The defendant's account can be presented in full; whether it is accepted still requires examination of evidence and judicial reasoning.
SPECIAL FEATURE / LEGAL OBSERVATION Who Has a Duty
Who Has a Duty
to Catch the Child?
Guarantor status, acts, and omissions through the Kaikai case
Read on | Clarifying the boundaries of legal responsibility Home › Special Features › Diverse Perspectives › Who Has a Duty to Catch the Child?
The question is whether, at a specific time, the person knew of risk, had access, and had feasible protective measures available.
Where warning signs already exist, job titles and formal divisions cannot replace scrutiny of verification, escalation, and reporting.
PROLOGUE / THE QUESTION
This is more than a question of “Did she personally inflict abuse?”
When a professional's duties, entrusted relationship, institutional arrangements, or actual information give her the possibility of verifying, reporting, referring, or intervening for a child, does the emergence of danger signals place her under a duty not to remain passive?
When a child cannot seek help, can someone authorized to see the child and able to intervene simply say, “That is not my job”?
This concerns offenses by omission in criminal law. The “legal duty to prevent” in Article 15(1) of Taiwan's Criminal Code is generally described in legal scholarship as guarantor status. It is not a lifelong label attached to an occupation: a social worker does not automatically bear criminal liability for every child and every risk. Yet not being a parent or direct caregiver cannot justify skipping examination of a protective duty in a particular case.
COURTROOM & FACTS / CROSS-READING
Hearings and facts: how guarantor status is tested concretely
Guarantor status cannot be deduced directly from a job title. The court must ask what she actually knew, which care setting she could enter, what measures she could take, who relied on her information, and whether the danger could reasonably have been prevented at the time.
“I do not diagnose child abuse, and I did not choose the caregiver alone”
Chen Shang-chieh's defense: She said caregivers were chosen through joint assessment by supervisors and meetings; visits concerned health and development, and abuse training did not equip social workers to diagnose like doctors. She also argued that she understood some abnormalities through the caregiver's explanations and had asked questions, reminded the caregiver to seek medical care, and discussed matters with her supervisor.
Relevance to guarantor status: This challenges the “source of the duty” and “capacity to exercise care.” It may rebut overextended notions of liability, but being neither the sole decision-maker nor a doctor cannot by itself exclude duties to verify, follow up, escalate, and report.
Were visits merely formalities? Was information actually compared?
Focus of the hearing: The court asked individually about three visits, tooth loss, medical care, photographs, growth records, and the postponed December visit. Chen said visits usually lasted about an hour and that she had planned further assistance. Regarding some information and when records were completed, she explained her use of Excel, messages, notes, and later compilation.
First-instance assessment: The court did not infer forgery directly from “incomplete records”; she was acquitted on the document-forgery charge. For negligent homicide, however, it found a gap in the duty of care in the failure to further check abnormalities against objective data, medical information, the former caregiver, or unannounced visits.
“I am not the caregiver's supervisor”
Chen Shang-chieh's statement: She said she handled adoption placement; learning about the child was part of those services, but the procedures served adoption. She would have acted actively had she known of improper treatment, but without knowing at the time she could not address it. She said supervising the caregiver was outside her work.
Judges' questions: The judge asked not about an abstract service label but whether she had a responsibility to proactively discover improper treatment. The judge noted that local-government social workers with supervisory responsibility did not even know the child's location, while she did. This courtroom question was not a standalone adjudicative conclusion, but pointed to informational advantage and capacity to intervene.
Beyond “Who has primary responsibility?” who can catch the child?
Witness layer: Testimony from Shih Ying-ju and others concerned actual follow-up responsibilities. CWLF managers and institutional witnesses addressed screening cooperating caregivers, requesting information, visiting, and ending cooperation. Medical testimony concerned the significance of tooth loss and physical or psychological abnormalities as warnings. Each must be read in its original examination context, not replaced by a single-sentence summary.
The first instance's legal approach: The court identified case-specific guarantor status through control of information, access to the care setting, actual task allocation, and available protective tools. It found a high likelihood that checking, following up, or reporting could have prevented death. This is an existing first-instance assessment, open to review at later levels.
FULL RECORDS
Chapter Two is published
The full hearing records are available in Chapter Two. Use the links above to cross-check the February 23 and February 26 records, the witness texts, and the first-instance reasoning.
DETAILED TESTIMONY GUIDE
Detailed testimony guide: from “how I understood it” to “why the law still required action”
This is neither a verbatim transcript nor an attempt to invent motives for either side. It breaks statements most directly related to guarantor status into readable, verifiable legal questions. Each passage should be checked against the published judgment and source materials.
Read the same testimony through three questions
What did the person know then? What else could they do? Could reasonable measures have avoided the danger?
1. Not the sole decision-maker: does that exclude guarantor status? Source of duty
Meaning of the defendant's statement
Chen said cooperating caregivers were selected through supervisors' and meetings' joint assessment, not by her alone; she participated in discussion of the child's needs.
Materials to verify
Who selected the caregiver, followed up daily, knew the child's location, could visit, and could convey risks to supervisors, the institution, or public authorities? Job titles alone cannot answer these questions.
Court reasoning and legal significance
The first instance assessed duty through actual tasks, information, access, and CWLF's protective tools. In law, not being the sole decision-maker does not mean no protective responsibility; responsibility nevertheless remains limited to risks the person could actually control or influence.
2. Social workers are not doctors: when must they still verify, escalate, or report? Duty of care
Meaning of the defendant's statement
Chen said abuse training could not enable social workers to diagnose like doctors. She understood some abnormalities through the caregiver's explanations and had not personally witnessed every situation.
Materials to verify
Observations from the three visits; tooth-loss and medical information; whether photographs, videos, medical records, or other support existed for the caregiver's explanations; and whether warning signs occurred together rather than in isolation.
Court reasoning and legal significance
The first instance did not require social workers to diagnose medically. It found a failure to further verify, follow up, refer, or report multiple abnormalities. The legal threshold concerns a reasonable response to recognized risk, not a professional personally confirming abuse.
3. I asked and reported internally: why did the court consider that insufficient? Capacity to act
Meaning of the defendant's statement
She argued that she had asked about injuries, reminded or required the caregiver to seek medical care, and consulted her supervisor; she had not taken no action at all.
Materials to verify
Whether medical information was directly verified afterward, concrete support was requested from the caregiver, follow-up or alternative measures, referrals, or reports were recorded, and whether those measures were actually feasible at the time.
Court reasoning and legal significance
The court focused on “could danger be avoided?” rather than “was anything done?” Verbal questions do not automatically discharge the duty of care if available reasonable measures remain unimplemented. Conversely, if no further feasible measure truly existed, capacity to act must be assessed case by case.
4. A visit was only postponed: why was it part of the court's causal chain? Avoiding the result
Meaning of the defendant's statement
Chen said the December visit was postponed, not canceled, and that further help and play therapy had been planned; she did not consider that she had abandoned services completely.
Materials to verify
The reason and sequence of postponement, alternative meetings or unannounced visits, increased follow-up as warnings accumulated, and whether plans were implemented while risk could still be controlled.
Court reasoning and legal significance
The first instance placed postponement in the context of prior warnings and found no intensified verification or intervention as risk rose. One postponement is not automatically a crime; the issue is whether a protective opportunity to avoid the result was thereby lost.
5. Not the primary social worker: how do witnesses fill in actual responsibilities? Cross-checking testimony
The role of witness testimony
CWLF, public-sector, and home-based-childcare testimony concerned who followed up on care, held information, and could demand records or take measures. Testimony is evidence to be assessed, not automatically true because a manager or social worker gives it.
How to cross-check
Compare communications, visit records, referral responsibilities, supervisory reports, and public hearings rather than isolating “she was / was not primarily responsible.” Existing public sources preserve accounts from these different positions.
Court reasoning and legal significance
The first instance took a substantive approach, not treating statutory task allocation or private calls alone as the complete answer. Guarantor status centers on whether the person assumed a protective task, held key information, and could intervene in this case.
RESPONSE MAP / CLAIM → EVIDENCE → REASONING
How the judgment responded to each defense
This table does not silence the defense; it places each proposition back alongside verifiable materials and judicial reasoning. The left columns show accounts and materials open to testing in litigation. The right columns explain how the first-instance court addressed them and their significance for omission liability.
Mobile reading: swipe horizontally for all four columns
| Defendant's account | Verifiable evidence | First-instance reasoning | Legal significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| “I was neither the vulnerable-family case's primary social worker nor the caregiver's supervisor.” | The division among adoption, vulnerable-family services, and home-based-childcare centers; records of actual contact, knowledge of location, visits, and reporting; institutional tools for screening, checking, and ending cooperation with caregivers. | The court did not decide solely by job title. It assessed actual tasks, informational advantage, access, and protective tools, finding a concrete duty of protection in this case. Why the court rejected this account: Formal task allocation cannot replace an actual protective relationship that has formed. | Source of duty: Guarantor status is a substantive, case-specific assessment, neither automatically established by being a social worker nor automatically excluded by not being formally in charge. |
| “Social workers cannot diagnose abuse like doctors; the caregiver explained most abnormalities.” | Three visits' observations, tooth-loss and medical information, explanations about self-collision or teeth-grinding, and whether photographs, videos, medical records, or independent information were obtained. | The duty was not to diagnose medically but to verify, follow up, refer, or report multiple warnings, rather than simply accept the caregiver's unilateral explanations. | Standard of care: Professionals need not diagnose, but must translate recognizable risk into verification and protective action. |
| “I asked about injuries, reminded her to seek medical care, and discussed matters with my supervisor.” | Communications, supervision records, treatment or referral information; direct checks with medical providers; requests for concrete corroboration; and documented, traceable follow-up. | The court found that verbal questions or ideas did not complete risk management. Feasible but unimplemented measures included checking medical information, comparing records, consulting the former caregiver or relevant bodies, additional or unannounced visits, and legally required reporting. Why the court rejected this account: “Having done some things” is not the same as taking reasonable measures sufficient to reduce danger. | Capacity to act: The issue is not whether anything was done, but whether reasonable, feasible measures capable of reducing danger were available and left untaken. |
| “The December visit was postponed, not canceled; further assistance was planned.” | Schedules, reasons for postponement, alternative contact, outdoor or unannounced visits, and whether referral, medical care, or reporting was actually completed after escalation of risk. | The court assessed postponement together with earlier injuries, weight loss, tooth loss, and other warnings, finding no implementation of more active verification and intervention as risk increased. | Avoidability: A single delay need not establish criminal liability, but failure to take alternatives amid continuing foreseeable danger may form part of the causal chain. |
| “I did not know then that the child was being mistreated.” | Information available then, visit observations, photographs, medical and growth records, contradictions in the caregiver's accounts, and opportunities for contact or verification. | The court found Chen capable of exercising care and intervening, with a high likelihood that timely verification, follow-up, or reporting could avoid death. It therefore found an adequate causal relationship between negligence and the result. Why the court rejected this account: The assessment asks not only whether abuse was known, but whether danger was foreseeable and prevention possible. | Causation and negligence: Actual knowledge of abuse is not the sole threshold. The questions are foreseeability of concrete danger, ability to prevent it, and attribution of the result to the omission. |
LEGAL MAP
Guarantor status must be proved element by element
Knowledge alone does not create guarantor status; not directly abusing the child does not automatically exclude omission liability. Examine the source of duty, foreseeability, intervention capacity, and possibility of avoiding the result.
Where does the duty come from?
Do law, office, contract, entrusted care, institutional rules, or a voluntarily assumed protective task create a duty to prevent harm to this child?
What information was held?
Did the person know the child's location, care arrangements, visit records, health, or external warnings? Were they closer to key information than other potential interveners?
What could be done?
Could the person visit, verify, demand improvement, end cooperation, refer, report, or seek medical or public-authority assistance?
Was danger foreseeable?
Were there concrete abnormalities requiring further checking and response? Assess information available then, not infer backward from the later outcome.
Could the result be avoided?
Could timely, reasonable action have removed the child from danger, secured medical care, enabled referral, or provided protection?
Is the result attributable?
Even with a duty, breach of care, a link to the result, and negligence or other mental elements must still be proved. Liability cannot be presumed from the result alone.
ACT OR OMISSION?
First distinguish omission from positive conduct
If the issue is “not doing”
Failure to visit, verify, report, or protect follows an omission analysis. The court must first establish a legal duty to prevent the result, then capacity to act and possibility of avoiding it.
If the issue is “conduct concealing risk”
Evidence that false or distorted visit records prevented timely supervisory intervention could concern positive conduct. This still requires strict proof, but the legal focus would no longer be confined to guarantor status.
TESTIMONY & JUDGMENT
The defense must be heard; the judgment must also be read in full
The left-side accounts below reflect the defendant's first-instance defense; the responses reflect Taipei District Court judgment 114-Su-51 and its press release. Neither replaces the other, and rejection of a defense must not be recast as a judgment of character.
“I was not primarily responsible and had no public authority”
Chen argued that vulnerable-family case responsibility and statutory caregiver oversight belonged to other bodies. She did not choose the caregiver alone; adoption services included learning about the child but not comprehensive supervision of the caregiver.
Court finding: Job title and a single statutory division were not the sole criteria. The court considered her information about the child, opportunities to enter the care setting and see him, actual task-sharing with other workers, and CWLF's tools for checking and ending cooperation, finding a concrete protective duty in this case.
“I trusted the wrong person”
Chen said the caregiver explained most abnormalities. She did not personally witness self-collision or teeth-grinding and could not diagnose abuse like a doctor. She argued she had done her best with the information then available.
Court finding: The social worker's duty was not diagnosis but verification, follow-up, referral, or reporting amid multiple warnings. The court found a failure to seek objective corroboration of unilateral explanations, resolve contradictions, or jointly assess tooth loss, weight loss, and bruising, constituting a breach of care.
“I asked, reminded her to seek care, and reported internally”
The defendant said she asked about injuries, reminded or required medical care, and discussed matters with her supervisor. The December visit was postponed rather than canceled, and play therapy and further assistance had been planned.
Court finding: Verbal questions or ideas do not mean risk management is complete. The judgment listed available but unimplemented actions: direct medical verification, additional or unannounced visits, checks with the former caregiver or relevant agencies, comparing data, and statutory reporting.
How the first instance linked duty, negligence, and death
The court found a reasonable caseload and experience in adoption and abuse-warning recognition, giving Chen capacity to exercise care and intervene in concrete risks. Timely checking, follow-up, or reporting had a high likelihood of avoiding death; it therefore found adequate causation between omission and death.
Outcome: On April 16, 2026, Taipei District Court sentenced her to two years' imprisonment for negligent homicide and acquitted her of document forgery. This was a first-instance, not final, judgment; later courts may review its factual and legal assessments under law.
READING THE JUDGMENT
What the judgment actually found
These three points are essential safeguards against misunderstanding: neither expand guarantor status into unlimited liability nor treat division of work as a universal exclusion of responsibility.
She is not automatically guilty because she is a social worker.
The court started from case-specific information, access, actual responsibilities, and protective tools, not a blanket presumption based on occupation.
The court found that she had a protective duty.
The first instance found she had key information and opportunities to intervene and should have verified, followed up, escalated, or reported when warnings emerged.
Reasonable action could have avoided the result.
The court considered timely verification, follow-up, or reporting highly likely to prevent death; because these were not taken, it found adequate causation between negligence and the outcome.
How readers can assess the record
Read in this order: Original hearing text → witnesses and documents → court reasoning. Do not treat observation summaries, prosecution arguments, or individual testimony as established facts, or prematurely present conclusions beyond the first-instance judgment as final.
Guarantor status does not require anyone to guarantee that tragedy never happens. It requires that when a child cannot save himself, danger is visible, and verification, reporting, or intervention remains possible, protection cannot end with “That is not my job.”
EDITORIAL POSITION
This feature's central assessment: duty cannot readily be divided away
Given the protective relationship formed between Chen and Kaikai, her information, and the court's existing assessment of her capacity for care, this feature considers it difficult to exclude guarantor status merely because she was “not the vulnerable-family case's primary worker” or “only handled adoption.”
Guarantor status is not unlimited 24-hour liability. But once a matter falls within services, visits, and risk verification, splitting tasks cannot evade basic duties to protect the child's safety.
Capacity to act and the reasonable expectation of action remain legal elements to examine. Staffing, caseload, time, and informational constraints can affect individual liability, but are not automatic exemptions. Where recognizable warnings and opportunities to see the child or obtain information existed, yet reasonable verification, reporting, or protection was not undertaken, “objectively unable to act” cannot readily exclude responsibility wholesale.
COMPARATIVE LAW
One question, different legal languages: answers from nine jurisdictions
Taiwan's criminal law belongs to the civil-law tradition and has historically been strongly influenced by German and Japanese scholarship. Jurisdictions nevertheless differ in how explicitly they codify omission liability and in their terminology.
| Jurisdiction | Legal framework | Implications for this case |
|---|---|---|
| Taiwan | Criminal Code Article 15 provides that a person legally obliged and able to prevent a result who fails to do so may be assessed equivalently to positive conduct. | Examine the defendant's legal or substantive preventive duty concretely, not only the job title. |
| Germany | Criminal Code Section 13 addresses commission by omission: liability requires a legal responsibility to prevent the result and equivalence between omission and positive realization of the offense's elements. | Duty, capacity, and “equivalence” all require rigorous reasoning; this is important comparative background to Taiwan's Article 15. |
| Japan | Japan has no general provision identical to Taiwan's Article 15. Practice and scholarship address commission of result offenses by omission through duties to act, protective relationships, and factual control. | The focus is not only nominal institutional task allocation but also care relationships and actual protective capacity. |
| Mainland China | “Guarantor status” is not absent: it is important in omission-crime theory and practical reasoning. The Criminal Law nevertheless lacks a general express clause equivalent to Taiwan's Article 15. | Analysis generally returns to statutory duties, prior conduct, contracts, and actual control, rather than judging by one term alone. |
| Hong Kong | Common law often addresses omission liability through a “legal duty to act,” arising from statute, contract, special relationships, assumed care responsibilities, or creation of danger. | Different terminology still leads to questions about legal duty, reasonable intervention, and the relationship between omission and result. |
| South Korea | Criminal Act Article 18 provides for criminal liability by omission for those obliged to prevent a dangerous result or who themselves create the danger. | The framework expressly includes a duty to prevent danger, while still requiring proof of the duty's source, the danger, and avoidability. |
| Austria | Criminal Code Section 2 requires a special duty under the legal order and equivalence between failing to prevent the result and positively realizing the offense's elements before punishment by omission. | Similar to Germany's equivalence requirement, it targets those specially responsible for preventing a particular result, not everyone who fails to help. |
| Italy | Criminal Code Article 40(2) treats failure to prevent an event one is legally obliged to prevent as equivalent to causing it, addressing result offenses by omission. | Its wording is closest to Taiwan's Article 15: first ask about the legal preventive duty, then whether the result is attributable to the omission. |
| France | The Criminal Code addresses some passive omissions through specific offenses such as failure to assist a person in danger, rather than a single general “guarantor status” clause covering every result offense. | The institutional language differs, but central questions remain knowledge of concrete danger, ability to help without risk to oneself or others, and legal boundaries of the duty. |
SOURCES & LIMITS
Sources and reading boundaries
- Taiwan Criminal Code Article 15(1).
- User-supplied excerpts from the February 26, 2026 oral-argument record in case 114-Su-51, and case-file summaries relating to adoption matching, out-of-home placement, visits, and reporting duties.
- German Criminal Code Section 13 and the official English translation of Japan's Penal Code, for comparative context.
- This page does not treat a single hearing, institutional record, or social-media discussion as the complete facts established by judgment, or reach final conclusions about conduct not finally confirmed by a court.
AFTER THE QUESTION
Institutions must not leave children
between the lines of a task chart.
Discussing guarantor status does not call for conviction by emotion or unlimited responsibility for every social worker. It safeguards this principle: when a child cannot save himself, those with protective authority must not allow institutional gaps to become places where harm continues.