Reminiscences｜Should teachers who molest students be kept at school for the New Year?

I have to say a few words.

It’s about a 54-year-old head teacher in Guangshan County, Henan, who molested a 15-year-old girl and was given 10 days of administrative detention and demoted from the teaching front line to the logistics position of the original school. See The Paper.

We know it’s wrong, but if we don’t compare, we won’t know how outrageous this is.

If this happened in Canada, the maximum sentence would be 14 years in prison, and the minimum sentence under summary procedure would be 90 days in prison. His teaching certificate would be permanently revoked, and he would not be allowed to stay in any school, not even in administrative, logistics, or cleaning positions. He would also be entered into the national sex offender registry and prohibited from engaging in any work related to minors.

Not only in Canada, but also in the United States, European countries, and our neighbors Japan and South Korea, the outcome is almost the same, and there is no exception. South Korea also requires electronic shackles and mandatory disclosure of personal information, and will never report it like we do, “Liu Moumou”.

Simply put, this person is basically “socially dead”, and that’s what he deserves.

The school can’t escape either, and will be sentenced to civil compensation for lack of supervision. Canada usually pays more than 100,000 Canadian dollars (500,000 RMB), and the United States is even higher, possibly up to millions of dollars. No school would dare to keep such a person in the school, not even if the school board member is his own father.

Don’t talk about “insufficient evidence”. To avoid suspicion, foreign teachers have to keep their doors wide open when talking to students of the opposite sex (Open Door Policy), so that people passing by in the hallway can see the situation inside. They don’t dare to meet with students privately outside of teaching hours and locations. You took the student to a hotel room, what more evidence do you need? Besides, the surveillance shows that you also went to see family planning supplies; someone heard a little girl crying in the hotel room; the female student in question showed symptoms of depression afterwards… These are all very strong circumstantial evidence.

In fact, the police also confirmed his molestation, and that’s it? It should have been a criminal charge in law + a huge fine in economics + the end of his career + the bankruptcy of his social reputation – but here, it’s just 10 days of administrative detention and a transfer to a logistics position?

I haven’t figured out the logic behind this. Is it to keep his retirement pension, or do they think the establishment is too precious? In their eyes, it’s more important to protect the integrity of their own people than to protect a child from harm – after all, the girl was just touched a few times, how can the teacher lose his position?

So, what kind of people are these? Are you people in the system so humane to your own people? Are you keeping him around to give him year-end performance bonuses during the Chinese New Year? What do you think of children? “A country’s civilization, first of all, depends on how they treat children”, is this how you do it?

Giving farmers a pension of one or two hundred yuan, and letting teachers who molest students get away with it, how far is this country from civilization?