Courts have duty to curb violence against children

A 2-YEAR-OLD GIRL in Xining, Northwest China’s Qinghai province, died after being repeatedly beaten by her parents over 20 days. Beijing News comments:

The sentences handed down to the parents by the local court in Xining has aroused fierce discussion as the girl’s mother was sentenced to five years in prison, while the father was found guilty but received no punishment.

The local court said it made the ruling according to Clause 260 of the Criminal Law, which states that those who maltreat a family member to such an extent it results in the victim’s death should be sentenced to imprisonment for two to seven years.

That’s also a common practice among many local judiciaries. Many of them tend to treat all violence among family members as “maltreatment” and sentence the suspects according to the above-mentioned clause.

That practice is debatable. Maltreatment means long-term spiritual and physical torment, and it mainly refers to low-level violence such as forcing someone to kneel. In the Xining case, the couple beat their young daughter so severely it killed her. The violence was obviously far more than maltreatment.

There were at least 30 wounds found on the girl’s body, which were caused by external force. This means her parents should have been charged with the crime of willful and malicious injury, which would result in a prison sentence of over 10 years for each of them if found guilty. Of course, that does not exclude maltreatment and they should be found guilty of both crimes.

That’s not only for justice in this particular case, but also for tens of thousands of children who suffer from domestic violence. Only with proper legal punishment can such a tragedy be prevented from happening again.