Child Abuse Attorney Defense | An Attorney's Case Leading to No Prosecution for a Client Charged with Child Abuse of a Child with a Disability

🔗Child abuse refers to an adult, including a guardian, harming a child's health or welfare or committing acts such as assault. A guardian's abandonment or neglect of a child is also included within child abuse.

Where a child dies as a result of child abuse, the offender is subject to life imprisonment or imprisonment with labor for not less than five years, and where the abuse creates a danger to the child's life, the offender is subject to imprisonment with labor for not less than three years.

Abuse of a child with a disability refers to the crime of committing emotional, physical, verbal, or sexual cruelty, exploitation, abandonment, or neglect against a person with a disability. A person who commits such a crime may be subject to imprisonment with labor for not more than five years or a fine not exceeding fifty million won under the Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities.

In the case of abuse of a child with a disability, both the Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities and the Act on Special Cases concerning the Punishment of Child Abuse Crimes may be applied together, and depending on the gravity of the offense, the offender may be subject to severe punishment.

The child abuse attorney first pointed out that the statements of the child said to be the victim were not consistent.

The child reversed his statements about the alleged assault several times, first stating, 'The teacher choked me,' and then stating, 'Actually, he hit my head,' and so on.

Through the statements of other teachers, the child abuse attorney argued that the child had an intellectual disability and was a student who frequently told small lies.

In order to argue that the client had not assaulted the child, the child abuse attorney submitted classroom CCTV footage as evidence.

Owing to its nature, the special education classroom where the client worked is equipped with CCTV.

The child abuse attorney obtained the CCTV footage and proved that no assault had occurred on the day of the incident alleged by the child.

The parent of the child alleged that the client had inflicted emotional abuse on the child through verbal abuse.

When the child told a lie during class, the client said, 'You must not lie. If you lie, I will not talk with you,' and even this was a statement made for educational purposes.

The Daeryun child abuse attorney emphasized, on the basis of Supreme Court precedent, that this was not a statement amounting to emotional abuse.