Foreign teacher jailed for sex assault

A foreign teacher at a kindergarten run by RYB Education in Qingdao, Shandong province, was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for molesting a female pupil.

Mayorga Heredia Daniel Oswaldo, 35, from Columbia, was given the sentence by the Laoshan District People's Court in Qingdao for sexually molesting a pupil during nap time in January, the court said in a statement.

He will also be deported after serving the sentence, and the court decided to give the harsh sentence because Oswaldo made use of his position and publicly molested the pupil, the statement said.

A video showed him entering a classroom and putting his hands into the girl's quilt during nap time for about one minute as the Chinese caretaker left for the bathroom at 2 pm on Jan 25, the Beijing-based preschool operator said in a statement.

The incident was uncovered after the child's parents reported it and the school reviewed surveillance tapes. Police detained him on Jan 29, immediately after the kindergarten and the girl's parents reported the case, it said.

It's the second time RYB has been hit by a claim of abuse at one of its Chinese kindergartens, after reports of children at an RYB Education preschool being poked with needles and maltreated by a 22-year-old female teacher, which caused a public outcry in 2017.

A Beijing court in June sentenced the teacher, surnamed Liu, to a year and a half in prison and barred her from teaching or caring for minors for five years after her release.

Another incident involving foreign teachers caused public outrage after sixteen foreigners - seven teachers from the Xuzhou branch of EF Education First and nine students from nearby schools - were among 19 people detained in Xuzhou last month in an anti-narcotics crackdown, according to the Xuzhou public security bureau.

Xie Chuanjiao in Qingdao contributed to this story.

zoushuo@chinadaily.com.cn