China ‘must do more’ to protect its children from sex offenders

HONG KONG — Reports that a foreign kindergarten teacher in east China has been formally charged with molesting a pupil have reignited calls for better protection for the country’s children.

The reports come just weeks after a known sex offender was arrested for abusing girls at the primary school he worked at in the southern province of Guizhou.

In the latest case, prosecutors in Qingdao, a port city in Shandong province, announced last week that after a six-month investigation into allegations made about a teacher, they would be proceeding to trial.

RYB, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is one of China’s biggest providers of early education services.

In the second case, Guizhou Daily reported last month that a Chinese man employed as a teacher at an international primary school in Guiyang, the provincial capital of Guizhou, had been charged with sexually abusing several girl pupils.

Investigators discovered that the suspect was a convicted sex offender who had served a seven-year sentence in another city for multiple rapes, with at least one of his victims being a minor.

The revelation sparked outrage among parents and teachers, with tens of thousands of them taking to social media to question how a known sex offender could have been allowed to work with young children.

Traditionally, the subject of child sex abuse has been taboo in China, with many parents reluctant to report or even talk about alleged offences out of fear of jeopardising their children’s prospects.

But Professor Pi Yijun, a professor specialising in criminology at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said that if the country wanted to provide better protection for its children it was time that attitude changed, and the government should lead the way.

“The right to know is a problem in China. They [the government] only publicise the good news and don’t want to talk about the bad news,” he said.

“As a result, it is very difficult to understand the real situation as we can’t get the data. But what is more important? [Covering up] the scandal or the safety of our children?”

Ms Gao Yurong, vice-president of the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University, agreed there was a need for greater transparency, though she acknowledged that it would not be easy because most acts of child abuse were perpetrated by the victims’ relatives or close family friends.

“[Because of their close relationship with their attackers] children are often afraid to say that something bad has happened to them,” she said.

Also, when abuse occurred, most victims’ parents tended to try to resolve the matter themselves, without going to the authorities, leaving perpetrators free to repeat their crimes, Ms Gao said.

“We don’t recommend that people settle such matters privately, but rather they report them to the police so they can be dealt with by the law.”

Prof Pi said that as well as the need for better reporting of sexual abuse cases, the laws covering such crimes required updating, particularly as they related to offences against boys.

Under Chinese law, rape victims are assumed to be female, therefore the most serious charge than can be levelled against anyone convicted of abusing boys is indecency, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

“People don’t take abuse against boys seriously enough, as they tend to think that boys won’t suffer as much as girls, won’t get pregnant and are more able to protect themselves,” he said.

As part of their efforts to provide better protection for children, some local governments have set up registers of known sex offenders, allowing schools and other organisations to conduct background checks.

Authorities in Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong province, were among the first to develop such a system and now have a database of about 400 known offenders, Guangzhou Daily reported.

Similar systems are also being tested across eastern China, in Shanghai and the provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

Prof Michelle Miao, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that while the databases were a step in the right direction, it remained to be seen how effective they would be.

“There will be interesting questions such as whether the criminal history checks are mandatory or voluntary, especially for private schools,” she said.

“And what criminal offences would be included that could disqualify an ‘offender’ from being eligible for a teaching job?”

Prof Pi also expressed concern about the fragmented nature of the existing monitoring system. What was needed, he said, was a central government agency to guide policy on child protection issues and manage a national sex offenders register.

Such an agency could also set mandatory controls that would prevent offenders moving from city to city to exploit gaps in oversight, he said.

“[The current level of] collaboration and communication between local governments and departments is grossly inadequate, as they all work in isolation and are only interested if they get the credit,” he said.

According to a recent state media report, China’s National Health Commission released a document to canvas the opinions of governments across the country on plans to establish a national database of child sex offenders who would be disqualified from working in schools, nurseries and kindergartens.

But as well as establishing a better monitoring system, Pi said the government needed to update its statute books as the present laws dealing with sex crimes against children were based on those designed to protect adults, not taking the greater vulnerability of minors into account.

“Children are much more vulnerable than adults,” he said. “So we can’t apply the standard for adults in cases involving young children, as the nature [of the cases] is totally different.”

According to China’s top prosecution and criminal investigation agency – the Supreme People’s Procuratorate – 67,600 people were convicted on child abuse charges in 2017, an 80 per cent increase from the year before.

While the agency did not say how many of the crimes were of a sexual nature, Prof Pi said the key issue now was recognising the threat posed to the nation’s children and establishing a system capable of protecting them.

“The government likes to tell us that children are our future, but if we don’t protect them in the present then how are they going to become our future?” he said. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST