Two young men have been arrested for sexually assaulting a bridesmaid after a video of their backseat “wedding prank” went viral on Chinese social media.
The shocking video, one of the most widely-shared on Weibo last week, shows the two men in the back of a car grinning and laughing as they grope a young woman, trying to grab her breasts and later to take off her underwear as she protests and tries to fight them off.
It is the latest in a long line of videos exposing the troubling tradition of lewd “wedding pranks” against bridesmaids in China, which all too frequently devolve into verbal and sexual assault.
The video left Chinese netizens appalled and calling for a police investigation into the incident as the faces of the two men were spread around the web.
Later, police in Xi’an tracked down and arrested the two men. Police said that the video as filmed inside a vehicle that was part of a wedding motorcade headed to the ceremony site on June 3rd. One man was identified as the 21-year-old best man surnamed Hu, while the other was identified as a 19-year-old groomsman surnamed Chen.
China Business News reports that the victim in the video knew both of these men and therefore is not intending to pursue a lawsuit. A decision that has horrified many. “Just because they know each other they are allowed to do that? That explansion is completely disgusting,” wrote one Weibo user.
However, police are still investigating the matter, and lawyers told China Business News that the pair could be put behind bars for five years for what they did in the video.
Watch a Chinese news report on the case below:




Follow Shanghaiist on WeChat