Alibaba’s client has been sentenced for 18 months to imprisonment for sexually assaulting a female employee on a work trip.
Jinan’s eastern city court heard that the woman was forced to drink alcohol prior to the attack.
Alibaba fired the woman after she made her claims public.
Her case made headlines and generated much discussion, highlighting the harassment Chinese female workers face. The client intends to appeal.
Most cases of sexual assault in China do not reach the courtroom. However, fewer cases are convicted.
There has been sympathy for her, but there has also been criticism on social media about her drinking habits. The handling of the case by Alibaba and the country’s drinking culture were also condemned.
An employee of Alibaba made the claim public in August that the company had not taken action. A senior colleague from the same trip was also accused of rape. He was fired, but the criminal case against him was dropped later.
It was revealed that the woman had been fired from Alibaba in December. Her dismissal letter stated that she had spread falsehoods which had damaged Alibaba’s reputation.
Zhang Guo, a client who has been held in detention for almost a year, still has eight months to complete his sentence.
Jinan Huaiyin District People’s Court convicted him of “forcible indecency and sexually assaulting victim against her will while drunk”, according to the state media outlet, the Global Times.
According to the Global Times, the court determined that the assaults took place over two days. They occurred during their first meeting in a restaurant and again the next day at Zhou’s hotel.
In an 11-page report, the woman claimed that her manager raped and raped her in a hotel while she was still unconscious from a drunken night last summer.
It caused a social media storm in China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
According to the woman, the manager forced her to travel to Jinan, which lies approximately 900 km (560 miles) away from Alibaba’s Hangzhou headquarters, in order for her client meeting.
She claimed that her superiors ordered her to have alcohol with coworkers at dinner.
She claimed that the client had kissed her on 27 July. The next morning, she woke up in her hotel room without her clothes on. She had no memory of what happened the night before.
According to the woman, she had surveillance camera footage that showed that the manager entered her bedroom four times in the evening.
The woman returned to Hangzhou and stated that the incident had been reported to Alibaba’s Human Resources (HR) department. She also claimed that she had asked for the manager to be fired.
She stated that HR initially accepted the request, but did not take any further action.
Alibaba was subject to a strong public backlash and eventually fired the employee. Two executives were also fired by the company for failing to respond to the allegations.
An email was sent out stating that Alibaba was “staunchly opposed” to forced drinking culture.
Alibaba previously stated that the man accused of the rape had confessed to “intimate acts”, while the woman was “intoxicated”.
Although the case against the coworker did not move forward, the court granted the prosecution permission to arrest the client. This led to the client’s trial and conviction.
This case is dividing opinion online and has been the most talked about on Weibo. Some users on social media claimed that the coworker was too easygoing, while others stated that there wasn’t enough evidence to prove his innocence.
China covered the news of the sentence extensively, but social media showed little sympathy for the victim. Many people questioned her behavior, seemingly ignoring what she had just experienced. Many men supported the appeal of her attacker.
China continues to attack women and gender violence victims make it difficult for them to speak out.
Reporters via WeChat were informed by the former employee of Alibaba that she had read the verdict.
“I don’t know what to say about the feelings I’m feeling right now. This verdict has been a long time coming. “I feel wronged and sad. But no one empathises.”
