Media reported this month that a one-year-old boy nicknamed Kai Kai (愷愷) died as a result of abuse in December last year at the hands of a woman surnamed Liu (劉), who was his foster caregiver, causing much public anger.
Ironically, Liu had written a comment on social media in support of the idea that “the death penalty is the only punishment for child murderers.”
However, there is another important aspect of the case.
As a licensed nanny, Liu would have looked after many children without incident; that is, apart from Kai Kai.
On her social media pages, there is also evidence of the passion and attentiveness she had for childcare.
So what psychological mechanism made it possible for her to become a child abuser and even a killer?
Liu might have a pathological tendency to be a so-called “justice warrior,” with an abnormal sense of mission.
Before she became Kai Kai’s nanny, she must have known that the child’s father had lost contact with him and his mother was in prison.
For her, his family history was his “original sin.”
It is inevitable that a one-year-old would be a little naughty or difficult to communicate with. For other children who were that way, she might have seen them as “active and smart,” but perhaps she saw Kai Kai as “a bad child with criminal tendencies.”
She might have thought: “As the nanny of this bad child, I should educate and punish him to prevent the offspring of criminal parents from also harming society when he grows up.”
The morbid tendencies of a justice warrior might have allowed Liu to rationalize her abusive behavior as disciplining a “bad” child.
She even shared her philosophy on discipline with her younger sister online.
For nannies and the children they care for, there is already a gap in psychological maturity.
As for a justice warrior nanny, she is more likely to be self-centered and take on the responsibility of educating and disciplining a child inappropriately when faced with incessant crying, ultimately leading to regrettable events.
Training courses for nanny licenses should teach the legal responsibilities of the job, the penalties for child abuse and the scope of appropriate discipline. That would establish proper conduct and help prevent tragedies such as those perpetrated by the punishment of a justice warrior.
Another way to improve the social safety net would be to improve the single-person tracking and counseling methods of social workers, promote random visits by supervisors and recruit “secret visitors” — workers who enter the homes of carers to observe their behavior without the carer knowing they are being scrutinized.
Public sensitivity to child abuse incidents also needs to be bolstered.
By improving the social safety net, every child can have the chance to grow up in peace and security.
Tai Shen-feng is a professor in National Chung Cheng University’s department of criminology.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017