BEIJING/SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - Chinese police are investigating claims of sexual molestation and
needlemarks on children at a Beijing kindergarten, the latest case in a
booming
childcare industry to spark outrage among parents.
The official
Xinhua news agency said late on Thursday that police were checking allegations
that some teachers and staff at the kindergarten, run by pre-school operator
RYB Education Inc, had abused children, who were “reportedly sexually molested,
pierced by needles and given unidentified pills”.
Parents said
their children, some as young as three, relayed troubling accounts of a naked
adult male conducting purported “medical checkups” on students, who were also
unclothed, other media said.
Some
parents, who gathered outside the school to demand answers on Thursday, said
their children gave matching accounts of being fed unidentified tablets and of
punishments where students were “made to stand” naked in class, media said.
The welfare
of children in professional care has become a hot-button issue in China, where
a string of high-profile cases of abuse has underlined lax regulations and
supervision in the childcare and early learning industry.
“We deeply
apologize for the serious anxiety this matter has brought to parents and
society,” RYB said in a statement on its official microblog on Friday, adding
that it was helping authorities.
“We are
currently working with the police to provide relevant surveillance materials
and equipment; the teachers in question have been suspended and we are
co-operating with the police investigation,” it said.
The school’s
principal had lodged a police report against “individuals who have engaged in
false accusations and framing”, it said, without elaborating.
Beijing
police did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.
China’s
education ministry has begun a special investigation into the operation of
kindergartens, it said in a statement on Thursday, and told education
departments nationwide to “take warning from these types of incidents”.
Separate
incidents in China of children being slapped, beaten with a stick and having
their mouths sealed shut with duct tape have also gone viral and fueled anger
online.
News of the
investigation into the Beijing kindergarten triggered a wave of outrage on
social media, with more than 76 million mentions of “RYB” on Tencent Holdings
Ltd’s WeChat messaging service on Thursday.
“These may
be individual cases but the deeper problems they reflect cannot be overlooked,”
a Xinhua editorial said. “Laws must be enforced, supervision strengthened,
teacher wages increased. The childcare industry cannot be allowed to grow in an
uncivilized fashion.”
Chinese
education providers have been attracting major investment, while others have
sought global listings, latching onto fast-growing demand from parents for
high-end education services.
Shares in
RYB are up about 44 percent on the New York Stock Exchange since a September
listing, giving it a market value of nearly $766 million.
This was not
the first case of alleged abuse at an RYB school.
In 2015, a
court in Jilin province found two teachers guilty of physically abusing
children at one of its kindergartens in the city of Siping. In that case, staff
at the school on “multiple occasions used needles and intimidation tactics to
abuse many of the children under their care”, according to the court ruling
document.
Earlier this
year, RYB said it had found “serious mistakes” at another one of its Beijing
schools and had asked the principal to step down after videos emerged showing
teachers hitting and pushing children.
State
television broadcast images of police and angry parents gathered outside the
school in Beijing on Thursday, calling for answers.
On Friday,
one father leaving the school said he had been there to cancel his son’s
enrolment and demand a refund.
Another
parent, 36-year-old Wang Siqi, said she took the day off work to demand
answers, even though her six-year-old son does not attend the school.
“As a mother
when I saw this news I really couldn’t take it,” she said. “This is
unforgivable.”
RYB says on
its website it runs a network of more than 1,300 directly owned and franchised
play-and-learn centers and nearly 500 kindergartens for children up to age six
in about 300 Chinese cities and towns.
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