Five-year-old girl’s murder shows urgent need for Hong Kong to reform child protection laws

Now is the time to act on multiple recommendations to pass laws requiring mandatory reporting for suspected cases of child abuse
Child protection must be prioritised, which means the enactment of a comprehensive reform package by the end of the year

Grenville Cross

Published: 6:45am, 24 Apr 2021

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Good can sometimes result from even the vilest of crimes. After the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in the United States in 2020, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Bill was introduced into the US House of Representatives in 2021.

It seeks to combat police misconduct, excessive force and racial bias in policing, and it is an appropriate response to a crime that shocked the world.

Following the convictions of a Hong Kong couple for murdering their five-year-old daughter in 2018, it is now incumbent on the authorities to also act decisively.

The victim, who died of septicaemia, sustained 133 injuries while her eight-year-old brother experienced 128 injuries. They both suffered horrific ill-treatment and neglect across many months, although this was preventable.

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Comprehensive measures in four key areas are urgently needed to minimise the chances of any other child ever experiencing a similar ordeal, and many children are at risk. The Social Welfare Department received reports of 1,064 child abuse cases in 2018, an increase of about 20 per cent over the 2008 figure of 882, and any of these could also have ended in tragedy.

These statistics are only a part of the picture, however, and many cases go undetected. This means the victims suffer in silence, not knowing to whom they can turn for help, and this can cause irreparable harm to their mental health and future prospects.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has applied to Hong Kong since 1994, and it imposes clear obligations on signatories.

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In particular, Article 19 requires governments to “take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical and mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) and any other person who has the care of the child”.

This, of course, has not yet happened, but all parts of government must now galvanise to turn Article 19 into a reality.

If child abuse is to be stopped, it has to be reported so the authorities can deal with it. This is why the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which supervises the convention, has called on governments to establish mechanisms for reporting abuse against children.

In 2013, the committee recommended mandatory reporting so that all types of child abuse can be countered, but this has not happened in Hong Kong despite the Ombudsman’s call in 2019 for the government to consider its feasibility.

Such action has been taken elsewhere. The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect recently revealed that, out of the 86 countries it had surveyed, 71 had enacted mandatory reporting laws, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the United States. Hong Kong must now follow suit.

The types of abuse and neglect which are reportable cover five main areas – physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and exposure to family violence. If child abuse is discovered at an early stage, the chances of helping the victim before serious harm occurs are greatly increased.

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While mandatory reporting is confined in some places to professionals who deal with children, such as doctors, care workers and teachers, elsewhere the net is cast more widely. This recognises that the more comprehensive the scheme, the greater its efficacy.

In Ontario, Canada, the public, including professionals who work with children, must report the matter if they have reasonable grounds to suspect a child is being abused or neglected and is in need of protection.

This means relatives, family friends and neighbours, as well as professionals, are duty-bound to report the abuse and cannot simply look away.

Since root-and-branch reform of child protection laws is now unavoidable, the Hong Kong government must also bring forward proposals to create a new offence of failing to protect a child or vulnerable witness where the victim’s death or serious harm results from an unlawful act or neglect, as proposed by the Law Reform Commission in 2019.

When this was first mooted in the United Kingdom, the need for such a law was recognised on all sides. It was therefore fast-tracked in 2004, and the same sense of urgency is now necessary in Hong Kong.

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Also required is an equivalent of the UK’s “Cinderella law” to expand the scope of the child cruelty law contained in the Offences Against the Person Ordinance to cover all types of harm.

This was achieved in Britain’s Serious Crime Act 2015 by enabling a prosecution, irrespective of “whether the suffering or injury is of a physical or psychological nature”. Since Hong Kong’s own law is based on the English model, it must now urgently catch up.

Although corporal punishment has been banned in schools and correctional institutions in line with Article 19, it is still permissible in the home, where it can do great harm in terms of trauma, depression or self-harm. It is often excessive, irrational and unexplained, and it causes untold damage to its victims.

After Nepal banned corporal punishment in all situations in 2018, Japan and South Korea followed suit. It is now proscribed in 62 countries altogether. Given the latest developments, the government must now also act decisively in this area if children are to be properly protected.

For too many years, the problems caused by child abuse have not been sufficiently addressed, and this must end. Child protection must be prioritised, which means the enactment of a comprehensive reform package by the end of the year.

If this is done, the nightmares endured by that little girl and her brother will at least have resulted in something meaningful.

Grenville Cross SC is honorary consultant to the Child Protection Institute of Against Child Abuse