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| Residents of Uijeongbu stage a massive protest rally ahead of Kim Geun-sik's planned move to a rehabilitation facility in their city, Oct. 16. Yonhap |
A child rapist serving a 15-year prison term for assaulting 11 girls in 2006 has been rearrested on an additional charge a day before his discharge and is expected to face another prison term as heavy as seven years, officials said Monday.
The Anyang office of the Suwon District Court on Sunday issued an arrest warrant for Kim Geun-sik, 54, on a charge that he sexually abused a 13-year-old girl in 2006.
The arrest warrant was issued one day before Kim was to be discharged from prison after serving a 15-year term for raping 11 underage women between May and September 2006 in the greater Seoul area. Earlier that May, he was discharged from prison following a five-year imprisonment over rape and violence charges.
The latest victim reportedly filed a complaint against Kim in December 2020 after hearing about his serial sexual crimes via media reports.
The arrest of Kim put an end to fierce protests by residents of Uijeongbu, a city north of Seoul, where Kim was scheduled to enter a rehabilitation facility for former prisoners.
A court had prohibited Kim from contacting any women aged below 19 or going out after 10 p.m. after being released, but the city of Uijeongbu protested fiercely, threatening to close off the roads leading to the rehabilitation facility on the day of Kim's release.
Residents of Incheon, Goyang, Paju and other cities where Kim raped or molested underage women had also been edgy about Kim's release, posing a headache to law enforcers about where and how to house the widely feared child rapist.
Kim is denying the additional sexual abuse charge, and how long he will be imprisoned if he is additionally convicted is beyond anyone's guess.
Currently, those convicted with sexual abuse are given a sentence between three and seven years if there are multiple victims or the crimes are repetitive.
"In the upcoming trial, Kim is likely to face a heavily punitive sentence as there had been criticism that his previous 15-year sentence was too lenient," a prosecutor-turned-lawyer told Yonhap News Agency. "The sentence will be more than one or two years if he is convicted."
Another lawyer well-versed in sexual crimes also argued the country should come up with social measures to handle the return of heinous criminals to society after incarceration, such as Kim Geun-sik.
"This issue should serve as an important point to start a debate about how to handle issues like this in the future," lawyer Lee Eun-eui said. (Yonhap)
