A Beijing district court granted Kim Lee, the American wife of Crazy English founder Li Yang 12 million yuan of her husband’s assets in a divorce triggered by domestic violence. The decision comes after a lot of media attention and also amidst a growing awareness that women are mostly left defenseless in the case of domestic violence.
I just hope this will trigger better treatment of domestic violence in China, not only for a “foreign” spouse. Right now, neither law nor police are of much help for abused women. Domestic violence is regarded an “internal family matter”. It leads to horrible situations and if the wife, in total desperation, fights back or kills the abusive husband, she ends up being blamed; right now a women is on death row in such a case, generating wide condemnation. Big shame on Chinese men, on the law, on the police. It is not as bad as in India but a lot needs to be done.
In Beijing the Rotary Club of Beijing supports an NGO that has a call center to help women in distress. – the demand on the call center is so great it cannot attend to all the calls. For the Maple Counseling Hotline Project (part of the Maple Women’s Psychology Counseling Center), our Rotary Club contributed in its fiscal year 2012/2013 RMB 150,000 for the project.
See more on the court case:
‘Crazy English’ guru’s wife Kim Lee granted 12m yuan in divorce, by Mimi Lau, SCMP, on 4 February 2013
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1142768/crazy-english-gurus-wife-granted-12m-yuan-divorce