Assault on woman in hotel cause for concern

Screen capture of the video. [Photo/IC]

A young woman complained on social media that a man assaulted her on Sunday night while she was staying at a Home Inn in Beijing. Video from the hotel's security cameras, which the woman filmed with her phone and then posted online, shows a male hotel staff asked the man to stop, but did not try to restrain him and it was a female guest who finally stopped the man.

Worse than the attack itself is that both the hotel and the local police have tried to pass the buck.

On Tuesday night, Home Inn said in a statement that they had been "wasting no time trying to contact the victim".

Do they have any understanding of the phrase "wasting no time"? The woman went to the police station accompanied by a hotel staff member that night; she went back to the hotel to collect her bags the next morning, during which time the Home Inn had plenty of time to contact her. Yet they didn’t.

The local police did not perform well at first, either. After the woman arrived at the police station, they did not try to trace and detain the suspect. In a later interview, a police officer responded that the woman "did not suffer any personal injury".

Yet the video clearly shows she was knocked to the ground and the man grabbed her hair and dragged her for several meters.

We do not expect the crime rate in our society to be zero. But we expect that those who have the duty to protect us will help when we are in need.

Both the police and the hotel said they are conducting investigations. But had the woman’s video not attracted so many eyeballs, would they have taken the incident as seriously?

The next time an assault happens, we hope they will do their duty before public opinion forces them to act.