Opinions divided over increasing child abuse

Amid a growing number of reported child abuse cases at daycare centers, discussions about how to solve the long-running problems are drawing mixed responses, ranging from stronger punishment of abusers to better labor conditions for carers. / Gettyimagebank

By Kim Jae-heun

According to the National Child Protection Agency, Sunday, reported child abuse cases at daycare centers have rapidly increased in the past 5 years. Between 2014 and 2017 the number of recorded cases rose from 295 to 840. The agency is an affiliate of the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Looking at laws on special cases concerning child abuse crimes, a babysitter working at a nursery facility can face additional punishment for assaulting a child. The penalty can rise by 50 percent compared to an assault case against an adult.

However, if the child survives, precedents show most nursery workers receive suspended sentences after they are indicted for assaulting an infant.

In last October, the Busan District Court handed down a suspended one-year jail sentence to a babysitter for pricking a child with a needle and attacking him in the blind spot not covered by the surveillance camera.

The following month, the Incheon District Court sentenced a nursery teacher to 10 months in prison for forcing a child to eat leftover food and hitting children who refused to sleep during the day. However, her sentence was suspended for two years.

Verdicts given on similar cases this year also did not see babysitters sent to jail. In one case involving two babysitters, one suspect was sentenced to a one-year prison sentence suspended for two years, while the other suspect was found not guilty.

A petition urging for stronger punishment against abusive nursery teachers was posted on Cheong Wa Dae's website last July which was signed by nearly 410,000 people.

The presidential office, which promises to address petitions that collect over 200,000 signatures, said it sees a necessity to apply stricter regulations against child abuse at daycare centers in order to improve the system there.

However, many also point out that there are limits to prevent child abuse with only stern punishment and the boundary between child abuse and disciplinary action is ambiguous.

Lawyer Shim Moon-jae at Jinsol Law Firm, who has multiple years of experience with child abuse cases, argued that the judiciary needs to provide specific standards on physical and psychological mistreatments.

“There is no clear standard on what physical abuse is and sometimes there are parents who sue a babysitter with a small physical contact she made with their child,” Shim said.

Another lawyer called for the ministry's effort to supervise daycare centers and provide education to nursery teachers to prevent child abuse as most of the indicted cases are first-time offenders.

There are opinions that labor conditions for babysitters need to be improved to solve the fundamental problem.

According to the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education's 2017 report, the main causes of child abuse at daycare centers come from poor working conditions that attribute to an uncontrollable amount of stress put on babysitters.