As the festive season is celebrated, there are some people who cannot join in. Child abuse remains a blight on society, with many of its victims suffering in silence, seeing no way out. Although some cases are reported, most are not, and too many children live out their lives in misery.
In the first nine months of 2021, reported child abuse cases rose to 871, an increase of 66 percent over the same period last year, when there were 525 cases. Physical abuse cases jumped from 262 to 444, an increase of 70 percent, with the police reporting that the perpetrators were usually family members. This situation was largely linked to the pandemic, with children spending more time at home; and in often crowded conditions, tensions flared. In these circumstances, the teachers and social workers who sometimes identify child abuse cases at an early stage were unable to exercise their customary oversight.
On top of this, reports of child sexual abuse rose in the same period by over 60 percent, from 263 to 427. Roughly a third of cases occurred in public, including on the MTR. Whereas 22 of the victims were aged five or under, all but one of them were girls. As Superintendent Lee King-hei, from the Police Force’s crime wing, explained last month: “This year, with kids returning to school, but for just half a day, they have a lot more freedom to run about outside,” and this has sometimes made them easy prey.
However, credit must always be given where it is due, and the government has taken some significant steps to protect children this year. In October, the new anti-doxxing law was enacted, and this will help to protect the many children who, as a recent survey by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University revealed, have undergone depression, anxiety and stress after the unauthorized posting online of their personal information. Cyberbullying of this sort can be as damaging to a child as physical abuse, but perpetrators will now have to think twice or else face sentences of up to HK$1 million ($128,230) in fines and five years’ imprisonment, and this will hopefully deter potential offenders.
How marvelous it would be if child protection was prioritized in 2022, and the government ensured that all that needs to be done is finally done. Whatever the obstacles, if there is a will, there is invariably a way. Child protection, after all, is an integral part of social justice, and any society is rightly judged by how it treats its weakest members
There has, moreover, been a major lacuna in the child protection laws for many years, and, in September, the Law Reform Commission recommended that this be plugged. It proposed the creation of a new offense of “failure to protect a child or vulnerable person where the child or vulnerable person’s death or serious harm results from an unlawful act or neglect”. Once enacted, this law will facilitate the prosecution of people who, for example, fail to lift a finger to help a child for whom they are responsible and who is in existential danger, such as Yeung Chi-wai, the 5-year-old disabled boy who died in 2013 after imbibing methamphetamine (“ice”) that his carers had reportedly left lying around at home. The LRC proposal is based on a UK law, which was fast-tracked through Parliament in 2004, and, now that the Labour and Welfare Bureau has carriage of the matter, it will hopefully display the same sense of urgency.
In her Policy Address on Oct 6, the chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, having clearly recognized, in light of recent tragedies, that child abuse must be reported as early as possible, announced that “we are formulating a legislative proposal to provide for a mandatory reporting mechanism on child abuse cases”. This, by any yardstick, was a breakthrough, and, once enacted, this law will bring Hong Kong into line with the 71 other jurisdictions that already provide for mandatory reporting, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the United States.
The proposed law must, however, if it is going to do the job properly, go the whole hog. As in Ontario, Canada, it will need to affix the public, including health professionals who work with children, with a duty to report if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that a child is being abused or neglected and is in need of protection. This would mean, therefore, that relatives, family, friends and neighbors, as well as professionals, would be required to report suspected abuse, whether physical, sexual or emotional. Although some people may balk at this, fearful it would be too wide, they cannot be allowed to prevail, not least because there can be no room for half-measures where child safety is at stake.
The chief executive also announced that a commissioner for children is to be appointed, tasked with assisting the Labour and Welfare Bureau to ensure that children are safe, and, again, this was most welcome. Once appointed, the commissioner will also need to seek the early enactment of laws in other key areas, including online abuse. In 2019, the LRC highlighted the dangers children face on the internet, and called for them to be protected from sexual predators by means of a new offense of “sexual grooming”, and this must be implemented. Indeed, the sending of sexual messages to a child is a real danger these days, not least because it is often the precursor of horrific abuse.
Given, moreover, the harmful impact of online pornography on children, a strict regime, using age verification technology, is essential to prevent children from accessing adult websites, whether deliberately or inadvertently. As the singer and Grammy Award-winner Billie Eilish has just revealed, her exposure to “abusive” pornography from the age of 11 had a devastating impact on her development. She said it “destroyed” her brain, warped her values and left her with recurrent nightmares, and children in Hong Kong must be protected from any such experiences.
The new commissioner will also need to seek the long-overdue update of the child cruelty law, contained in the Offences against the Person Ordinance (Section 27). Although the law works well enough when children are physically abused, it is of little use when psychological abuse is involved. If there is no tangible evidence, such as a wound or bruising, it is almost impossible to bring a prosecution, and this means that emotional abuse invariably goes unpunished. Hong Kong’s law is based on its UK counterpart, and the problem was resolved in Britain in 2016 by the so-called Cinderella law, which makes child cruelty prosecutable regardless of “whether the suffering or injury is of a physical or a psychological nature”, and Hong Kong must now follow suit.
Although the greater emphasis now being placed on child protection is certainly encouraging, children will not be truly safe until the outstanding laws are on the statute book. If the Labour and Welfare Bureau, the Commissioner for Children, and the Children’s Commission can work together to seek their early enactment, Hong Kong will be a far safer place for children to grow up in. Although the city has fallen behind some other places, once people of goodwill mobilize in pursuit of shared objectives, it should not be too difficult for it to catch up.
How marvelous it would be if child protection was prioritized in 2022, and the government ensured that all that needs to be done is finally done. Whatever the obstacles, if there is a will, there is invariably a way. Child protection, after all, is an integral part of social justice, and any society is rightly judged by how it treats its weakest members.
The author is a senior counsel and honorary consultant to the Child Protection Institute of Against Child Abuse, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.