Grandmother, domestic worker arrested for suspected child neglect after viral videos spark investigation

Hong Kong police have arrested a 61-year-old woman and a domestic worker over suspected child neglect after video clips of a girl crying for help went viral on social media.

Police said on Friday they were investigating the suspected maltreatment of an 11-year-old girl by her family, following a referral from the Social Welfare Department.

The girl had redness and swelling in her hands and feet and was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital for treatment before being transferred to Hong Kong Children’s Hospital, police said.

Her 61-year-old grandmother and a 43-year-old foreign woman – reportedly a domestic worker – were arrested on suspicion of child neglect in Wong Tai Sin on Friday, police said.

The pair are being held for investigation, and the case is being pursued by the Wong Tai Sin district crime team, police added.

The arrests came after two clips went viral on social media on Thursday. Although the original Instagram post has been taken down, netizens saved copies of the video, one of which shows a girl recording herself asking for help.

“I need everyone’s help. My family is going crazy. I just got home from the tutoring centre…” the girl said in Cantonese in the video, before being cut off by several loud bangs on the door behind her.

A woman’s voice can be heard shouting in Cantonese: “Are you done being so loud? People need to get to work tomorrow morning.”

In another video allegedly filmed by the girl, a man berates her using profanity over issues concerning her schoolwork. It was unclear whether the man in the video is the girl’s father.

Hong Kong has seen an upward trend of child abuse in recent years. Data from the Social Welfare Department’s Child Protection Registry showed the rate of child abuse soared from 0.92 per 1,000 children in 2020 to 1.54 in 2025 – a 67 per cent increase over the six-year period.

Experts have warned that a myriad of factors have contributed to the phenomenon, including the Covid-19 pandemic, economic downturn, parenting style changes, and family dysfunction.

Authorities enacted the Mandatory Reporting of Child Abuse Ordinance in January, requiring people working in dedicated professions such as teachers and medical workers to flag suspected cases of child abuse.

In the first five months since the law came into effect, authorities received 176 reports of suspected child abuse involving 188 children, according to official figures.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.