Babysitting couple given three-year sentence for child abuse

Two babysitters convicted of child cruelty were jailed yesterday for three years after the judge said the punishment must reflect the public's utter contempt for child abuse.

'A lenient sentence would indirectly encourage this type of offence and that is inappropriate,' District Court Judge Maggie Poon Man-kay said.

'Whatever the circumstances, adults should not vent their own distress on innocent children who are totally helpless.

'The defendants were cold blooded for abusing a two-year-old child.' Bernard Yuen, for the accused, asked for a non-custodial sentence because the couple had a two-year-old daughter and three-month-old son. Judge Poon was also unmoved by a defence request to only jail the father, if one of them must serve time.

'I cannot give too much weight to their personal circumstances at the expense of public interest,' she said.

Chau King-cheung, 24, and Tam Wai-sheung, 27, were asked last April to take care of the two-year-old girl by its grandmother.