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Brian Wong

A Hong Kong couple have been jailed for up to three years over repeated abuse of their three-year-old boy, who was left with potentially permanent brain and eye damage after being slapped in the face, thrown from height and hit on the head with a metal ruler.
The District Court heard on Friday the unemployed couple had also left the child naked and starving in the cold during a 10-day ordeal at a flat in Ngau Tau Kok’s Wang Kwong Building between late 2022 and early 2023.
The 23-year-old mother and her 26-year-old boyfriend, Wong Yat-ming, who is not the boy’s biological father, pleaded guilty to a joint count of ill-treatment or neglect of a child.
Wong, a former clerk, also admitted to causing the boy grievous bodily harm with intent.
The mother was jailed for 2½ years and her boyfriend was sentenced to three years behind bars.
The court heard the mother sent the boy to foster care six months after he was born in November 2019.
The boy, who was diagnosed with a speech disorder and delayed development, had spent his early years with different families before his mother obtained the approval of the Social Welfare Department for him to briefly stay with her during Christmas in 2022.
A prosecution case summary said the mother and Wong had treated their own daughter “very well” while forcing the boy to sleep on the floor and regularly making degrading comments about him in their private conversations, calling him “rubbish”, “ugly” and “disgusting”.
On Christmas Day that year, the boy was made to wear only his diapers at the flat despite the chilly weather at the time. The mother took the boy to the shower 3½ hours later when his lower body was covered with stool.
The couple again left the boy naked at their home on Boxing Day, while also barring him from eating.
On December 27, they locked the boy inside a pitch-black toilet for 30 minutes, before forcing him to sleep on a toilet bowl that night.
The defendants subjected the boy to a spate of physical punishment in the following week, slapping him on the face, pulling his ears and hitting his thighs and buttocks.
Wong also used a metal ruler to hit the child’s back, stepped on him and threw him, causing his head to bump against a bed’s headboard.
The boy’s foster parent saw bruises on his forehead and blood stains on his nose when the defendants returned the child on January 5, 2023.
The couple dismissed the foster parent’s concerns and said it was “very normal” for the toddler to “hurt himself after stumbling”.
A subsequent medical check-up revealed the boy suffered bleeding in the brain and on his retinas, as well as multiple bruises over his face, abdomen, limbs and buttocks. The couple were arrested the next day.
“He was very naughty. I briefly lost my temper and hit him,” the mother told police.
Wong, meanwhile, tried to justify his assaults by asserting the boy had hurt the couple’s daughter.
In subsequent interviews, the couple maintained they had no idea how the boy sustained the injuries and suggested he had a tendency to self-harm.
An updated medical report showed the boy’s brain injuries could have long-term neurological complications, while the damage done to his optic nerve could be permanent.
Defence counsel Oliver Davies in his written mitigation submissions noted the mother had been suffering from depression after the boy’s biological father deserted them upon learning of her pregnancy.
He said the mother endured enormous emotional distress taking care of her children at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, while her boyfriend Wong, the family’s sole breadwinner, bore additional financial hardship.
The lawyer on Friday acknowledged that little could be said on behalf of his clients apart from highlighting their timely guilty plea.
“They were two very young people doing very stupid things … They accept full responsibility,” he said.
In sentencing, Judge Clement Lee Hing-nin said the couple had acted “in flagrant breach of their power and position as parents” by subjecting the boy to deliberate and repeated assaults within a short period of time.
“This was not an isolated act, but joint efforts of child cruelty. Nothing suggested [the mother] and [Wong] were immature as parents,” Lee said.
Child cruelty is punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment in Hong Kong.


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Mother and her boyfriend inflicted so much physical damage on boy he faces long-term neurological problems and permanent eye damage


Mother and her boyfriend inflicted so much physical damage on boy he faces long-term neurological problems and permanent eye damage.


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Hong Kong society

Hong Kong couple jailed up to 3 years for repeatedly abusing three-year-old son

Mother and her boyfriend inflicted so much physical damage on boy he faces long-term neurological problems and permanent eye damage

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