How child abuse by kindergarten teachers (CAKT) happens in a Chinese context: Findings based on 35 cases of CAKT

Institutional abuse (IA) committed by professionals outside the family is an important form of child abuse. As one type of IA, while cases of child abuse by kindergarten teachers (CAKT) in China are increasing, research on the characteristics and mechanism remains scarce. The objective of this study was to address this research gap. Data were extracted from 35 criminal judicial documents involving 48 kindergarten teachers (nurses) and 247 victims aged 2–6 years. Statistical analysis was used to describe the characteristics of CAKT; qualitative thematic analysis of the stakeholders’ statements was used to disclose the mechanisms. The findings revealed the following: (a) The nature of CAKT was that by trying to control children’s conduct through physical force to achieve a desired order, teachers adopted a teacher-centered educational concept, requiring children to obey them rather than by organizing teaching activities based on the children's development stages; (b) The three most common means of committing CAKT were needling (42.9%), dragging and pressing the body (34.3%), and slapping (31.4%); (c) These abusers were relatively young and had a low level of education; (d) Teachers evaded monitoring through the concealment of abuse tools (e.g., needles, water, mustard) and abuse locations (e.g., corners of classrooms, bathrooms, storage rooms), and the perpetrators utilized strategies such as word substitution (e.g., replacing “needling” with “injection”, replacing “splashing” with “bathing”), making CAKT hard to discern, and a spoken terminology of “finger pointing” to shift the responsibility from themselves to the children, which made the children reluctant to disclose the abuse. The implications for the research and practice are discussed.