Au Chi Keung, head of Department of Family and Community Service of IAS (center)
After a video clip showing a woman violently slapping her physically handicapped elderly mother went viral on Sunday evening on several social media outlets, the Public Security Police (PSP) has located the family and referred the case to the Social Welfare Bureau (IAS). According to a PSP spokesperson, investigations into the alleged abuse closed yesterday and the daughter has since been transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office, suspected of the crime of harming bodily integrity.
The IAS called a press conference yesterday in order to confirm the daughter-and-mother relation revealed in the video. According to the head of the Family and Community Service department, Au Chi Keung, the abused elder, had been confined to a wheelchair after having suffered a stroke and has been transferred to an elderly residential care home after the exposed incident.
Mr Au attributed the cause of the abuse to the middle- aged daughter’s tremendous stress, as she has been primarily responsible for taking care of the family, caring also for a brother with intellectual disabilities and an elderly unemployed father.
“Her brother has been receiving rehabilitation services and we’ve granted temporary financial aid to the family. During our contact with this family in the past, we didn’t see her showing emotional instability. We have sent staff to provide counseling, and by ‘following up the case,’ we will not only follow up with the daughter but the whole family,” said Au, adding that the bureau “has done what it should have done.”
The official further explained that many cases of emotional instability and domestic violence in communities are not easily identifiable. In the past three years, a mere seven cases of abuse against elders have been recorded among Macau’s hundreds of thousands of families.
“There’s always a question as to the things [abuses] that their neighbors can see, but our colleagues cannot [see the abuses]. We may not be able to hear the neighbors’ views and make the right predictions. This really tests our colleagues’ skills,” he stressed.
It was reported that some of the residents in the Fai Chi Kei area often saw the daughter bringing her wheelchair-bound mother to the park and sometimes heard her scolding her loudly. Some have called for more attention to be invested into hidden elderly abuse cases within communities, and identifying strategies to explore how the government can better support caretakers both financially and psychologically.
“In this case, the result is suspected domestic violence, but the cause is social responsibility. Everybody gets old and sick, and both children and parents may need to be a long-term caretaker. Therefore, this incident reminds us to reflect on whether our community care means ‘care in the community and for people’ or ‘care just by the women caretakers,’” explained social work scholar Cecilia Ho.
Ms Ho noted that many social policies and services are in need of improvement in order to increase assistance to the concerned groups. She said there are a lack of services reaching out to families that have low motivation to seek help, while a set of integrated services assisting caretakers – which might include skills training, counseling and household help – have not been implemented. Meanwhile, families that demand elderly care services often need to wait over a year in order to secure a place at a care home, or alternatively must pay large sums for the private ones.
The scholar cited the Macau Domestic Violence Legislation Coalition’s statement on the incident, which states, “The government needs to promptly complete the definition of domestic violence in the bill and stipulate specific content of supporting services.”
She pointed out, in particular, that “financial abuse is not included in the definition [specified in the] domestic violence bill; but for elder abuse, it’s very common, especially for old people suffering from chronic illnesses.” “In this case of suspected elderly abuse, the elderly woman is a chronic illness patient who is fully dependent on her daughter. So, this is a case that can be charged as a public crime,” she added.
Clip gets shared thousands of times
In the two-minute video that was soon shared many thousands of times by Macau and Hong Kong netizens, the middle-aged woman is seen slapping, hitting and screaming in Cantonese at the elderly woman repeatedly, as she seemed to be furious that her mother wouldn’t lower the brake lever on her wheelchair.
A man’s voice is heard yelling at the abuser: “If you hit her again, I’ll call the police.” The woman yells back: “Then call the police!” The person who filmed the shocking video then asks the old woman, “Is she your daughter?” She replies, “Yes,” and someone says: “If you hit your grandmother like this, I’m going to call the police.” She answers aggressively: “This isn’t my grandmother, it’s my mother!”
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