A kindergarten principal has been placed on administrative leave after she admitted to grasping a student’s arm during a misunderstanding, causing bruises that the child said still hurt a week later.
The four-year-old’s father, surnamed Wong, told HK01 that he discovered injuries on his son when he returned home from his Kwai Chung school on May 31.
After the school refused to tell him what happened, Wong reported the case to police. Only then was he told that the injuries are related to a misunderstanding between his son and the kindergarten principal earlier that day.
According to Wong’s retelling of the school’s explanation, his son was attempting to put a book back in its shelf. He was unable to place it properly and, in a fit of frustration, threw the book to the floor.
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The principal thought that the book struck a school caretaker, so she forced the child to apologize. Believing he didn’t do anything wrong, the boy refused and started crying. The principal then carried the child away, and in the process, clutched his arm tightly while telling him to stop sobbing.
“From the state of [his] injuries, it’s clear that it was an abnormal amount of strength,” Wong told HK01, adding that his son says the bruises are still painful a week after the incident.
A teacher clarified later that the boy did not hit the caretaker with the book.
Po Leung Kuk, the organization that runs the school, said the principal has been placed on leave, and that it is following up on the case.
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