A 12-Year-Old' s Predicament

The parents of 12-year-old Yuan were divorced. Yuan lived with his mother. In 1998, he and his mum began to practice Falun Dafa. The two benefited both mentally and physically.

In April of 2000, Yuan' s mother was illegally detained. His father regained custody, giving the reason that his mother was in detention and therefore couldn' take care of him. In 2001, Yuan' s mother was illegally detained again. After she was released, Yuan strongly requested to return to live with his mother, since his father had used only violence to control him. Sometimes when his father had a quarrel with someone else, he would assault Yuan to vent his anger.

One time he injured Yuan' s head, and the boy couldn' rest his head on a pillow for more than 10 days. His grades in school declined. His thoughts were of his mother, because she had been very patient in helping him study, and had taught him to use "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" as his guide for living.

In October 2001 Yuan appealed to the court to transfer custody back to his mother. According to the law, if the child has the ability to decide (and is over ten years old), the court will consider the child' opinion. In other words, Yuan had the right to choose to be with his mum. The court, however, using the fact that his mother practiced Falun Gong as an excuse, ruled that custody should be given to the (violent) father. In a country where the law is abused like this, a 12-year has been completely marginalized and his human rights ignored.

Source
http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2002/5/30/22595.html

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2002/5/20/30533.html