Opinion | Child safety: Care home concerns a call to action

By Grenville Cross

On Jan. 21, the police arrested two more staff members from the Mong Kok care home run by the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children (HKSPC), and charged them with willful assault. They are suspected of having assaulted two children at the home, and their arrests bring the total number of staff under suspicion to 18. Over the last month, 16 other care workers were also charged, accused of assaulting at least 33 children, aged one to three years. All 18 suspects have been bailed to appear at Kowloon City Magistrates' Court on Feb. 21, when, if investigations are complete, they will likely be asked to enter their pleas.

If true, and the case has yet to be proved in court, the allegations are clearly shocking. If children are not safe while in care, it begs the question of whether they are safe anywhere. The Mong Kok care home, in Portland Street, housed over 70 very young children, aged up to three years, and they were looked after by 40 HKSPC staff members. The assaults allegedly involved head hitting, hair pulling and face slapping, with children also being thrown around.

Established in 1926, the HKSPC has done some outstanding work over the years, and currently operates 27 centers for children aged up to 16. It cares for around 3,000 children and their families daily, and is committed to what it calls the "physical and mental development" of those for whom it is responsible. On Dec. 28, it announced that "behavior that violates children's well-being will not be tolerated", and it is fully assisting the police inquiry.

Another disturbing feature of the case is the way it came to light. According to the police, the allegations only emerged after a neighbor with a view of the home's playground tipped the authorities off. If this be right, there was no reporting by any of the home's own staffers, duty of care notwithstanding. The police are now wading through over 60,000 hours of video footage, and further areas of concern may yet come to light, along with other suspects.

As things stand, however, there is nothing to suggest that the problems allegedly associated with the Mong Kok care home exist elsewhere. It is important, therefore, for people, however upset, not to be carried away by emotion. Quite clearly, if there are a few bad apples in one home this cannot be allowed to tarnish the reputation of an entire organization, or to cast a cloud of suspicion over its many dedicated professionals. That said, a thorough review is unavoidable, not only to reassure the public that this episode is no more than a one-off, but also to safeguard the HKSPC's good name.

Although it is certainly true that even a single instance of child abuse is one too many, perspective must always be maintained, even when anger mounts.

Child abuse, regrettably, in one form or another, exists in most places, and sometimes on an industrial scale. On May 20, 2009, for example, an inquiry in Ireland reported that physical and sexual abuse of children was endemic in the institutions run by religious orders between the 1940's and 1970s. On Oct. 22, 2018, after an inquiry in Australia disclosed that tens of thousands of children had suffered abuse in the nation's establishments over decades, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, issued a national apology, saying "we finally acknowledge and confront the lost screams of our children". Then, on Oct. 5, 2021, an inquiry in France concluded that there were about 216,000 victims of child sexual abuse committed by the French Catholic Church between 1950 and 2020, causing President Emmanuel Macron to comment that many lives had "been shaken, sometimes broken".

There is, fortunately, no reason to suppose that child abuse in care homes, religious institutions or educational establishments is in any way endemic in Hong Kong. That said, if instances of abuse come to light, they must always be called out. The Social Welfare Department is now reviewing the Mong Kok case, and it will hopefully look at the wider picture. At the very least, it appears that supervisory arrangements may have to be tightened, and it could also be helpful, in the interests of quality control, to review staff recruitment and assessment mechanisms.

Even if, at the end of the day, there are no convictions arising out of the Mong Kok episode, a spotlight has nonetheless been shone on the weaknesses in the child protection laws. As a matter of urgency, there needs to be, firstly, a mandatory reporting requirement where people become aware of child abuse and, secondly, a child cruelty law that specifically criminalizes all types of child harm, be it emotional, physical or psychological, and, thirdly, the criminalization of child beating in all situations. If, moreover, the law, proposed in September by the Law Reform Commission, to criminalize a failure to protect a child from serious harm associated with an unlawful act or neglect, can now be fast-tracked, as happened in the UK in 2004, so much the better, as this will provide an extra layer of protection.

The Secretary for Labor and Welfare, Law Chi-kong, has directed an internal investigation into the allegations, and this must be wide-ranging. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Commission on Children, and is best placed to spearhead the child protection laws that are now so urgently required. After all, child safety has been on the back burner for ages, and further delay is simply not an option.

(Source: Orange News)

Grenville Cross, a Senior Counsel and Professor of Law, is Honorary Consultant to the Child Protection Institute of Against Child Abuse.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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