The family of a 13-year-old girl sexually assaulted by an official and declared a prostitute by police, wept as her attacker received a 10-year jail sentence for rape yesterday.

The sentence handed to Lu Yumin, 47, head of Baihua branch office of Yibin city's taxation bureau in Sichuan province, overruled an initial police investigation that found that the official had paid the girl for sex.

Meanwhile, Mu Qiong, a small private business owner, and her underage niece, Mu Siting, who both forced the girl to have sex with Lu last December, were sentenced to nine and six years jail respectively.