Rare Chinese child abuse case involving girl beaten with a hot spatula sees parents stripped of custody
- The mother would beat her daughter for not doing well on homework assignments
- Social workers said the girl was not as active or as happy as her peers
A single mother in eastern China who beat her daughter repeatedly for not doing well enough in school has lost custody of the 12-year-old.
Chongchuan District People’s Court in Nantong, in China’s Jiangsu province, stripped the mother, Li Ping, and her ex-husband, Zhang Jian, of custody of their daughter, who is only known as Jiajia to protect her identity, ThePaper.cn reported on April 20.
According to court documents, Li was determined that her daughter go to one of the “top three or top five” universities in the country, so she beat the girl regularly to “improve her academic scores”.
Jiajia, who had lived with her mother since her parents divorced eight years prior, was in grade six at school but was forced to take the English band-4 and band-6 test papers, which are designed for students at the university level, the news report reported.
Whenever Li was not satisfied with the scores Jiajia had achieved, she would hit her, causing scars across her entire body from the beatings.
In April last year, the young girl’s grandmother, Liu Guiying, reported the attacks to police after seeing her granddaughter’s face and head swollen from another beating. At that time, Li had punished her daughter for not reciting a text to her.
Police immediately issued a domestic violence warning letter to Li, the Yangtze Evening News reported.
But even after a court ordered a personal protection order in January, the assaults continued.