Recently, Hong Kong was exposed a horrific case of child abuse in a residential building, and as of now, 29 children have been victimized in the "Children's Residence" under the Jurisdiction of the Hong Kong Children's Protection Association, while there are only 70 children in the "Children's Happy Residence".
Twenty-nine young children were pulled hair, heads spanked, slapped or slapped on the head, and some were even thrown to the ground, covered with redness, swelling and bruises, which were cruel and unacceptable.
And now the police have only viewed about 20% of the surveillance footage, 16 employees have been arrested (the police have earlier seized about 60,000 hours of surveillance video), and after more footage is read in the future, it is not excluded that more employees will be arrested in the hospital and more children will be found.
Hong Kong's "strong" anti-abuse safety net?
In 2017, the child abuse case in Beijing's red, yellow and blue kindergarten shocked the mainland, when the Local media interviewed Chen Qianxian, a lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of hong kong Chinese, who had been serving in the Hong Kong Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse for 14 years, and Chen pointed out that the local anti-abuse in Hong Kong "The actual operation of the 'safety net' is very good, and once the investigation mechanism is activated, the SWD, non-governmental organizations, hospitals and the police will all work together."
Hong Kong Government is committed to providing childcare and rehabilitation support services (Photo of Information Services Department of the HKSAR Government)
She is right that in dealing with child abuse, Hong Kong has strong legal protection and efficient governance team, as well as professional legal services and firm respect for the rule of law.
Hong Kong became a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994. It sets out the right of the child to the highest standard of health (article 24) and the right to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse (article 34).
Hong Kong has a number of laws that have specific provisions to protect children's rights, such as:
The Protection of Children and Juveniles Ordinance, the Offences Against the Person Ordinance, the Child Pornography Prevention Ordinance, the Abduction and Custody of Children Ordinance, the Evidence Ordinance, the Employment Ordinance, the Criminal Offences Ordinance, the Criminal Procedure Ordinance, the Live Television Links and Video Recording Evidence Rules, as well as the Education Ordinance and the Adoption Ordinance.
Chief Executive visits kindergartens providing pre-school rehabilitation services (Photo, Information Services Department of the HKSAR Government)
Hong Kong's protection of children is almost strict in some laws, such as:
Section 27 of the Offences against the Person Ordinance provides that any person who deliberately neglects, abuses, abandons or abandons a child or adolescent aged 16 years or under his or her care, thereby causing him or her injury, including damage or loss of sight or hearing, mutilation of limbs or bodily organs, or insanity, is a criminal offence punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.
However, as soon as Chan's voice dropped, in January 2018, a five-year-old child in Tuen Mun was abused to death by her father and stepmother at home.
Police found 133 old and new wounds on his body, covering his head and limbs, which were described as "the worst case of child abuse since the opening of Hong Kong".
His eight-year-old brother, Chan Swee Yi (Yi Tsai), was also suspected of being beaten to the point of being bruised.
The recent case of child abuse in "Tong Le Ju" was even more appalling and shocked the whole of Hong Kong.
Background Additions:
The Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children, a subsidiary of Children's Delight House, is one of the oldest non-profit children's charities in Hong Kong, with a total of 27 service units serving about 3,000 children every day.
The most unacceptable thing is that this kind of long-term, large-scale, and highly detectable abuse that occurs in the "Children's Happy Residence" is that no one in the institution is silent.
It was not until December 17 last year that a neighbor witnessed a staff abusing children in the outdoor playground of the courtyard and informed the dean, and then the dean called the police, that the appalling "Children's Happy Residence" incident gradually surfaced.
Hong Kong's anti-abuse "safety net" has been overlooked so far that all excuses cannot be accepted.
"Report" or "Don't Report"?
The "Tong Le Ju" incident has made the whole hong Kong angry, and netizens have begun to reflect: Why did such a thing happen in Hong Kong?
Some people believe that the repeated child abuse cases in Hong Kong's highly civilized small society can be attributed to the "declaration system" or "insufficient supervision".
When children or teenagers in Hong Kong are abused, most of them need the Social Welfare Department, social workers, or police officers to "report" the case and "apply" for investigation, rather than independent agencies or individuals taking the initiative to "supervise", patrol, and take the initiative to "discover" the crime.
For example, if the 5-year-old girl who was abused to death mentioned above is coming, if the teacher of Futai Kindergarten where she attended or the Hing Tak school where her brother attended could promptly report the case to the newspaper office, and then the SWD sent a social worker to visit her home, then the tragedy might have been avoided.
Similarly, in this incident of child abuse that shocked the whole of Hong Kong, if the employees who did not commit violence in the hospital can report the situation to SWD in a timely manner, or report to the police, to a large extent, such a large-scale and bad child abuse case can be avoided.
In addition, Hong Kong's blurred "reporting" boundaries have also delayed the exposure of child abuse cases to a certain extent.
In an interview with the media, some Hong Kong social workers have said that in Hong Kong, the line between "reporting" and "not reporting" is not clear; more importantly, when it is necessary to "report", there is also a vague area.
For children who have been abused in the family, after the social worker investigates and reports, the children may be taken away from their parents, and the parents have the opportunity to be arrested by the police.
At the same time, children will also feel that they have been "bad people", so before blurring the boundaries of "reporting", frontline social workers are likely to choose not to "report".
For children who have been abused in institutions such as hospitals, because the crime of "no protection" in Hong Kong (a new offence recommended by the LRC Subcommittee, which proposes to impose criminal liability on bystanders who did not take "reasonable steps" at the time of the crime) has not yet been committed, whether child abuse can be stopped or exposed by the staff within the institution is also up to the conscience of other staff, not legal responsibility.
Even more frightening is that in the "Children's Happy House" similar to the "Children's Happy House", the victims are all abandoned babies, orphans, children referred by the Government or from troubled families, and the age is between the first birth and three years old.
Most of these children have lost the protection of their families and are too weak to protect themselves or seek outside help, so as long as there is a tacit understanding between the staff of the hospital, the cost of crimes of child abuse by the staff is basically zero.
Perhaps, for Hong Kong, rather than expressing sympathy, it is more necessary to reflect deeply to find ways to prevent the recurrence of similar vicious incidents from the source.
Hong Kong International Kindergarten (Photo by information office of the HKSAR Government)
(Reporter Shen Yuqing)
This article is a new media article of the Hong Kong Economic Herald,
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