The parent had accused a teacher of tormenting her 6-year-old asthmatic daughter to the point that she was coughing up blood.
A woman in the southern Guangdong province has been detained for sharing false information online claiming her daughter suffered health problems after being physically abused by her teacher.
The public security bureau in Guangzhou’s Baiyun District said the parent, surnamed Liu, had been criminally detained on suspicion of “seriously disrupting public order, causing a bad societal impact, and picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” According to the police, Liu had hired people to spread false information in order to receive compensation from the school and get the head first-grade teacher fired.
On Saturday, the parent in question shared photos of her daughter’s school uniform covered in “blood” on microblog Weibo.
The parent claimed her daughter had coughed up blood after the teacher forced the 6-year-old to run 10 laps around an outdoor track as punishment, according to screenshots of the now-deleted Weibo post shared online. The mother also said she had given the teacher 60,000 yuan to “take special care” of her daughter, and that the educator had attacked her once to stop her from complaining to the school.
In an earlier statement Sunday, the Baiyun District public security bureau said the parent, Liu, had admitted spreading false accusations against the teacher to “increase influence.” Police added that the blood found on the child’s school uniform was fake, and there was no medical certificate confirming that the daughter had coughed blood or even suffered from asthma.