Hong Kong needs these laws to close child protection loopholes

Hong Kong’s passage of a law earlier this year mandating the reporting of child abuse should greatly benefit the city’s vulnerable. By discharging one of its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the law shows Hong Kong is serious about child protection. However, there’s much more work to be done. According to statistics from the Social Welfare Department’s Child Protection Registry, child abuse cases have increased from 940 cases in 2020 to 1,457 cases in 2023. The most prevalent type of abuse was physical (602 cases, or 41.3 per cent), followed by sexual abuse (509, or 34.9 per cent) and neglect (310 cases, or 21.3 per cent). Among the cases of sexual abuse involving underage victims, 45 met their perpetrators online. This was a 15 per cent increase from the previous year. Most victims were between ages 12 and 16, with the youngest being only nine years old. However, most cases never come to light. In 2021, Professor Clinton Emery, a social worker researcher at the University of Hong Kong, estimated that only 1 per cent of child maltreatment cases are reported. According to a China Daily report, “child abuse is largely a phenomenon of families at the margins of society, handicapped by poor education and low income”. Alarm bells, therefore, are ringing, and must be heard. The Commission on Children, created in 2018 to be an engine of change and chaired by the Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki, must show its worth by convincing the government of the need for three new child protection laws. The easiest reform is what some in the United Kingdom called the “Cinderella Law” – part of the country’s Serious Crime Act – directed at combating psychological suffering. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires children to be protected emotionally as well as physically, and here Hong Kong is wanting. Although the city’s child cruelty law – section 27 of the Offences Against the Person Ordinance – is based on an earlier British provision, it has not been modernised in the same way as its counterpart and is not performing as it should. Although the existing law works well enough when a child is physically abused, it is ineffective in the absence of clear evidence, such as bruises, cuts or redness. A child’s emotional development can be endangered or impaired by ordeals that are all too common, and from which there is minimal protection. For example, if a child is psychologically abused by being persistently frightened, bullied, ignored, isolated or scapegoated, there can be severe consequences. Besides low self-esteem, behavioural and cognitive problems can result, for which there is minimal accountability. When the UK enacted its “Cinderella Law” in 2015, the sustained emotional abuse of a child was specifically criminalised. Wilful cruelty likely to cause psychological harm or suffering became an offence. Anybody who causes injury or unnecessary suffering to a child is now prosecutable, regardless of whether the harm is physical or psychological. Hong Kong must urgently follow suit. In 2021, when the Law Reform Commission in Hong Kong recommended a new offence of “failure to protect a child or vulnerable person where the child’s or vulnerable person’s death or serious harm results from an unlawful act or neglect”, there were high hopes. The hideous death in 2013 of five-year-old Yeung Chi-wai, who was born with Down’s syndrome and imbibed narcotics that were left lying around by adults at home, was vividly remembered and the commission’s suggested reform was a proportionate response. Although the Law Reform Commission’s subcommittee chair, Amanda Whitfort, said the proposed offence would “send a clear and unequivocal message that there is zero tolerance for abuses of children and vulnerable persons”, it has still not reached the statute book, which is unacceptable. The UK passed a similar law in 2004. Hopefully, the commission’s proposal will finally be implemented next year. In 2019, the Law Reform Commission, having noted the dangers children face from sexual predators on the internet, called for an offence of “sexual grooming”, but this has also not materialised. The Social Welfare Department’s statistics show the problem is worsening. All forms of sexual messaging involving children must be criminalised. This reform must also be prioritised in 2025. Although there has been some recent progress, children continue to face dangers that existing laws do not adequately protect against. The mandatory reporting law shows that some in the government care but it must now do the most it can to protect our children. Hong Kong must fully galvanise criminal law to combat child abuse in 2025. Grenville Cross SC is the patron of Against Child Abuse