Recently, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children’s children’s residential institution "Tong Le Ju" was exposed to child abuse. The association held a press conference this Tuesday (28th) evening to explain for the first time that its staff of Tong Le Ju were involved in child abuse. The arrest incident refers to the fact that four more staff members were found to be involved in child abuse after checking more closed-circuit television images after the incident. They have reported to the Social Welfare Department and called the police.
At present, the number of people involved in the case has reached as many as seven, and the total number of abused children is 18. Redness and bruises.
For different reasons, young children are not taken care of by their parents after birth, so they need to be admitted to institutions, but now they are being abused by dormitory staff again, which will undoubtedly cause secondary harm to the young children.
If there are only two or three employees involved, the case may still be regarded as an individual incident. However, after this incident has become more and more uncovered, it means that this case may not be a single incident, but an early precedent.
The severity of the case is far beyond imagination
The Society for the Protection of Children said that it would look through more than 800 CCTV records in the past month, but now four more people have been arrested before all the records have been watched, which makes people suspect that past deleted records may also contain unrevealed Or there have been recovered cases of child abuse, and the number may be far more than expected. The situation deserves social attention.
According to information from the Social Welfare Department, there are currently two organizations providing residential nursery services, namely, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children's "Tong Le Ju" involved this time, and the Po Leung Kuk Infant Group providing a total of 249 emergency places for children.
As the largest infant and toddler home in Hong Kong, "Tongle Home" provides care for 104 infants and toddlers from birth to three years old. This means that among the infants and toddlers who are currently receiving home services, nearly two of them have been confirmed to have been abused. become.
Tsai Su-suk-hsien, director general of the Society for the Protection of Children, said at the press conference that "Tong Le Ju" has more than 80 employees. After deducting non-care positions such as principals, social workers, and nurses, it can be estimated that the number of front-line child care workers in the institutions should be less than 70 people.
Based on the current seven arrests, it is estimated that there are almost one adult frontline staff who have participated in or indirectly caused child abuse incidents. The situation is really serious.
SWD needs to bear certain responsibilities
The abuser should be brought to justice, but the SWD has the same responsibility as a supervisory agency.
According to the information of the SWD, there were three cases and one case involving abuse by school dormitory staff in 2018 and 2019 respectively. They accounted for 0.3% and 0.1% of the total child protection cases in the same year. The reports were reported last year and the first nine months of this year. Among the 940 and 1,023 child protection cases, none of them involved abuse by school dormitory staff. However, since all the cases were reported on the initiative of the institution, the malicious concealment of cases is difficult to be reflected in the figures.
Just as Lei Zhang Shenjia, a member of the Children’s Commission, pointed out that even if dormitory staff account for a small percentage of the overall child abuse cases, the non-representative situation does not exist. Therefore, it is necessary for the SWD to conduct a comprehensive review of the relevant monitoring mechanism and should not just wait for cases. For reporting, it is necessary to take the initiative to visit different institutions, conduct more random inspections, and establish an effective reporting and complaint mechanism and communication procedures, so that third parties can also act as monitors to protect the well-being of children.
Dealing with the problem of child abuse cannot stop with legislation promptly enacting the "crime of no protection". Improve the details to help the public understand that the 5-year-old girl and her brother have been abused for half a year without intervention. The social child protection mechanism is obviously insufficient
