ALPHARETTA, Ga. — An Alpharetta mother who admitted to police she beat her daughter with a bamboo switch is facing serious charges and police said her husband is also in jail.
Alpharetta police told Channel 2's Mike Petchenik they arrested Wen Wen Zeng, 25, after teachers at her 5-year-old daughter's school reported the little girl didn't want to go home and had welts on her body.
Police have charged Zeng with felony aggravated battery and cruelty to children.
Her husband, 39-year-old Jun Feng Zou, is facing second-degree child cruelty charges because police said he witnessed the beatings but did nothing to stop them or report them.
"The child had bruising and lacerations on the hands and looked like switch-type marks from a beating on her back," said Officer George Gordon with the Alpharetta Police Department. "This was a bad one."
Gordon said the girl had some new wounds and some appeared to have been there for some time.
"The mother had two switches at her residence and she showed and demonstrated to the officers how she struck the child," said Gordon. "The mother would take a switch and just continuously hit the child."
Petchenik went to the family's Old Roswell Road home and encountered Zeng's brother-in-law, John Chau.
Chau told Petchenik Zeng was merely disciplining her daughter for being "disrespectful" to her elders.
"The children (are) really impolite for older people," he said. "Her mother (was) angry so she used a bamboo stick."
Zeng told Petchenik it's Chinese custom to discipline children this way.
"In Chinese, it's hurting the skin, not hurting the inside," he said.
Neighbor Brandy Romo told Petchenik she says it's a custom Zeng shouldn't be allowed to follow in the United States.
"Poor kids. They're innocent, they're young," she said. "There's other ways of disciplining.
Family says mom beat 5-year-old for being 'impolite'
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