On October 13 last year, an emergency room at a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, received a 16-month-old girl.
When the girl, Zheng Ren, was taken to the hospital by her adoptive mother, her heart had stopped beating.
Thanks to the efforts of the medical staff, she briefly recovered her heartbeat, but when the attending doctor saw her CT and X-ray results, he felt his blood flowing backwards... The child is like a fragmented rag doll with multiple fractures in the brain, ribs, and thigh bones.
Xiao Zhengren's heart stopped beating repeatedly, and after the third heartbeat stopped, she could not be saved again, and no one knew how painful the process was for her. Subsequent autopsy reports concluded that "external abdominal injury caused rupture of the interintestinal membrane" for her cause of death.
After her death, a person lies quietly in a free cemetery where children who have died of cancer are buried, and no one remembers her, as if she had walked through this world in the future.
Until the 2nd of this month, the broadcast of a South Korean TV program revealed the case of Xiao Zhengren suspected of being abused to death by his adoptive parents, which triggered the anger of the korean people.
The untimely demise of a 16-month-old girl has sparked public outrage in South Korea after an investigative report aired by SBS revealed how her adoptive parents allegedly abused her to death.
The girl, named Jeong-in, died in October 2020, just 271 days after a family adopted her in southwestern Seoul.
271 days of nightmares
Zheng Ren was abandoned at birth and grew up to seven months old in a welfare institution. From the photos of her childhood, it can be seen that Zheng Ren before she was adopted had fair skin, very cute flesh, and cheerful and lively.
In January last year, Xiao Zhengren was adopted by a young couple. Her adoptive mother, Zhang Mou, is a translator and her adoptive father works for a television station, and the two already have a 4-year-old daughter.
After adopting Zheng Ren, the two also took her and their eldest daughter to star in the TV show "Ordinary Family", showing the scene of harmony and harmony of the whole family. They said on the show that zheng ren was adopted because the eldest daughter wanted a younger sister, and said that "adoption is not an unseemly thing, it is a matter that should receive blessings." ”
But the blessing that Little Zhengren received did not become a reality. On the contrary, during the 271 days of adoption, she experienced despair and pain that many people could not experience in their lifetime.
At the beginning of the adoption, Zhang and his wife may indeed hope to find a companion for the eldest daughter as they say. But not long after, Zhang began to complain to relatives and friends: "It seems that the adoption is too simple", "I seem to have no feelings for the adopted child." ”
This is also the beginning of Zheng Ren's nightmare.
According to the SBS program "Want to Know the Truth", the police have received three alarms. This was three chances that could have redeemed Jeong-in.
The first person to call the police was Zheng Ren's nursery teacher. In May last year, the teacher found that the child had multiple bruises on his body, thinking that this was very abnormal, so he called the police, but the police believed the adoptive parents' excuse of "just helping the child massage too hard" and could not do it.
After the storm, the adoptive parents began to shut Zheng Ren in their homes, and from July to September last year, Zheng Ren only appeared in the nursery six times.
Last July, the police were called again. Someone saw his adoptive parents leave Zheng Ren alone in the car and then went shopping. The clever adoptive parents once again succeeded in excusing themselves on the grounds of cultivating their children to sleep independently.
In September last year, during regular check-ups, a pediatrician found that Zheng Ren, who was clearly in the stage of development and growth, weighed 2 kilograms less than before, and he suspected that the child had been abused, so he called the police. But adoptive parents say the reason for the weight loss is that the child is picky eaters, not eating and not drinking water.
Once again, the police chose to believe the adoptive parents' claims.
On the day of Zheng Ren's accident, the adoptive mother found that the child's condition was not right, and sent a text message asking her husband whether he wanted to send him to the hospital. After that, she did not immediately send Zheng Ren to the hospital for rescue, but changed her clothes and sent her own daughter to school first, and then called a taxi to take Zheng Ren to the hospital after returning home. The taxi driver noticed that something was wrong with Zheng Ren and suggested calling an ambulance, but the adoptive mother refused.
The attending doctor in charge of first aid Zheng Ren said that when Zheng Ren died, there were multiple bruises on his body, his abdomen was full of blood, many internal organs were ruptured, even the innermost pancreas was ruptured, and there were multiple fractures throughout the body. "This is a picture of child abuse that should be in a textbook," he said. ”
Regarding the injury, the adoptive parents said that the girl fell from the sofa by herself, but the doctor said that it must be the gravity of the adult jumping off the sofa and stepping on it hard to cause the child's pancreas to rupture. And this is not the first time that Zheng Ren has been injured, from the monitor footage released by the nursery teacher, it can be seen that Zheng Ren is even in pain in the clinic and cannot stand up, slumped on the ground.
The results of the autopsy of the National Academy of Scientific Investigation showed that Xiao Zhengren was only 8 kilograms when she died in 16 months, and 9 kilograms when she was adopted at 7 months old.
Zheng Ren's adoptive parents were arrested last month, with her adoptive mother facing charges of manslaughter and her adoptive father charged with negligence, and the adoptive mother's case will go to trial on the 13th of this month.
Jeong-in was adopted last January by a couple with a 4-year-old biological daughter. The mother was an interpreter and the father an employee of a broadcasting company. The parents even appeared on a program by the Korea Educational Broadcasting System with both daughters to promote adoption.
According to the SBS report, the adoptive parents brutally abused Jeong-in for months. A worker at a day care center made the first report of suspected child abuse to Yangcheon Police Precinct last May after she found bruises on Jeong-in’s body. The parents told police they probably massaged the girl too hard, and the police closed the case.
The couple then kept Jeong-in at home instead of sending her to day care. From July to September, she only showed up at the center six times.
In June, the police received a report that Jeong-in was left alone inside a parked car. In September, a pediatrician who treated Jeong-in reported suspected abuse to the police. In both instances, the police closed investigations by saying they could find no evidence and did not separate the child from the couple.
Jeong-in died on Oct. 13, 2020, at a hospital in Mok-dong, Yangcheon District. Her body was bruised, many bones were fractured and she had wounds on her head. She suffered three cardiac arrests at the hospital and the doctors could not resuscitate her.
A hospital worker reported suspected child abuse to the police.
According to an autopsy by the National Forensic Service, Jeong-in died of serious internal bleeding of her organs caused by external force. She only weighed 8 kilograms (17.6 pounds) at the age of 16 months. When she was adopted by the couple in January, she was seven months and weighed 9 kilograms.
Yangcheon Police concluded that the couple started violently abusing Jeong-in one month after adoption. In November, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office indicted the adoptive mother for involuntary manslaughter by child abuse and the father for negligence. The mother’s trial will begin on Jan. 13 in the Seoul Southern District Court.
"Zheng Ren, I'm sorry"
After the SBS program aired, people who could not suppress their anger launched a national petition on the Blue House website demanding that the government severely punish the adoptive parents involved, which had exceeded 230,000 as of last month.
At the same time, netizens also launched a "Zheng Ren, I'm sorry" condemnation campaign on social media. Many South Korean public figures, including actors Shin Ailok and Han Hye-jin, singer Yan Jeong-hoon, comedian Kim Won-hyo and other artists, have also voiced their anger and demanded that Jeong In's adoptive parents be severely punished.
According to the JoongAng Ilbo, on January 5, actor Lee Young-ae took his twin children to the cemetery of Jeong-jin in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, to mourn.
On January 5, South Korean Prime Minister Ding Se-kyun held an emergency ministerial meeting on child abuse at the Seoul Government Building, and he said of the "Jeong In case" that "I am very sorry and regretful" and that "it is really heart-wrenching as a national to think of Jung In's short life without any protection from his family and the state, and to die in pain." ”
Over 230,000 Koreans signed a petition calling for a heavier sentence for the couple on the Blue House petition bulletin board.
Hashtags relating to the case, including "Jeong-in-ah, [I'm/we're] sorry", trended in South Korea, and many celebrities posted about the injustice.
Actress Lee Young-ae on Tuesday visited the cemetery where Jeong-in lies in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi, to mourn the 16-month-old girl.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun expressed "pain" and "regret" over the country not "giving protection to" Jeong-in.
Crime and Punishment
The tragedy of Jeong In is not unique in South Korea.
On June 1 last year, a 9-year-old boy was imprisoned by his stepmother in a trolley box for seven hours, and finally died after rescue was ineffective.
A case of child abuse exposed in 2016 was even more appalling, when a father brutally murdered his 7-year-old son and hid his body in a refrigerator for four years.
According to a report released by the South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare in August last year, in 2019 alone, more than 30,000 cases of child abuse were reported in South Korea, an increase of 22.1% year-on-year. Even more surprising is that 75.6% of the cases were committed by parents.
South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare said the number of child abuse cases in South Korea has increased in recent years. Sadly, the number of children who died of abuse in 2019 also increased from 28 in 2018 to 43.
Child abuse is frequent in South Korea, and parents are often perpetrators. Many people believe that South Korea's 60-year-old Civil Code is one of the reasons. Article 915 of the Civil Code, first enacted in South Korea in 1960, clearly stipulates that parents have disciplinary powers over their children and may punish them to protect or teach them.
In view of this, in August last year, the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Korea decided to delete the provisions of the Civil Code on the "right of parents to discipline" in order to eliminate disciplinary acts beyond the scope of the teaching.
The death of Xiao Zhengren has once again attracted the attention of the South Korean government.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on January 4 ordered countermeasures to prevent the recurrence of child abuse.
He urged government agencies to strengthen the management and supervision of adoption procedures and to give priority to the rights and interests of children in any adoption process.
In an official statement, the South Korean government said it would step up screening of potential adoptive parents and ensure follow-up monitoring to safeguard the welfare of adopted children.
In addition to this, the Government plans to send 664 dedicated civil servants to deal with child abuse.
It is worth mentioning that the South Korean police will set up a separate department to deal with child abuse cases. Police inspect child abuse cases declared more than twice every six months. Upon receiving two declarations, the police should visit the families involved in child abuse the next day to thoroughly confirm whether the child is abused and test the child protection measures.
Media reports of child abuse cases have been popping up frequently in South Korea recently.
In one case, a 9-year-old boy died after being allegedly locked in a suitcase for 7 hours by his stepmother.
In 2016, a shocking case of child abuse came to light in South Korea, in which a father brutally murdered his seven-year-old son and hid his body in a refrigerator for four years.
The number of child abuse cases in South Korea has soared in recent years, with 41,388 reports of child abuse received in 2019, of which 30,070 cases were confirmed, a 22.2 percent year-on-year increase, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare's data.
And the number of children who died from abuse also increased by 15 year-on-year to 43 last year, the Ministry of Health and Welfare noted.
In response to the high number of child abuse cases in South Korea, the Ministry of Justice decided to delete Article 915 of the Civil Act 1958 provides for the "right to take disciplinary action" and legal provisions against violence and abuse are not interpreted as prohibiting all corporal punishment in childrearing.
In the wake of Jeong-in's death, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on January 4, urged government agencies to strengthen management and supervision of adoption processes, requiring them to give priority to the rights and interests of children in any adoption process.
In an official statement, the government will strengthen checks on potential adoptive parents and ensure thorough follow-up to monitor adopted children's welfare.
The government also plans to dispatch 664 specialized civil workers to respond to child abuse situations.
The South Korean police will also set up a separate department to deal with child abuse cases and strengthen cooperation with relevant departments and agencies.
Little one, have fun in heaven!