Teacher used needles to ‘discipline’ children: Police
BEIJING: Chinese police said late on Tuesday some claims of child abuse at a Beijing kindergarten run by New Yorklisted RYB Education were unfounded, the latest twist in a case that has sparked outrage throughout China.
Police in Beijing’s Chaoyang district said in a statement posted on their official microblog that they had criminally detained a teacher surnamed Liu suspected of using knitting needles to discipline children.
However, they added that claims made by some parents that children had been fed unidentified tablets at the school and accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported “medical checkups” on unclothed students were fabricated.
China’s state-run Xinhua news agency had reported last week that police were checking allegations that children were “reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills”.
Police said they had recovered 113 hours of footage from the school’s surveillance system, but had not yet found on it instances of people harming children.
They added that the hard drive storage for the footage had been “damaged”.
The fall-out from the scandal has been widespread.
China’s education ministry has launched a special investigation into kindergartens nationwide, while Beijing authorities have said they will send permanent inspectors to city nurseries.
RYB, which says it has over 1,300 playand-learn centres and 500 kindergartens in 300 cities in China, has suspended one teacher and fired the headmaster of the Beijing kindergarten. – Reuters