Young mainland women 'marrying elderly Hong Kong men to get residency'
PUBLISHED : Friday, 07 March, 2014, 11:56am
UPDATED : Friday, 07 March, 2014, 1:08pm
Samuel Chan and Clifford Lo [email protected] [email protected]
More and more elderly abuse casese have been reported involving cross-border marriages in recent years. A Mr Chan (pictured), 60, told a social group about his ordeal in 2007. Photo by David Wong
Uncle Law, 83, just wanted someone to share the rest of his life with and when he met his young mainland wife, he thought he’d found her.
They married after meeting in Hunan Province in 2010 and had a son the following year.
But last year, six months after his wife and son finally obtained one-way permits to live in Hong Kong, his world fell apart.
After months of abuse, including public humiliation, he was divorced, lost custody of his son, then aged three, and was evicted from his 150 sqft public flat.
Law’s story is not unusual, according to welfare agency Against Elderly Abuse, to which he was referred in December. But he was the oldest of 100 elderly men who sought help from the agency last year.
“In the beginning, the couple had disputes over trivial matters,” assistant executive director Roy Lam Man-chiu said. “She then complained about poor living conditions, argued over money and their relationship and shouted at him every day.”
She also accused him of impotence in front of his friends and neighbours.
“This made him feel ashamed and embarrassed,” Lam said. “He was afraid to go out and meet neighbours and friends.”
Social Welfare Department figures show the number of cases involving abuse of the elderly rose by 44 per cent to 589 last year from 408 in 2012. There were 368 reports in 2011 and 319 in 2010.
Psychological abuse, the category Uncle Law’s case falls under, almost doubled to 73 cases last year from 36 in 2012 – the highest level since 2009.
Lam said the 100 abuse cases handled by his agency last year compared to just dozens in previous years.
In response to a South China Morning Post enquiry, the department did not offer an explanation of the rise in elderly abuse cases. But it said that the government would not tolerate elderly abuse and would take such cases seriously.
Law was ordered to move out of his flat after his wife, then aged in her 30s, won custody of the child.
The Housing Authority said that in the case of a divorce, it usually would allow the custodial parent to keep the flat.
Lam said many elderly people who did not know how to seek help ended up homeless. But the agency has helped Law find another flat through the Housing Department’s compassionate rehousing scheme.
Lam said he believed the main reason mainland women married elderly men was to get residency in Hong Kong and seize their flats.
In similar cases handled by Against Elderly Abuse most of the women were from Hunan and Hubei provinces and in their 30s.
Their spouses are all public housing tenants over 60 years old living on welfare.
Social welfare sector lawmaker Peter Cheung Kwok-che said the rule awarding a flat to custodial parents also protected wives and children from hostile husbands.
He said the government at best was only able to take remedial action such as offering men evicted from their flats after divorce a rental allowance of around HK$1,500 to rent a bedsit apartment.
Men over 60 should think carefully if a young mainland woman agreed to tie the knot, Cheung said adding it could be “too good to be true”.
Echoing Cheung’s advice, Lam from Against Elderly Abuse said: “Lust? Use caution.”
