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UPDATED: July 25, 2014 NO. 38 SEPTEMBER 19, 2013
Watching Over Our Children
Crimes against minors could be reduced by better legal protection and safety education
By Li Li
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PROTECTING ONESELF: Sun Jing, a police officer in Hefei, Anhui Province, teaches girls from a local primary school how to protect themselves from the touches of strangers on May 30 (LIU JUNXI)

Han Jingjing, a lawyer with the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center, said that some parents, particularly migrant workers in cities, are too busy to properly protect their children.

"In some cases, parents let their children go to nearby shops or take elevators alone, which provided the opportunity for criminals," she said.

Hu Yueyue, a research fellow at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, Shandong Province, said that in most crimes involving child victims, their adult guardians deserve some of the blame for not doing enough to protect the children in their care. "However, due to a lack of legal stipulations, these adults are not held accountable for their actions," he said.

Hu called for legislation specifying legal liabilities of guardians toward minors, adding "the greater the responsibilities that guardians take, the safer the children will be."

China adopted the Law on the Protection of Minors in 1991. It was revised in 2006 in response to widespread public complaints about students' academic burdens and the irresponsible management of Internet cafes.

Tong Lihua, Director of the Special Committee for Child Protection under the All China Lawyers Association, who participated in the revision of the law, said that the amendment failed to address the issue of lacking concrete rules on which parties should be held responsible for what in criminal cases involving children.

Tong suggested that instead of generally holding families, schools, the government, non-governmental organizations and the judicial system responsible for ensuring a safe environment for children, laws should specify the responsibilities of each party respectively.

Educating children

In recent years, there has been a rise in sexual abuse cases involving children in China. For example, the Chaoyang District People's Court in Beijing handled three such cases in 2007 and an average of nine cases per year between 2008 and 2012. Prosecutors in Beijing's Fengtai District brought 28 cases of sexual abuse against minors to court between 2009 and 2011, involving 42 victims, most of whom were aged between 10 and 13.

According to a survey conducted by the Beijing Youth Legal Aid and Research Center in 2008, 70 percent of victims in child sexual abuse cases know abusers, such as neighbors, family friends or stepfathers. Since most assailants are not strangers to targeted children, many cases involved repeated abuse over an extended period of time, said Chen Zuying, a senior prosecutor in Chongqing.

In China, most parents feel embarrassed talking about sex with their children and fail to provide sex education to their children. As a result, after being abused, some children may not even realize they have been molested besides feeling uncomfortable.

Parents should teach children from a young age what their private parts are and the need to protect them from being seen or touched by others, said Lu Ye, a senior prosecutor in Beijing.

Monica Cui, China Chief Representative and Executive Director of Safe Kids Worldwide, a global nonprofit organization, said that although the Chinese primary and middle school curriculum includes content on self-awareness and how to protect oneself from becoming danger, children are often bored and don't pay attention as they are simply given warnings and instructions in classes.

"Teachers need to introduce more vivid teaching methods and use experiences from their daily life to intrigue students, for example, asking them to draw a roadmap from home to school and identify all the possible dangers on the way and teaching them how to deal with them," Cui said.

Email us at: lili@bjreview.com

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