The person in charge of a Shanghai day care center where staff were caught on camera allegedly abusing toddlers has been detained, police said Wednesday.
The suspect, surnamed Zheng, was detained on Monday, after three staff from the third-party center management were detained last week, according to Shanghai police.
Leading travel agency Ctrip established the center, run by a third-party organization, in 2016, to help employees solve babysitting problems for children under three years old, the minimum age for public kindergartens.
Video footage showing staff abusing children at the center went viral last week, leading to intense public outcry.
One clip showed a female staff member throwing a little girl's schoolbag on the floor and pushing her violently, causing her to fall and hit her head on the corner of a table.
In another video, a child cried after being forced to eat something that his parents later claimed to be wasabi.
On Wednesday, authorities with the Shanghai Municipal Working Committee on Children and Women announced the result of a preliminary investigation into the case, saying it is a "severe case of child abuse" that had a "terrible impact" on society.
Meanwhile, the Women's Federation of Shanghai apologized to the public for a "lack of supervision and management" of Modern Family, a magazine that is affiliated to the federation.
In early 2016, the magazine's reader service department signed a contract with Ctrip to run the day care center. It later subcontracted the center to the third-party organization. But it controlled financial affairs of the center.
Ctrip is seeking new management for the center and will allow employees to see surveillance video of classrooms on their mobile phones in the future.
