A former carer at a leading child protection group in Hong Kong was jailed for about seven months on Friday, becoming the second person sentenced over one of the city’s biggest scandals involving toddler abuse in recent years.
Lam Mei-po, 56, was put behind bars by acting principal magistrate Wong Nga-yan at Kowloon City Court, following her previous guilty plea to three counts of ill-treating or neglecting a child or young person.
She is one of 27 carers prosecuted for child abuse after more than 400 cases at Children’s Residential Home, a facility in Mong Kok run by the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children, came to light late last year.
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First of 27 defendants in Hong Kong child abuse scandal gets 4 months’ jail
Wong handed down a sentence of “five months and eight weeks”, noting some months had fewer or more than four weeks.
Lam admitted to assaulting three toddlers aged between two and three, when she was a relief children worker at the facility, with all the incidents taking place on December 10 last year.
The court heard previously that she forcefully hit the first victim twice in the chest, causing the child to fall backward and cry, after the two-year-old pushed her arm while she was filling up some water bottles.
Just a minute later, she shoved a water bottle in a three-year-old girl’s face, splashing water on the child before hitting her mouth with the bottle.
The last assault took place at night when Lam forcefully stepped on the third victim’s lower body parts when the child was sleeping.
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The centre on Portland Street where Lam worked provides round-the-clock support for children up to the age of three who have been abandoned, orphaned or lack care because of family problems.
Founded in 1926, the Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children is one of the oldest charities specialising in child care. It also runs nursery schools and family service centres offering help to underprivileged families. It serves about 3,000 children and their families on a daily basis.
Since news of the scandal emerged last December, police have arrested 34 staff members for allegedly abusing 40 children at the Children’s Residential Home.
The suspects were accused of yanking the hair of children under their care, hitting them on the head, as well as slapping the toddlers and tossing them to the floor.
In June, the government cut funding for the group by more than HK$1.8 million on the grounds that the residential home did not provide accommodation services for children receiving hospital treatment from the alleged abuse cases.
The first to plead guilty was former senior child carer Barbara Heung Wing-shan, who was sentenced to four months in jail last month for twice assaulting a two-year-old boy.
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