Hong Kong girl ‘murdered by parents’ had 133 injuries to body, court hears

Girl’s brother tells court their father threw his five-year-old sister at least 18 times against the ceiling

Representative: Girl rides her scooter in Hong Kong on 18 July 2020 (AFP via Getty Images)

A five-year-old girl who was allegedly murdered by her parents had 133 different signs of injury all over her body, a forensic pathologist told a Hong Kong court.

The case dates back to 6 January 2018, when the girl was rushed to the hospital in an unconscious state before being declared dead.

Though the girl died of septicaemia, the prosecutors have argued that her death was indirectly linked to the assaults and neglect that she faced at the hands of her father and stepmother.

The injuries detailed by the pathologist included deep bruises to the child’s scalp which were supposedly caused by bumping her head against a hard surface, the South China Morning Post quoted the experts as saying.

In an interview played at the High Court, the brother of the girl recounted the abuse from his father on the night of 5 January 2018 and said that their father threw his five-year-old sister at least 18 times against the ceiling, punishing her for “walking slowly” on the night before she died.

Dr Kwok Ka-ki who performed the autopsy of the victim agreed with the prosecution’s suggestion that the injury could have been caused by throwing the child at the ceiling.

She reportedly said that she found 58 recent injuries and 75 scabbed wounds, ulcers and scars during the post mortem, and that these injuries were compatible with the ones caused by slapping and punching, using a rattan stick, clothes hanger, slippers and scissors.

While the father and the stepmother of the deceased admitted to abusing the child for over 150 days from 10 August 2017, they denied the charge of murder.

Her eight-year-old brother was also found with multiple bruises, abrasions and lacerations over his body which suggested abuse, the experts told the court.

The couple got married in November 2016, after the father separated from the biological mother of his two children in 2013.

The girl’s seven-year-old step-sister from the mother’s first marriage told the court that she saw the father throwing the child upwards, with her head hitting the ceiling. “[They] wanted to scare her,” she said. “Because caning her with a rattan stick was useless.”

The matter is currently under trial, with a gag order from the court to not name any of the accused or their relatives to protect the identity of the children.

According to data from the Child Protection Registry, in 2019 a total of 1,006 cases were registered in Hong Kong, down from 1,064 in 2018. Prior to that, however, the number of abuse cases last crossed the 1,000 mark in 2010.