Discipline becomes abuse when child gets injuries such as cane marks: MSF

Struggling to deal with multiple problems, such as a wife grappling with suicidal thoughts and financial woes, a man ended up abusing his children when disciplining them.

- Theresa Tan Senior Social Affairs Correspondent

The sole breadwinner used his belt to hit his children, threatened them with a knife and pushed one child’s head against the wall when they did not do household chores to his expectations.

He has more than five children, from toddlers to teenagers.

Ms Lee Jia Ai, deputy head of All-kin Family Service Centre@Cheng San 445, said: “When his children could not meet those expectations and communication repeatedly broke down between them, his disciplinary methods escalated and crossed the line into abuse.

“(The situation shifted) from a father trying to discipline his children to help them learn from a mistake, to a father losing control of his emotions.”

Ms Lee said that the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s (MSF) Child Protective Service (CPS) was alerted, and the children were placed in alternative care, such as with foster parents or other family members, to ensure their safety and stability.

On Nov 5, Minister-in-charge of Social Services Integration Desmond Lee said that excessive physical discipline of one’s children will be considered as abuse, in announcing measures to improve safeguards in the child protection system in the wake of Megan Khung’s death.

Megan died at the age of four in February 2020 after suffering over a year of horrific abuse by her mother Foo Li Ping and the then boyfriend Wong Shi Xiang.

In responding to questions from MPs about the threshold needed for CPS to remove a child from his or her abusive family, Mr Lee had said the approach to child protection exists on a continuum.

He said that as concerns about child abuse escalate, the child protection system progressively steps in, from social workers educating parents about strategies to manage their children to state intervention in serious cases of abuse.

Mr Lee, who is also Education Minister, said: “Generally, the existing thresholds are appropriate.