Grenville Cross
Published: 9:30am, 25 Dec 2025
The Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance becomes operational in Hong Kong on January 20, and will enhance child protections. It contains a mechanism for the early and effective detection of child abuse cases. It requires particular professionals to report if, during their work, they come to suspect a child has been suffering serious harm, or is at real risk of it.
The acts considered serious harm include inflicting physical injury, forcing or enticing a child to participate in a sexual act, and intimidating, terrifying or denigrating the child in a severe or repeated way that impairs the child’s mental health. If a child’s basic needs are repeatedly neglected, causing its health or development to be endangered, this could also constitute causing serious harm.
However, progress notwithstanding, nobody should think “job done”. Unfinished business aplenty remains, and the government will hopefully take the initiative with a comprehensive package of proposals to protect the most vulnerable. Once it does so, the incoming Legislative Council must facilitate the legislation, and in the meantime, it should hold the government’s feet to the fire.
In 2021, for example, the Law Reform Commission proposed a new offence of “failure to protect a child or vulnerable person where the child’s or vulnerable person’s death or serious harm results from an unlawful act or neglect”. It would facilitate the prosecution of people who, for example, fail to protect a child in danger and for whom they are responsible.
A classic instance was five-year-old Yeung Chi-wai, born with Down’s syndrome, who died in horrifying circumstances after swallowing the drug methamphetamine hydrochloride that his carers had left lying around at home.
The Law Reform Commission proposal derived from a British law that, given its urgency, was fast-tracked through parliament in 2004. After four years, it must be hoped that this much-needed reform will also receive an expedited passage through the Legislative Council next year. After all, delays can – and do – cost lives.
There is, moreover, a pressing need for an updated child cruelty law, clarifying that offending conduct is prosecutable regardless of whether the child’s suffering or injury is physical or psychological in nature. As things stand, prosecutors have little difficulty in bringing charges when a victim has been physically harmed, backed by proof of wounds or bruises. But emotional damage is a different story, and the law needs tightening.
In 2023, moreover, the Court of Appeal, when considering the sentence imposed on an adult offender for “extreme and callous cruelty” towards two children, called for a strengthening of the penalties, given that the maximum sentence for child cruelty is 10 years’ imprisonment. It said the facts showed “yet again the need for a substantial increase in the maximum sentences for this offence”. However, its call has yet to be heeded, and further such cases could arise at any time.
And, as recommended by the Law Reform Commission in 2019, the sexual grooming of children on the internet must be criminalised, along with sexual messaging. In March, the Hong Kong police, having surveyed 2,000 students (from Form One to Form Four), reported that 63.5 per cent had faced sexual advances online. This reflects developments elsewhere, with Save the Children and Western Sydney University having revealed last year that over six in 10 children globally interacted with “unknown others”.
Also, given the effect exposure to pornography can have on young minds, internet service providers should be made to understand there will be criminal consequences if children under 18 are allowed access to adult websites. A 2021 survey of 989 people revealed that 62 per cent began looking at pornography when aged 10 to 15, with 15 per cent having encountered it while under nine. If children are to enjoy a healthy transition to adulthood, adult site operators must be subject to a duty of care.
As the statistics show, child abuse cases are rising, and alarm bells are ringing. Hong Kong reported 1,504 cases last year, up from 1,457 in 2023 and 1,439 in 2022. Shocking as they are, these figures are only the tip of the iceberg. For example, support group Talk Hong Kong estimates that although 16 per cent of children may experience sexual abuse (affecting one in five girls and one in nine boys), up to 96 per cent of cases never reach the authorities.
This was because stigma, fear, social taboos and cultural barriers prevent children and families from coming forward, and the same is equally true of other types of child abuse. But everybody needs to understand that such conduct is intolerable and that culprits will face the full force of the law.
Much has been said about the workload awaiting Hong Kong’s eighth term of Legco, and it will undoubtedly have its work cut out for it. But it must also find the time to enact the child protection laws that are urgently required and long overdue.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SCMP