Three Chinese students attending high school in southern California are set to serve time in prison due to bullying for kidnapping and assaulting a female classmate, as reported by China Daily.
On Jan. 5, Zhai Yunyao, Yang Yuhan and Zhang Xinlei settled on a plea deal with prosecutors, preventing the case from going to trial.
The three Chinese students, all 19 years old, pleaded no contest to criminal charges of kidnapping and assault. Zhai, the case's prime culprit, will face 13 years in prison, while Yang and Zhang will face 10 years and 6 years, respectively, according the Los Angeles Times.
The three will be deported back to China at the conclusion of their sentence.
The bullying case, which was reported in March 2014, became a media sensation in China.
The victim, a female classmate surnamed Liu, testified that she was taken to a park, stripped, kicked, slapped and burned using cigarettes. She claimed the incident lasted over five hours.
According to one of the defendants' attorneys, the plea deal was the best resolution as going to trial would carry too many risks. Prosecutors agreed to drop the torture charge if the plea deal were accepted.
The three students were reportedly shocked upon learning that what they did was a felony in the United States that could lead to a life sentence. For them, it was a "prank" that would result in demerit points from their school at worst.
A parent of one of the students was also detained for attempting to slip one of the prosecutors a bribe in an effort to make them drop the case.
In China, bullies rarely receive the punishment that they deserve, despite the fact that bullying is not rare in the country. Bullying cases have even made the headlines, and some perpetrators have even uploaded their misdeeds online.
In cases where there is no severe physical harm, bullies in China are only ever punished with criticism from their schools. Chinese parents often trivialize bullying incidents, seeing them as small fights between their children.