BEIJING – Parents across China this week were shocked when two separate stories of gross physical abuse against kindergarten-aged children made national headlines.

On Tuesday, police in the city of Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi, detained a teacher at the Sky Montessori kindergarten after parents complained about alleged physical abuse there.

Closed-circuit TV video from inside the classroom -- released to the media soon after the scandal broke -- confirmed what parents had already inferred from their children's bruises and stories: that their teacher, Li Zhuqing, was slapping, kicking, hitting and verbally abusing them.

A video from a local Shanxi provincial news program (report in Chinese; footage starts around 34 seconds in) shows Li repeatedly slapping and shoving around the children over a 10 minute period. Two girls are shown being repeatedly slapped in the face while a boy is seen being slapped and then shoved into another student.

The father of one of the girls said he reported the abuse to the police after his daughter came home with a bruised eye and cheek, and explained to the news program why his daughter was singled out.

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"The teacher [Li] did it because she couldn't answer 10 plus one correctly," said the father, surnamed Han. He noted that his daughter could do simple single-digit addition, but could not understand Li's explanation of how to solve higher sums.

According to Han, his daughter was slapped in the face around 70 times and kicked twice, while three other children in the class were reportedly hit 43, 10 and 27 times respectively.

"She is not a teacher. She should not be a teacher. To put it plainly, she is not a human being," said Han.

The story quickly went viral and drew hundreds of thousands of comments on China's Twitter-like service Weibo.

"How can the world have people like this? Her parents should be ashamed of having a daughter like that!" wrote one user. "Watching this video made me cry ... Children should never be treated like this," added another.

Li was detained under a 15-day "administrative detention," common when Chinese police are waiting to charge someone, Chinese state media reported. The Montessori school, which reportedly was unlicensed and therefore operating illegally, was also shut down indefinitely. Taiyuan city authorities pledged a month-long investigation of other municipal schools to ensure there were no other cases of abuse. 

Boy held up by ears
But there was more outrage to come: Another school abuse scandal broke the next day after a picture taken at the Blue Peacock kindergarten in Wenling, Zhejiang province, circulated online.

The photo showed a teacher holding up a child by his ears -- the boy obviously in pain and the teacher grinning widely.

The teacher, Yan Yanhong, 20, was detained and police opened an investigation. Authorities revealed that she had been working without a license and that the school had been applying to certify her while she worked.

News of the abuse quickly spread around the Web, where it garnered more than 4 million posts and became a trending topic on Weibo by Thursday.

"This person is seriously sick!" wrote a disgusted Weibo user. "My child starts school next year, how frightening!" said another.

Teng Linhua, Vice-director of the Wenling Education Bureau, told the China Daily newspaper that "all teachers at private and public schools must have qualifications before being hired."

Teng said only 40 percent of kindergarten teachers in Wenling were properly qualified.

NBC News' Le Li and Johanna Armstrong contributed to this report.

Sussex Police via AFP - Getty Images

An undated handout picture released by Sussex Police on September 24, 2012 shows missing British teenager Megan Stammers. British police were liaising with French colleagues on September 24 in an effort to track down a missing 15-year-old girl said to have fled across the Channel with a married teacher twice her age.

LONDON -- A 15-year-old British girl is believed to have run away to France with her 30-year-old math teacher, ITV News reported.

Megan Stammers, of Eastbourne, England, was reported missing at about noon on Friday and police said they believed she had traveled from Dover, England, to Calais, France, that evening.

Police said later that she was believed to have left the country with Jeremy Forrest, 30, of Ringmer, near Lewes.

"Megan's family love her dearly and are all incredibly upset by her disappearance. They want her to come home as soon as possible. We need Megan or Jeremy to make contact with us to help us return her safely to her family," Chief Inspector Jason Tingley, of Sussex Police, said in a statement on its website Saturday.

Police said her family were due to appear at a press conference later Monday.

ITV News said a blog posted on May 19 on Forrest's website, James Ayre Music, talked about trying to deal with a “moral dilemma.”

“And the overiding question it left me with was this: How do we, and how should we, define what is right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable???” the blog said, according to ITV News.

“I came to a few different conclusions, mainly that actually we get a lot of things wrong, but at the end of the day I was satisfied that if you can look yourself in the mirror and know that, under all the front, that you are a good person, that should have faith in your own judgement,” it added.

Read more stories from ITV News 

Megan’s sister Brooke said in a message on Twitter that “Hope and faith is all we can give and everyone's support is amazing.”

“Will not stop until my sister is home! #keepfaith #keephope #findmeganstammers,” she said in another message.

Her father Martin Stammers appealed for Megan to get in touch. “We are worried and miss her terribly,” he said.

A Facebook page has been set up called “Find Megan Stammers.” At 6:25 a.m. ET Monday, the page had 2,320 likes.

ITV News is NBC News' UK partner.

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Mukhtar Khan / AP

Indian policemen detain a Kashmiri teacher during a protest in Srinagar on July 16, 2012.

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir detained dozens of government teachers during a protest on Monday, The Associated Press reports. The teachers had taken to the streets demanding a hike in salary and regularization of their jobs. 

Tauseef Mustafa / AFP - Getty Images

A teacher holds a placard during a protest in Srinagar on July 16, 2012. 50 Rupees equals $0.90 USD.

Fayaz Kabli / Reuters

A Kashmiri government teacher inside a police van after he was detained during a protest in Srinagar on July 16, 2012.

Reuters

Policemen carry the body of an American teacher shot dead by a student at a school in Sulaimaniya, Iraq, on Thursday.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq -- The quarrel at a Christian school in northern Iraq was at first easily ignored by other students: a disagreement between a classmate and a teacher that could barely be heard. But it quickly escalated into gunfire Thursday in a murder-suicide marking the rare violent death of an American in Iraq's most peaceful region.

Authorities in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah said 18-year-old Biyar Sarwar shot his gym teacher, U.S. citizen Jeremiah Small, before turning the gun on himself at a private English-speaking school during a morning sports lecture. Sarwar died later at a nearby hospital.

Small was from Cosmopolis, a town in western Washington state near the coast. His father, J. Dan Small, confirmed the death on his Facebook page. "Our oldest, Jeremiah, was martyred in Kurdistan this a.m.," the elder Small wrote.

Eyewitnesses in Iraq described a scene of chaos in the classroom, with some students fainting in fear after gunfire shattered the morning class.

Ahmed Mohammed said he was sitting in the front of the classroom and paid little attention to the argument when it first erupted. He said he could barely hear what was happening because Sarwar was at the back of the room.

"Then I heard the gunshot," said Mohammed, his face pale as he recounted the scene. "I turned my head and saw the body of the American teacher on the ground with blood near it. All the students started to run out of the room. Seconds later, as I was running to the reach the school gate, I heard another gunshot."

A short time later, another student shouted that Sarwar had killed himself, Mohammed said.

"So I rushed back to the class with other students to see the teacher on the ground with three bullets in his head and chest, and bloody, and Biyar with a bullet in his head."

Sulaimaniyah police spokesman Sarkawit Mohammed, no relation to Ahmed, said the shooting appeared to be a murder-suicide, but provided no motive. He said Sarwar hid the gun in his clothes before the lecture at the Medes School, a private Christian academy of elementary through secondary grade level classes.

The Medes program runs three schools in the provinces that make up Iraq's northern Kurdish region, boasting an enrollment of about 2,000 students. According to the schools' website, American staff often teach one or two courses each semester. An estimated 95 percent of the students are from Kurdish Muslim families.

Students described Small as a devout Christian who frequently praised Christianity and prayed in the classroom. However, Sulaimaniyah Mayor Zana Hama Saleh said Small was not a missionary and cast doubt that the killing was motivated by sectarian issues because Sarwar "had no radical religious tendencies."

"Maybe the student had mental problems," Saleh said.

The Nashville, Tenn.-based Servant Group International, for whom Small worked, confirmed his identity and described him as a beloved mentor to the more than 1,000 Iraqi students he taught since 2005.

Jeff Dokkestul, a Servant Group International board member, said Small was one of nine American teachers at the Sulaimaniyah school, which he said is run by Iraqi Kurds. Although Dokkestul said the groups' teachers are Christian, he maintained that they do not proselytize their students.

"We believe this is an isolated incident, just like (what) happens in the U.S.," Dokkestul said in an interview. He said the school operates "as a Christian school serving the Muslim and Christian community, a mixed community."

Sulaimaniyah is located in Iraq's comparatively peaceful Kurdish region, 160 miles (260 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad. The Kurdish region has generally been free of the bombings and shootings that have plagued the rest of Iraq in recent years. Foreigners, including American citizens, usually travel freely around northern Iraq without the armed guards or armored vehicles often used in the rest of the country.

A team from the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the Kurdish region's capital, was in Sulaimaniyah to identify Small's body but was unable by Thursday night to do so.

"We have heard reports regarding the shooting of a teacher in Sulaimaniyah and are working through our consulate in Irbil and Iraqi authorities to ascertain the details of the incident," the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said in a statement. "At this time, we are waiting for identification to be completed and for the family to be notified."

Medes student Neyan Kamal said Small was highly respected, and described Sarwar as smart.

"I'll never forget these cruel moments," said Kamal, who was in the classroom during the shooting. "I have no idea what the motive was — both were good people."

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