Minutes after a Berlin court sentenced a Chinese man to five years in prison for aiding and abetting aggravated rape and sexual coercion, two women who had sat through the trial hugged each other and cried.
But the case left one of those women, named Kristina, balancing mixed emotions as she struggled to reconcile her desire to see the perpetrators punished and questions about what justice really meant in a case of this nature.
The 32-year-old accused, who was studying medicine, was jailed for five years earlier this month.
The man – who under German law could only be identified by his given name as Zhiting S. – was one of four Chinese nationals convicted and sentenced to up to 14 years in prison after investigators uncovered an online network where perpetrators exchanged tips on drugging and sexually assaulting women.
Kristina, who is studying in the German capital, was one of the many Chinese women who spent months sitting through the hearings. Some of them have criticised these sentences as too lenient.
Punishing some perpetrators does not make this kind of thinking disappear. It is like a smell in the air
She, like other observers, had a complicated reaction to the case – one shaped by anger towards the perpetrators, desire for justice and the challenge of understanding a legal system with a different approach to punishment compared with China.
The guilty men