Beating the baby beaters

By Huang Lanlan Source:Global Times Published: 2014-8-13 18:18:01

A Shanghai woman’s NGO battles child abuse


(From left) Li Shilai and the Taizhou baby Xie Linzi, Tingting and her daughter, and Chen Lan and her daughter at the Xiaoxiwangzhijia home in Minhang district Photo: Huang Lanlan/GT


 

In a house in Minhang district a man changes the diaper of a baby. The baby has a surgical drain attached to his head. The man is not the baby's father or related to him in any way. Four months ago 28-year-old Li Shilai hadn't even met the infant. But now he is taking care of this child who is, incidentally, suffering from spina bifida and hydrocephalus.

Four months ago the child's parents had asked the staff at the hospital in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, where the baby had just been born, to let him die. They told staff not to feed the baby and to leave him alone.

That was when Li Shilai became involved. He was working for a cosmetics company in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, and read about the case on the Internet. While most people would feel outraged at the way the parents were behaving and sorrow for the child, Li could do something about this.

He is a member of an NGO called Xiaoxiwangzhijia - literally "small hope home" - China's first registered NGO that deals with child abuse and neglect.

When details of the case were confirmed Xiaoxiwangzhijia members sprang into action. Li, who lived closest to the hospital in Taizhou, caught a bus at midnight and went to the hospital to rescue the baby.

A confronting sight

The first sight of the child was confronting. "He was lying on his stomach in a small bed, thin and yellow and had a big lump on his back." Li pushed his misgivings aside and vowed to save the life of the seriously ill baby. "His crying made my heart ache."

Li immediately talked to the father who said he was too poor to afford the medical costs to save his boy. He then vanished and switched his mobile phone off. With the parents out of the picture Li and other volunteers discussed the case with the hospital, offering to pay medical expenses. The hospital agreed and months later the baby was taken to Shanghai for more surgery.

This time the parents gave them permission. But only after Li and other volunteers had promised that they would pay the costs of the treatment and would never ask them for money.

Li first heard about Xiaoxiwangzhijia in June 2013 when he attended a special memorial service in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province. At the service he watched volunteers in Nanjing erect little gravestones for two children who had died from neglect. Their drug addict mother had locked them in a bedroom at their home and walked out. When the 1- and 2-year-old sisters were found they were both dead, their little bodies shriveled and withered from starvation. The mother, an unemployed woman named Yue Yan was eventually found and charged with intentional homicide. She is serving a life sentence.

The case sparked public outrage that year, and led to the foundation of Xiaoxiwangzhijia. Its creator and director, a determined mother and writer, Chen Lan, explained that the organization was established to help protect children from maltreatment and neglect at home. "But like these poor sisters in China there have been lots of children seriously injured or even killed in their homes," Chen told the Global Times. "I don't want to see things like this happen again."

The Nanjing tragedy was not the first case to upset and anger Chen. Early in the winter of 2010, a baby girl was born in Tianjin with an imperforate anus. Instead of having the baby treated, 13 days after she was born her father dispatched her to a hospice where he intended to let her die alone.

A secret mission

Immediately she heard about this Chen flew to Tianjin to save the abandoned infant. That night she slipped into the hospice, picked up the baby, and later, with friends, secretly sent the girl to a private hospital in Beijing.

Three years later, Chen recalled that unforgettable night in her book Xiao Xiwang (literally "small hope"). She wrote how she tried to feed the sick baby lying quietly in her arms.

"She had stayed in that hospice for 10 days - no food, no water, only a little glucose," Chen wrote. "She weighed just two kilograms, and looked like a small mummy. Her skin was as dry as sandpaper. Her belly bulged like a big ball, with blood vessels 'crawling' like earthworms beneath her skin.

"The poor baby was so weak that she had to stretch herself to suck a little milk. She straightened her slender neck, and struggled to lift up her small face to me - I guessed she had felt the breath of a mommy …"

Today Chen still describes the baby as having "a very pretty face."

Chen faced a lot of criticism for the way she tried to save that child. Sadly, the infant died two months later. It was not Chen's fault. The child's father and uncle arrived at the international hospital in Beijing where she was being treated and took her away even though the hospital told them the treatment would not cost anything.

That day is etched in Chen's memory. When the girl's father and uncle carried the baby out of the hospital a small crowd was waiting outside. Police, doctors, lawyers, reporters and ordinary people tried their best to persuade the two men to leave the child in the hospital but they rejected these pleas.

"It was ridiculous!" Chen said. "Everyone knew clearly that they were killing the baby, but no one could stop them - no one had the right to do so, not even the police."

Not responsible

The baby girl died and the family was not held responsible for the death. That still hurts Chen and the people who helped her. From then on, Chen began researching and reading about children in similar tragic situations. Then in June 2013, after learning about the dead sisters in Nanjing, she decided to do something positive to stop the neglect and abuse of children. A month later, she launched Xiaoxiwangzhijia in Shanghai.

Nowadays the group has more than 1,000 volunteers from all walks of life. "We also have some 20 legal experts, 10 psychologists and five lawyers helping us," Chen said.

They stay in contact through Xiaoxiwangzhijia's QQ chat group and WeChat and when members come across a case online or in the neighborhood, they report it to the group. "Then we discuss how to help the children, who should go to the home, whether we should call the police or talk to other child protection groups, and whether we need to organize online donations to help the children involved," Chen told the Global Times.

One of the cases the organization has handled this year happened in January after media reported that three children in Guangdong Province, an 8-year-old girl and two boys aged 4 and 2, were being abused by their drug addict father. The youngest boy's scalp was seriously scarred from when the father had poured boiling oil on him.

Over the past few months Xiaoxiwangzhijia members have been helping the children. The father was sent to a drug rehabilitation center and his sister is now looking after the children, with some funding and supervision by the organization. Since it was established, the organization has helped nearly 30 children including the three in Guangdong, and 4-month-old Xie Linzi, the Taizhou baby with spina bifida. The group has signed a fostering agreement with the father, and now the baby lives in a three-story house in Minhang district with her new "father" Li, a 15-year-old girl called Tingting and her 1-year-old daughter.

Two years ago, Tingting was raped and later gave birth to a baby. But instead of helping their daughter, her parents wanted to send the baby to be raised by someone else. Last month Tingting fled from her parents' home with her daughter, and came to Xiaoxiwangzhijia for help. After discussions with her parents and signing an agreement with them, the organization took the mother and baby in.

Most child abuse cases involve physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect or psychological abuse. These definitions have been adopted in many countries and regions including Hong Kong, which has very specific definitions listed in its Procedural Guide for Handling Child Abuse Cases published in 2007.

However on the Chinese mainland, family members who abuse children often evade legal punishment.

Under Chinese law it is a crime for someone to abuse a member of their family. But this law is limited. "Even if someone killed a child, unlike a charge of murder, a person charged with abuse could only be sentenced for up to seven years," said Yao Jianlong, director of the Protection of Minor's Law advocacy group in the Shanghai Law Society.

Few abusers are charged with a crime, unless their victims have died or been seriously injured. "Usually, abusers are just fined or detained for a dozen days by the police," he added.

A Shanghai police officer confirmed this. "We tend to persuade and educate the parents rather than giving them a severe penalty," said the officer who wished to remain anonymous. "Who would be able to look after their children if we sent them to jail?"

That is not a question in Western countries. Lawyer Zheng Ziyin said there was a law in the UK which meant that once a child was found to have been abused, the local government had the right to deprive the parents of guardianship, and could arrange for another family to look after the child. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act in the US has similar provisions.

Hard to revoke

In China, it's very hard to revoke the guardianship of parents as long as they are alive. "That is why when the Tianjin baby was taken out of the hospital by her father and uncle, all the other people were not able to stop them," Chen said. "Guardianship always belongs to the baby's family."

Outside of the law Chen, and two legal experts said that a problem was that most Chinese people didn't regard a child as individual, but as a family's private property. So even when someone beats a child in public, people usually just ignore this.

There were 104 child abuse cases reported in the Chinese media in the first six months of 2014, with 47 children dying as a result, according to Ma Lianhua, a reporter with the China Youth Daily. "Most parents believe that there is nothing wrong with beating their own children," Ma told the Global Times.

In July, a court took the guardianship rights from a woman in Fujian Province who had attacked her 9-year-old son with fire tongs and kitchen knives. "It was a big breakthrough!" Chen said. That day, there were cheers on Xiaoxiwangzhijia's QQ and WeChat groups.



Posted in: Society, Metro Shanghai, City Panorama

blog comments powered by Disqus