School keeps Etta away from mum
PUBLISHED ONApril 25, 2015 6:25 AM
Hong Kong - Just a month after television host Elaine Ng was arrested on suspicion of child abuse, her relationship with her teen daughter, Etta, is in crisis again.
Ng, 42, said she had been refused access to Etta, 15, since Wednesday, when she received a call from her child's teacher at International Christian School saying the girl did not want to go home, reported Ming Pao Daily News.
She said she rushed to the school, but was refused entry. She waited for two hours to meet her daughter and, at one point, she was allowed to enter to meet a social worker and the principal.
An agitated Ng argued with the principal in the carpark.
Ng said the school should have talked to her first, even if it wants to help Etta.
Now, it is as if the school has "dropped the gates and released the dogs", she said.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, she said she had calmed down and would resolve the problem peacefully with a social worker as her middleman.
She said she could, but would not, report the school to the police.
"A family can sit down and talk. I hope that a school, in helping a child, will let the child have domestic harmony and not engage in differentiation," she told Ming Pao.
Etta was said to have reported Ng to the police out of concern about her mother's alcohol habit. In an apparent allusion to that episode, Ng told Oriental Daily News: "It's right that a kid loves her mummy, but isn't there a problem with the method?"
In another interview with HK Cable TV, she admitted having a disagreement about beer and homework with her daughter on Tuesday night.
Etta said something about buying beer and when her mother told her she could have one or two sips only, the teen retorted that her friends were drinking beer. Ng said: "I wasn't happy and told her off."
As Etta had not gone to school for a month, her mother also admonished her to do her homework, she said. Ng was asked about rumours that she refuses to let Etta meet her father, actor Jackie Chan, said Ming Pao.
Etta is the only known daughter of Chan, who has a son with his wife Lin Feng-jiao. Ng said this incident was not related to that.
On Wednesday, she had driven off at 9pm after entering the school twice but failing to meet her child, said Ming Pao.
At about 11pm, Etta emerged from the school with her principal, a foreigner, and kept her head down as reporters approached her.
Abruptly, the teen jumped over a railing and ran on a road. Later, she returned to the school for the night.
This article was first published on April 25, 2015.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.