Sixth grader arrested for child prostitution
2004/2/24
TAIPEI, Taiwan, The China Post Staff


A computer engineer has been arrested in Taipei, along with a 12-year-old girl hooker, for child prostitution, police said yesterday.

If convicted as a pedophile, the 26-year-old engineer, identified only as Chang, will be given a sentence of from three to 10 years in prison.

The sixth grader, who called herself Little Plum in an online advertisement for prostitution, will be placed under detention at a juvenile correction house for at least six months.

Little Plum was the youngest prostitute ever taken under custody in Taiwan.

Vice squad investigators said Little Plum, who advertised for a NT$10,000 session with "a sixth grader, who needs money," admitted to prostitution and gave clues for the arrest of the computer engineer.

"We monitored the ad last week," an investigator said. When he met Little Plum, the investigator was shocked to find a "little girl." She stands 1.5 meters tall.

Police did not say when Little Plum was arrested.

"She told us she met a man in a motel on January 27," the investigator said.

Investigators searched the motel in Shulin, only a couple of miles south of Taipei, and found out Little Plum's customer.

The computer engineer, arrested Sunday, told police he did not know Little Plum was that young. He paid her only NT$6,000, which she later gave her father.

Chang will be arraigned before a Taoyuan district prosecutor. The Taoyuan district court has jurisdiction over Shulin, a town in Taipei County.

Contacted by police, Little Plum's father, divorced and jobless, admitted he had received the money from her. "She told me she had borrowed the NT$6,000 from a friend," he was quoted as saying.
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I could use a Little Plum pudding.

Sorry, that was in bad taste.

DS