‘I’m afraid of choking’: video shows private school swim coach in China repeatedly push ‘naughty’ girl’s head underwater
- Family shocked when reviewing security footage to see 46 seconds of coach shoving girl’s head underwater repeatedly
- School apologises to family but did not ask coach to do so, saying it would hurt his pride
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Allegations that a private school swimming coach in China repeatedly pushed a seven-year-old girl’s head underwater for getting distracted during a lesson have shocked mainland social media.
Huashang Newspaper reported on August 7 that the unnamed girl, who studies at an exclusive international kindergarten costing 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) annually, was allegedly pushed underwater four times by the swim coach late last month.
The school in Zhejiang, eastern China, dismissed the man, but he is not under any investigation for the alleged assault.
Surveillance footage from the school’s swimming pool shows the coach, who was not named in the report, tugging on the girl’s arm to pull her away from two classmates nearby, then repeatedly pressing her head underwater.
No one reported the incident to authorities or informed the girl’s parents. When the girl’s mother was giving her a bath at home later that day, she said her daughter stopped her when she tried to wash her hair.
“Mother, I don’t want to wash my hair. I’m afraid of choking,” the girl told her mother.
The alarmed mother soon got the full story from her daughter about what had happened earlier.
“The coach pushed me underwater, and when I came back up, he did it again. It happened many times,” the girl said.
The following day the mother and the girl’s grandfather went to the kindergarten to check the surveillance video of the pool area.
The 46-second clip reportedly showed that at 2.40pm on July 27, the coach pulled the girl over at least four times even after she tried to move away from him and pushed the child’s head in the water.
The angry family then confronted the coach, but he claimed the girl was disruptive and “naughty” in class.
“When the girl’s grandfather asked the coach why he treated her so cruelly, he said that he punished her because her splashing water in the pool affected other children,” the mother said.
The coach was dismissed from his position shortly afterwards.
“The coach is our third-party employee. Now we are terminating his duties,” a teacher at the school, surnamed Fang, told Huashang Newspaper.
Fang also said the kindergarten had apologised to the girl’s family but had not asked the coach to do the same because they thought it would hurt his pride.
There has been no report of any further investigation by mainland authorities into the matter.
The story outraged many people on Chinese social media.
One person commented: “Is it just a physical punishment? He looked like he was drowning the little girl.”
Another said: “Poor little girl! She will be scared of water for the rest of her life.”
Cases of abuse by teachers are common in China.
Last month, a private school in eastern China was hit with accusations that a teacher abused students and forced them to participate in slapping, spitting and humiliating each other.
In May, a secondary school teacher in southwestern China caused public anger after forcing her class to put their mobile phones in a water basin as a warning not to bring them into class.
