Kindergarten teacher detained after allegedly pouring boiling water on 4-year-old boy

The child was taken into the school’s boiler room by his teacher, he reemerged with severe burns to 20% of his body

Over the past month, there has been a string of child abuse cases exposed at Chinese schools, however, none are as shocking or extreme as what appears to have happened at a kindergarten in the Shandong capital of Jinan.

On March 23rd, a teacher, identified only by her surname Yu, dragged a 4-year-old boy into the kindergarten’s boiler room to scold him. When he reemerged he was suffering from severe burns covering 20% of his body. One witness said that it was like the skin on the boy’s back, buttocks, and legs had all “fallen off,” The Paper reports.

At this time, it’s not clear what exactly happened inside that boiler room. However, it has been alleged that the teacher poured scalding water on the child to “punish” him for misbehaving.

The teacher has been detained by police on suspicion of child abuse. Meanwhile, the kindergarten director has reportedly stopped answering his phone. The local education authority has said that it is now conducting ethics inspections into kindergarten teachers working in the district. It has also blacklisted the teacher from ever working in Jinan again.

Police are still in the process of investigating the incident, reports of which have gone super viral today on Chinese social media, shocking the nation.

Unfortunately, child abuse scandals regularly arise to horrify the Chinese public. Last November, allegations from parents that a private Beijing kindergarten had been drugging their children and subjecting them to sexual abuse became one of the country’s biggest stories of 2017.

The fact that police concluded that parents had fabricated almost all of these claims did little to help other parents’ peace of mind as new child abuse scandals continue to emerge with horrifying regularity in China, particularly in rural areas.

Earlier this week, a kindergarten teacher in Ningxia was fired from her job for slapping kids, along with a coworker who filmed these beatings. A few days later, another video went viral on Weibo showing a middle school teacher breaking a broom on a group of male students’ butts for skipping class to play basketball.

[Images via The Paper / Beijing News]