Two senior executives of a child protection group have resigned after staffers at its children's residential home in Mong Kok were suspected of having abused at least 35 children. But the operator refused to close the children's home, saying there was a need for it.
Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children, which runs the problematic children's residential home, earlier formed an independent review committee for the abuse which led to 20 workers being arrested after 35 children were found to have been treated inappropriately at the facility.
As the committee revealed its first phase of investigation work, the society's executive committee chairman Robin Hammond said the society has accepted the resignation of its director Susan Choy So Suk-yin and the facility's superintendent Shirley Chui Wai-ying.
But Choy will stay on until the society can find her replacement, while deputy director Stephen Chan Chi-yiu will temporarily take over the reins of the Children's Residential Home.
Apart from the two senior management resignations, Hammond said seven staffers at the Children's Residential Home have also tendered their resignation, with 34 staffers caring 61 children, "which is sufficient under current childcare guidelines."
This is as the independent review committee chairman, Lester Huang, said the investigation found they found childcarers working in the facility with problems in their professional conduct.
"They roughly handled children intended to control them in the shortest amount of time and even made that a culture. It is only a fine line between these malpractices and committing a crime," Huang said.
He added that the whole monitoring system has "completely failed to take effect," as the management did not go over CCTV footage regularly, and the internal monitoring and complaint system was found with deficiencies.
The management also failed to arrange sufficient child abuse training for childcarers working for them, as the latest training held was already seven years ago, according to Huang.
He, therefore, suggested the society gradually replace all child carers of the facility, which will "terminate the existing culture" and let the children adapt to their new carers and reform the management system.
That would include introducing a complaint system and executing regular spot checks to ensure similar incidents will not occur again.
Hammond also bowed to apologize, as he said the findings of the probe are "painful to hear," but the society will do whatever it can to regain trust from the public.
Lester Garson Huang, chairman of the committee, noted that a total of 20 workers have been arrested while another seven have voluntarily resigned after the incident came under the spotlight.
Currently, 34 workers take care of the 61 children who stay at the childcare home. Huang added the carers will be changed in phases for the children there to get used to it, instead of hiring a group of new carers at once.
More arrangements will be made to see if the 35 abused children will return to the children's residential home after they are discharged from the hospital, he continued.
