Kindergarten disputes abuse charge

A Fengxian district kindergarten said Thursday that a student's parents had libeled it when they accused a teacher of kicking their 5-year-old daughter.

The kindergarten's administration said in a public microblog post Thursday that the involved teacher denied kicking the girl. They have asked police to investigate the incident.

An Internet user uploaded pictures of bloody underwear, and said it belonged to a student surnamed Cai who told her parents that she was kicked by a teacher at Tonghui Kindergarten in Nanqiao town.

The microblog post spread widely online and the kindergarten was under great pressure to respond, said the school's principal, surnamed Qu.

According to the kindergarten's microblog post, the school's administration received a call Saturday from the girl's grandmother, who asked about blood on the child's underwear.

Teachers immediately went to the girl's home. They saw the blood and noticed an odor coming from the underwear. The teachers asked the grandmother whether she had bathed the girl.

The grandma said she was up late the night before playing mahjong and forgot to bathe the girl or change her underwear, according to the post.

The teachers took the girl to a local hospital, where a doctor diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection.

"However, the parents didn't trust the local hospital and demanded the girl be taken to a better hospital downtown," Qu told the Global Times.

A medical exam at the Children's Hospital of Shanghai found nothing wrong with the girl, the post said.

Qu refused to comment on whether the girl suffered any injury that indicated she had been abused.

The girl's father told the Global Times that the post left out that the doctor found that his daughter had a swollen perineum.

The family did not know the teacher well, but believes she didn't kick the girl on purpose, the father said.

The girl has not been back to the kindergarten recently. Her parents have started consulting lawyers.

The district government's press office said that the cause of the girl's infection remains unknown. The education department has started investigating the case and vowed to properly deal with the situation after determining what happened.

Fengxian police have received the kindergarten's report, but believe it should be dealt with in court because it is a civil matter, said a district police press officer surnamed Cao.

The Fengxian district education authority could not be reached for comment by press time Thursday.