send to the group of victims for help. I was told to stay in a crowded area, so I hurried back to the street and went inside a bank. I don’t know how long I waited, but they finally got tired of waiting and left.
Wu Junbao once came to me and urged me to give up the idea of suing. When I refused, he took out a piece of paper and wrote down his phone number, telling me to call him when I figured it out one day.
After Wu Junbao appeared, my parents, fearing reprisals, urged me to accept a private settlement. But I was resolute, and I had to sue to the end. In fact, escaping from Yuzhang Academy these years, I never really get rid of that memory, only in the moment when I got the notice of filing, I feel like I finally came back to life.
After the case was filed, I took a 2-hour bus ride once a week to ask about the progress. The staff told me that there were many minors involved in the case, some of whom didn’t have time to cooperate because of examinations, and some of whom couldn’t testify because their parents didn’t agree to be investigated. Without sufficient testimony, it was difficult to investigate the case.
After that, I started to collect testimonies from various parties myself. I managed to contact two instructors who had worked at Yuzhang Academy and convinced them to give interviews to the media. They admitted to beating and physically punishing students in Yuzhang Academy, but since they were not the instructors who were supervising me at the time, they could not be effective witnesses to my case.
It was also difficult to get the victims to speak out. Some victims came out and went online as usual, as if they didn’t care about the incident. When I contacted her, she said that her parents had apologized to her and decided to let the matter go.
While inside, several participants and I left contact information for each other, agreeing that whoever got out first would help contact the other’s family. I tried to call the father of one of the cadets, but he told me to stay out of it, that he was trying to save his son from being led astray. I didn’t understand why he had to choose abuse when there are so many ways to educate a child.
More than half a year after the case was filed, the judiciary rejected the application for the defendant’s arrest, and the reason given in the statement of reasons for not approving the arrest was “illegal detention without unit crime.
In November 2019, a volunteer helped me contact a public interest attorney in Beijing, who combed through the case and pointed out, in addition to illegal detention, the charges of solicitation and fraud, mistreatment of wards and janitors, and organizing, leading and participating in a triad organization. With her help, I reported the case for the third time.
This time, Wu Junbao and the others were finally arrested because there was sufficient evidence and reason. Unfortunately, the Xin Guan epidemic broke out and the case was delayed until July of this year before it went to trial.
IV
In the process of the lawsuit against Yuzhang Academy, I never received understanding and support from my parents.
My father was irritable and seldom cared about my feelings since I was a child. One time in elementary school when I was watching TV and blocking his view, he took a metal box off the table and smashed it at my head, breaking my scalp and sending me to the hospital for two stitches.
When I was in junior high school, I quarreled with him over a trivial matter, and he asked three male relatives to tie me up with twine and kick me. When my grandparents couldn’t stand it, they called the police, but when the police came, they said it was normal for parents to beat their children, and they left. It was only when I felt like I was going to be killed that my father finally stopped when my grandfather called them again and called them back.
At home, my mother couldn’t protect me, nor could she defend herself. She told me that a few months after we were newlyweds, my father had first abused her. At that time, her grandparents scolded her for being from a poor family and told her to leave their son. My mother quarreled with her grandparents, and eventually both of them started to fight. My father defended her grandparents and beat my mother. At the time, my mother was still pregnant with my sister.
My sister knew what had happened to me, but the whole time, she thought I was blaming my parents. She always told me that my parents didn’t know what was going on inside, and that Wu Junbao had nothing to do with them if he beat me up, so she went to Wu Junbao.
I think she was trying to justify her parents, who were closer to her. Since I was a child, my parents worked in Nanchang and brought my sister with them, leaving me in the countryside to be raised by my maternal grandparents. I could only see them during the Chinese New Year holidays. It wasn’t until elementary school that my parents took me in.
A few years ago, my sister took out a loan to buy a house in Shenzhen, and my parents helped her pay off the monthly loan.
I suffered from depression from time to time, and often woke up in bed at two or three in the morning. During the day, my mind went blank, I couldn’t remember what I had done in the last second, sometimes I couldn’t control my swearing, and my whole body was like a trash can full of negative emotions.
Seeing me like this, my sister and parents were in sync and asked me, “Why am I the only one with a sad face when all the other kids are alive and kicking? I feel that I have too little mental capacity.
A few years ago, my grandfather passed away from a heart attack, and I lost the only person in my family who supported me in suing Yu Zhang Academy.
My maternal grandfather loved me very much. When I grew up, my father still couldn’t stop beating me, and sometimes I couldn’t help but fight back. He advised me: “You are not as strong as others, so don’t fight with them, as you will definitely suffer.
When I was locked up in the Yuzhang Academy, my grandfather wrote a letter to me. The letter was given to me only after it was checked by the instructor, and when it came to me, the bottom half of the letter was missing, only the beginning but not the end.
My parents were the biggest pitfall in my journey, and I often blamed them. If only they hadn’t hidden the evidence, I could have filed a successful lawsuit, and even if I failed, I would have just quit and the matter would have been over. But because my parents wouldn’t give me the evidence, the matter dragged on for so many years. I was kidnapped at the age of 20 and sent to Yuzhang Academy, and I am now 28 years old.
In order to fight the lawsuit, I have been unable to find a full-time job all these years, and have been helping out at my family’s jewelry store. My mother pays me 2,000 yuan a month, but other than that I have no regular income and occasionally sell second-hand clothes online to earn some money. I rarely ate at the same table as my parents, and tried to eat in my room to avoid talking to them.
In fact, I couldn’t help but think that the phone number Wu Junbao left for me at the time could be considered a way out. If he had given me enough money to cover my medical expenses, I could have found a better job and had a better life than the one I have now. But every time this thought comes up, I start to despise myself. I’m glad that I was stupid enough not to look at Wu Junbao’s phone number the day he came to my door.
Recently, I’ve been in contact with new lawyers, and I’ve also gotten in touch with victims who are willing to fight the lawsuit with me. I will pursue this matter to the end, and I must ask them to apologize, otherwise I can’t be responsible for the last few years of my life, and I can’t be responsible for my own dignity.
I will never forget my 20th birthday, when I was locked up in that “private prison”, humiliated, holding a cake and forcing a smile on my face.
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