Uiwang City to Directly Investigate Child Abuse Cases Starting This Month

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Seo Dong-young] Uiwang City announced on the 5th that it will begin directly investigating child abuse victims this month by taking over operations from the Gyeonggi Province Child Protection Specialist Agency, the child abuse investigation body.

This change follows the revision of the Child Welfare Act in accordance with the Presidential National Policy Initiative "Inclusive Nation Child Policy (2019)." Previously, child abuse investigations were conducted by private child protection specialist agencies. Despite these investigations involving the exercise of coercive power such as child separation and parental rights restrictions, the fact that private agencies handled such cases led to frequent problems including perpetrators refusing investigations and threats to counselors' personal safety.

Accordingly, as a leading region in the public child abuse investigation project, the city has restructured its child abuse response system to address these issues and align with the government's policy of strengthening public responsibility and state accountability in child protection.

The city established a dedicated Child-Friendly Team in January to handle child abuse cases and deployed one dedicated civil servant for child abuse matters. Additionally, it hired one dedicated child protection worker to strengthen support and management for children separated from their families and receiving protection.

The city also plans to hold regular meetings with the Gyeonggi Province Child Protection Specialist Agency and dedicated child abuse police officers at Uiwang Police Station to establish a collaborative system. It will address potential issues that may arise in the early stages of the public transition through measures such as day and night on-call duty and field response accompanied by police.

Lee Yun-ju, director of the Women and Children Division at Uiwang City, stated, "The importance of state responsibility for child abuse has grown even more due to recent serious child abuse cases," and added, "The city will make its best efforts in continuous promotion and prevention activities to continuously identify at-risk children in need of protection and prevent child abuse victims from occurring."