Child Abuse in Hong Kong
Causes of Child Abuse by Parents
Child abuse can be defined as the physical and the psychological maltreatment of a child. It is synonymous with child maltreatment or child neglect. Child abuse may take numerous forms whether physical, sexual, neglect, psychological or the combination of other abuses. Since the awareness of child abuse heightened in Hong Kong in 1978, multidisciplinary approaches to the problems were put into place. Child neglect though is rarely established though deaths of children while they are left unattended continue to occur.
The number of children experiencing physical abuse continues to rise despite the increase in reports of sexual abuses. Physical abuse is among the forms of child abuse that is admitted within the hospital practices. It constitutes a great proportion of the forms of abuse of suspected cases admitted to hospitals.
The difficulty of distinguishing between normal discipline and child abuse is one of the reasons for the increasing cases of Child abuse in Hong Kong. Despite the abolition of corporal punishment in the penal system and in schools, it remains widely practiced at home. Parents spanked their children more than once a week and consider this as an effective means of punishment. In the survey conducted by (1998) among 100 university students in Hong Kong, 95% of them admitted the use of corporal punishment in their homes. Even worse is that one third of the surveyed students approving that spanking children less than 3 years old as acceptable.
Such practice can be attributed with the belief that parents have the right to use corporal punishments to discipline their children. However, they do not realize the negative result of such acts. This leads to the same belief among children that they indeed deserve to be punished.
Neglect is another feature of child abuse which is not relatively high. Primarily children are left unattended by their parents to go to work, go shopping or attend leisure activities. Lack of parental education can be considered one of the causes why parents do such things especially at a time when cases of death of unattended children are rising.
Sexual abuse was also rarely reported prior to 1990. Majority of children who have experienced sexual abuse are girls. What is even distressing is the fact that perpetrators are known to the victim. Biological parents are the major group of perpetrators. Either parent or both of them are responsible for majority of the reported cases. A small percentage of about b5 % are foster parents or step parents (‘’, 2003).
Indeed, child abuse is attributed with the traditional attitudes of parents towards child discipline. The heightened level of stress among local parents is also a contributing factor. Because of this, child abuse has increasingly become tolerated in Hong Kong. According to a child welfare activist, this trend may lead to social crisis if not addressed.
The director of Against child Abuse (ACA) expressed alarm with the cases of child abuse and asserted that the protection of children is less prioritized in the country. Moreover, the tolerance in child abuses in the society is a manifestation of the Child Abuse Accommodation Syndrome. Such syndrome is referred to the victims who respond to the abuse by mere acceptance of the situation (, 2004).
Oftentimes, victims see no way of escape and therefore keep the abuse a secret. Hesitations to report such cases are born out of the fear of family destruction. Perhaps such abuses have been attributed to the mode of discipline that the society has turned a blind eye to it. The occurrence of severe abuse cases was not believed to be cause by inadequate procedural guidelines. In fact, the country has a comprehensive guidelines provided to the authorities, social workers and other related departments of the government.
The parent’s misunderstanding on the notion of child protection is considered to be a significant factor. The Chinese society accepts corporal punishment as a mode of discipline to the children. As such, parents think that the advocacy of the child rights would deter the disciplinary actions to their children. These kinds of attitudes and thinking provide an explanation why physical child abuses remain prevalent in the society. The tense social atmosphere and the financial straits of families have also put the children in vulnerable positions (, 2006). Indeed the perceptions towards child discipline have been the primary cause of the occurrences of abuses. On the part of the children, they come to accept such abuses and perceive them as normal. This explains why most of child abuse cases are rarely reported.
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