Concrete measures needed to better protect children from abuse
A 43-year-old woman was arrested in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, June 3, for killing her nine-year-old stepson by locking him in a suitcase for hours. The boy suffered a cardiac arrest inside the suitcase and died two days later. During questioning, the stepmother confessed to having put him into the suitcase as a punishment for lying. Police said several bruises were found on the boy's body.
On Monday, the police in the southeastern city of Changnyeong arrested the stepfather of a nine-year-old girl and her biological mother for habitual child abuse. However they were released. The couple's maltreatment was exposed May 29 when the girl was noticed by a member of the public while running on a street in the city with a black eye.
The two children had been abused habitually for a long time, but their dire situations were discovered belatedly. The child in Cheonan, in particular, was taken to a hospital by his parents for emergency treatment to his head and hands on Children's Day prior to his death. Medical staff discovered bruising on the child and reported their suspicions of abuse to the police. In pure-Korean policing style, these so-called protectors of society took zero meaningful action to ensure the safety of the defenseless child as the parents promised to change their “style of discipline.” When the child was released from hospital, the police and child care agencies should have taken proper measures to stop him from falling victim to parental abuse again.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, 132 children have died from child abuse over the last five years and 84 percent of the perpetrators were their parents. This explains why it's urgent to ensure the separation of children from parents when they are likely to be maltreated again at home.
Under the current law, only a prosecutor or local government head is allowed to request that abusive parents be deprived of their parental rights. This make it difficult to separate children from their abusive parents, forcing child care agencies to return abused children home without any proper protection for them. It's long overdue for concrete measures to be enacted to protect and support them.