Late at night, Dongfang Siyi flipped through a thick dossier of materials.

The divorce case of the plaintiff Chen Shifa v. the defendant Zhao Qiaofeng is just an ordinary divorce case that can no longer be ordinary in the eyes of ordinary people. Except that because the plaintiff Chen Shifa had an affair, which will cause people to hunt for curiosity for a while, it is completely an old-fashioned story that cannot be more old-fashioned. An originally honest man begins to like the new and hate the old because he has money, and he has to find various reasons to abandon his wife in order to marry again. In addition to making people angry at the performance of this man's moral turpitude, there is indeed no more novelty, no more social evaluation significance.

Although this man who has lost his conscience and departed from traditional morality and cheated on him is wrong, if he is not suspected of a criminal offense, and has not committed the crime of abandonment, abuse, and bigamy, the law has no way to punish him except for moral condemnation of him. The grounds for his divorce, although somewhat reprehensible, must also be decided by the court as long as they meet the circumstances of divorce under the law.

For these divorced persons who have lost their basic morality, the judge can only grant a divorce or refuse to divorce in accordance with the law. There is no way for the judge to change their hearts that have been corrupted by various temptations, and there is no way for them to find out their conscience and give a minimum of respect to their former partners. Because, from a legal point of view, judges are only judges, not redeemers of their souls, and only they can redeem them. All judges can do is to do their utmost to make full use of the existing legal system and regulations to protect the legitimate rights and interests of women who have been harmed in accordance with the law.

An otherwise unremarkable civil divorce case has aroused a lot of public outrage in the local area. This is something that ordinary people did not expect, and it is also something that Dongfang Siyi, a judge who has tried thousands of divorce cases, did not expect. Not only the neighbors, but all the villagers who knew about Chen Shifa and Zhao Qiaofeng's divorce talked about this matter, and the more they discussed, the more angry they became, and the more angry they became, the more they wanted to fight for Zhao Qiaofeng.

The villagers all know that Chen Shifa was originally from a very poor family, and the poor are well-known in the local area. But Zhao Qiaofeng didn't think the man was poor and married him, and when he first got married, it caused a heated discussion in the local area. Some say that they are because of fate, and some say that they are too unmatched, because Zhao Qiaofeng is a white and beautiful swan in their eyes, and Chen Shifa is just a poor toad. After they saw that Zhao Qiaofeng got married, not only did she not dislike the poor life, but she was also very able to bear hardships and stand hard work, taking care of housework inside and out, and became a virtuous woman in their eyes.

The exposure of this case caused great social repercussions, which was neither something that the plaintiff Chen Shifa could think of, nor did the defendant Zhao Qiaofeng deliberately do. I heard that Chen Shifa had money but lost his conscience, raised a nonchalant woman outside, did such an immoral derailment, and unrepentantly beat a rake, but wanted to divorce his wife Zhao Qiaofeng, Zhao Qiaofeng's experience suddenly aroused widespread social sympathy, and the women in the village were especially indignant after hearing about it.

In the more than two months since Chen Shifa sued for divorce, many people who sympathized with Zhao Qiaofeng took the initiative to go to the village committee and the women's federation to report the situation. Plaintiff Chen Shifa's cousin, Chen Shilian, not only scolded her cousin, but also took the lead in writing a joint letter to seek justice for the defendant Zhao Qiaofeng. No one expected that after hearing about it, more than 100 women in the village took the initiative to sign her joint letter and put their bright red handprints, Chen Shilian took Zhao Qiaofeng to the women's federation and the court, and personally handed over the joint letter to the leaders who received it.

This is a letter that made Chen Shifa break out in a cold sweat.

Dear leaders of the court and the leadership of the Women's Federation,

We are villagers in Village B of Town A, and because of a recent divorce case in our village, we have written to the leaders, hoping to attract the attention of the leaders and deal with this case fairly.

The village is located in a remote area, and most of the villagers used to have a difficult life due to the lack of financial resources. In recent years, many enterprises have been set up in the town, and men have entered the factory to work, and they have begun to have a different life and different choices.

Some conscientious and moral men earned money, did not forget the whole family, they cut down on food and clothing, worked hard, and the family was harmonious, bringing a new scene of labor and prosperity to the village. There are also some men who have lost their conscience, forgotten their family members who had shared weal and woe with them, and spent all their days drinking and keeping lovers outside, corrupting the social atmosphere in the village, and like a plague, it was passed from one man to another, and a bad trend of divorce arose in the village.

In the past two years, after some men in the village made a lot of money in business, they looked for lovers outside, which led to the breakdown of the family and the divorce of more than a dozen families. This has never been the case before. Now, some people are used to seeing it, but it has caused a kind of rich divorce reasonable, abandoning the married wife, and marrying a woman who loves money is becoming more and more beautiful.

As women in the village, we are so saddened to see this phenomenon happening around us so much that we dare not let our husbands run their businesses outside, preferring to be a little poor rather than see the tragedy of family breakdown.

Recently, Chen Shifa, who works as a salesman in the town's mechanical mold factory, filed for divorce again, which is a very typical example of ingratitude. His wife Zhao Qiaofeng is notoriously virtuous, and after he made a lot of money, he actually raised a mistress outside. Many people in the village knew about it, but only his honest wife Zhao Qiaofeng didn't know anything about it in the dark.

We don't want to watch a kind woman lose her family and her hard-earned property rights, and we don't want to see this kind of atmosphere continue to spread in the village, corrupting morality and family rules.

We strongly urge the court to handle this divorce case fairly and impartially, and not let a woman who has worked hard for the family have to shed tears of sadness for family changes, let alone let the woman who was victimized in the marriage be swept away. We don't know the law, but we want the law to protect them and protect us.

We strongly urge the Women's Federation to come forward to uphold justice and support our women. The Women's Federation is our mother's home, and it should appeal to society to punish those who have lost their conscience and morality. Enterprises should be required to strengthen their social responsibility, educate their employees well, and punish those employees who have lost their morality and conscience, so that they cannot become unfettered.

We are willing to provide all the facts for the injured party in this case, and hope that the leaders can pay attention to this divorce case in their busy schedules. I also hope that this divorce case can become a negative teaching material, so that those negative people who forget their roots after becoming rich can wake up from it, return to normal family life, and make the social atmosphere in the village full of positive energy.

A group of village women who don't want to be silent

Dongfang Siyi later learned that the joint letter led by Chen Shilian was written by Chen Shilian's daughter who let her go to college. After it was written, hundreds of women in the village took the initiative to sign their names one after another, and voluntarily put their fingerprints on them. Chen Shilian also took a few young women with her and sent dozens of copied letters to the courts, women's federations, and other government agencies.

The joint letter attracted the attention of the Women's Federation, as well as the lawyer who provided legal aid to Zhao Qiaofeng. After investigation, the lawyer finally learned that more than a dozen such tragedies had occurred in this village. After the man has money in business outside, he ignores the feelings he once had with his original partner, and wants to die or live or divorce, in short, he achieves the goal of divorce from his original partner by unscrupulous means.

These divorced men soon married their young brides, and the women of the village felt this marital crisis in front of them, and felt that sooner or later this bad atmosphere would also harm their families, and if there was no one to treat them, they would indulge those men who liked the new and hated the old and greedy for pleasure, and those men would lose their sense of social responsibility and family responsibility, and they would bring about the local social atmosphere, and if this phenomenon continued for a long time, it would also make more men lose their social conscience.

After learning about the situation, the Women's Federation also deliberately wanted to take advantage of this incident to publicize the "Marriage Law" and the "Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women and Children" among the villagers. At the request and active appeal of the Women's Federation, the Bureau of Justice specially appointed a lawyer to provide legal aid to Zhao Qiaofeng free of charge. The Bureau of Justice is also preparing to work with the Women's Federation to use this case to publicize the Marriage Law and the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women and Children.

The lawyer who provided legal aid to Zhao Qiaofeng visited the villagers extensively, and in the process of investigation, the villagers provided a lot of real evidence. The lawyer did several mediation efforts, but the plaintiff Chen Shifa insisted on a divorce, and the defendant Zhao Qiaofeng was also disheartened and agreed to the divorce. Finally, the disagreements between the parties mainly focused on the division of property. In order to find out the property that the plaintiff Chen Shifa may have deliberately hidden, the lawyer did a lot of investigation, and finally all the suspicious points were revealed.

Dongfang Siyi also unexpectedly learned the story of three generations of women in Zhao Qiaofeng's family in court, which made him, a judge, very emotional.

Zhao Qiaofeng's 90-year-old grandmother Ke Shi was sold by her biological parents to others as a child daughter-in-law at the price of three quintals of rice when she was six years old, and at the age of thirteen, she was forced to have a house with her husband who was 12 years older than herself. After ten years, Ke Shi, who has two children, thought that no matter how good or bad she was, she could finally live a stable life, where would she have thought that her husband was lazy and addicted to gambling, and when she was twenty-three years old, her husband, who was red-eyed, sold it to someone else for the price of five quintals of rice.

Like most women of her time, Keshi had no freedom or ability to change their enslaved lives, they had no dignity, they did not have any right to choose, but the lowest class of the weak who could be trampled on at will. They have no power to resist, only the miserable fate of being slaughtered.

Although Zhao Qiaofeng's mother, who was over the age of six, was luckier than her grandmother, and the social status of women in New China had really improved, it was difficult for women's rights and interests to be protected in a timely and necessary manner in that era when the legal system was not perfect. Zhao Qiaofeng's father had a bad habit of drinking, and when he was drunk, he often beat her mother to the point that she was covered in injuries.

In Zhao Qiaofeng's memory, her mother always wiped her tears while cleaning up the pots and pans that were broken by her drunken father. Mother told Zhao Qiaofeng many times that she wanted to divorce, and was persuaded by the village cadres many times to come back, scarred and carefully lived most of her life, and finally, Zhao Qiaofeng's father was finally paralyzed because of excessive drinking, and her mother was considered a blessing in disguise, and finally got rid of the life of frequent beatings, and was able to live in peace in her old age.

Dongfang Siyi typed the last word of the verdict on the computer, his mood seemed a little heavy, he got up and stood in front of the window, looked at the bright and quiet sky outside the window, and couldn't help but fall into deep thought.

In the course of collegiate deliberations with the two people's assessors on this case, in addition to seriously analyzing the evidence and facts of the case and discussing the relevant provisions of the law, they were also very emotional about the social phenomena involved in the case.

People's assessor Xie Siqiang, a middle school history teacher, feels that this case is a good example of women's rights and interests being protected by law. The fate of three generations of women in Zhao Qiaofeng's family is also a microcosm of women's fate.

Another people's assessor, Cheng Fei, is a member of the Social and Legal Affairs Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and she has studied the legal system for women's rights and interests: "Although we have made certain achievements in the protection of the legitimate rights and interests of women and children, we still need to further improve the legal system for the protection of the rights and interests of women and children. ”

The emancipation of women in the true sense is not only a great and remarkable achievement made by New China, but also a major change that has never been seen in the history of mankind. Hundreds of millions of women, who account for half of the population, have finally been protected by law in their social status and family life, which has completely changed the fate of women being oppressed and enslaved under the feudal social system.

The encouragement of the founder of the republic, "women can hold up half the sky," has stimulated the enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of women to build a country and a beautiful homeland, and the vast number of women in New China have completed the process of "socialization" of the entire group in the shortest possible time, from "people in the house" to "social people", and the state has established the social status of women and men on a completely equal footing in the law, and at the same time, through ideology, political movements, and administrative intervention, not only has the idea of "equality between men and women" penetrated deeply into the hearts of the people. And it can be embodied in all aspects and corners of social life.

The tremendous achievements made in the emancipation of women in New China were unattainable by the so-called "feminist movement" in the West, whether from the perspective of human rights, or from the political, economic, cultural, moral, and legal perspectives. This is an epoch-making change, and it is also the most beautiful scene after the rebirth of an ancient civilization.

In this case, in addition to the defendant Zhao Qiaofeng's passive awakening and taking up the legal weapon to protect his legitimate rights and interests after the plaintiff Chen Shifa asked for a divorce from him, it is of great social significance that the awakening of the collective consciousness of those women in the place where Zhao Qiaofeng's crime occurred, after knowing this case, they did not choose to stay out of the matter, but took the initiative to participate collectively, took the initiative to testify for Zhao Qiaofeng, took the initiative to provide clues in all aspects, and took the initiative to cheer for Zhao Qiaofeng. Because they see the possible negative impact on their own rights and interests from this case, they want to use collective consciousness to eliminate this impact. It's a proactive act, and they show by their actions that they are no longer a vulnerable group that can be ignored.

Dongfang Siyi thinks that from the perspective of women's overall survival and development, their rights and interests have been widely protected, but due to individual differences and differences in the family and social living environment in which individuals live, the legitimate rights and interests of some women have been infringed, and it is necessary for them to improve their comprehensive ability and quality, and also to provide timely and necessary protection from relevant state organs and women's organizations.

Dongfang Siyi thinks that from a legal point of view, it is also the most important duty of a judge to handle every case involving marriage and family.

(Next Notice: Chapter 58: Hidden Possessions)