Last week saw China’s official Xinhua news agency join a social media storm, saying that police were checking allegations that pre-school children had been “reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills.”
Following the latest in a series of scandals over alleged supervisory lapses in China’s booming private childcare sector, the education ministry have now urged officials nationwide to “take warning from these types of incidents.”
RYB Education apologized for the “serious anxiety this matter has brought to parents and society,” saying that the kindergarten’s principal had asserted that the center was the victim of a frame-up by an “individual.”
Three teachers are now suspended, said RYB, part of a fast-growing sector fulfilling a growing middle class’ parental wish for high-end educational services.
It provides for 1,300 daycare centers — some under franchise — and nearly 500 kindergartens in 300 Chinese cities, according to its website.
Parents stood together on Thursday and Friday outside the Beijing kindergarten demanding answers.
Some parents said their children, as young as three, had spoken of a naked male adult conducting purported “medical check-ups” on them while they were also unclothed.
“We need clarification,” said a father who gave only his surname, Wang.
A mother who was also present described the allegations as “unforgivable.”
One father said he had canceled his son’s enrolment and demanded a refund.
A Beijing mother whose children do not attend RYB schools, Zhang Yang, said that the allegations were alarming as they were being made against a well-known private institution.
Independent verification was not available on the molestation claims against RYB, which was in fact listed on the New York Stock Exchange in September.
Earlier in the year, RYB said it had found “serious mistakes” at another of its Beijing locations and asked its principal to step down.
In 2015, two teachers were found guilty of physically abusing children at a kindergarten in the city of Siping.
Mother Who Smothered Little Boy To Death Inside Restaurant Bathroom Now Says She’s Sorry
A woman in New York who smothered her toddler son to death inside a Manhattan restaurant will spend 18 years in prison. This is despite her cries of being sorry for the atrocious act.
People reports that on March 30, 2015, Latisha Fisher took her 1-year-old son, Gavriel, to the bathroom inside the 5 Boro Burger restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. There, she put him on her lap, pinched his nose and cupped his mouth until the little boy stopped breathing. When paramedics arrived at the scene, Fisher said that “the devil made her put him to sleep.”
Paramedics then noted that Gavriel had blue lips and was foaming from the nose when they arrived.
#NYPD take Latisha Fisher for booking for death of her 1yr old son. He was found in bathroom of #5BoroBurger pic.twitter.com/rpSiES8PXA
— Rocco Vertuccio (@RoccoNY1) March 31, 2015
Court records show that Fisher was diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia in 2011, while she served three months for a previous crime at Riker’s Island prison.
Before Gavriel’s birth, Fisher had been involved in a number od violent acts, including setting her mother’s boyfriend on fire (he survived), attempted murder on her aunt, and dousing her former boyfriend hot oil during their breakup.
“It’s really unquestionable she has a mental illness,” her lawyer, Bryan Konoski, said, according to the New York Times. “The ultimate question is whether she knew or understood that what she did was wrong.”
Woman Who Smothered 1-Year-Old Son in Bathroom Gets 18-Year Sentence: Latisha Fisher accepted a… https://t.co/E7iye4w8Az https://t.co/JUXb6c4H9D
— News Channel NYC (@NewsChannelNYC) November 20, 2017
The child’s father, Luis Ortiz Jr., 36, testified in court that the death of his son sent him into severe depression, which ultimately cost him his job and ability to sleep at night.
He noted that he blamed himself since he turned down an invite to join Fisher and the boy at the restaurant on the day in question.“I should have gone with him that day.”
Fisher reportedly pleaded guilty to manslaughter last month, as part of a plea deal worked out between her lawyer and prosecutors. Shortly before Justice Gregory Carro of State Supreme Court in Manhattan told Fisher her sentence, she cried out loud that she loved her boy and was sorry for what she did.
In addition to 18 years behind bars, Fisher must stay on 10 years of supervised probation upon her release.
[Feature Photo: Family Handout]