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Workers at a Chinese speech therapy centre have been caught hitting, slapping and kicking deaf and mute toddlers who were being looked after there.
One worker even threatened to make a boy eat his own faeces after the young child failed to go to the toilet as she demanded.
A report from a Chinese television broadcaster exposed the shocking incident on April 20 and revealed disturbing footage taken by an undercover reporter at the centre in Jiangxi Province.
The workers claimed themselves to be teachers at the school. They said the cruel punishments could help the pupils improve their ability to speak.
The incident was exposed after Nanchang News sent an undercover reporter to the Nanchang Hope Speech Therapy Centre to investigate. The reporter pretended to be a teacher.
Footage from a hidden camera shows the toddlers crying loudly as the teachers kicked their bodies and slap their faces.
They were also beaten on their hands by wooden sticks.
The video also shows a teacher threatening one child in the toilet: 'If you soil your pants, you will have to eat your faeces.'
A teacher can be heard yelling to children in the class: 'Don't you use your brain? See how stupid you are'
Another teacher told other pupils to scold their classmates. The teacher instructed the pupils to call each other 'pig heads'.
One teacher, surnamed Yao, explained to the undercover reporter: 'You must have thought this was cruel when you first started here, but this is all for their own good.
'They cannot speak, so crying can help them practise speaking.'
It's understood that teacher Yao was unaware of the reporter's identity and thought the reporter was a teacher.
Furthermore, Ms Chen, another teacher, recommended the undercover reporter to hit the pupils on the staircase because 'no one would see'.
Ms Chen said: 'You can take a glimpse outside the window to check if anyone is walking past.
'If there is no one, you can take the pupils back there and hit them again.'
Wu Xi, the head of the therapy centre, explained that teachers are allowed to slap pupils, but they are not allowed to hit them on their heads as the pupils wear hearing aids on their heads.
The video also shows serious hygiene issues at the therapy centre.
At least five to six toddlers can be seen using the same towel to wipe their bodies and private parts. All the toothbrushes were stacked in one single cup.
The report has sparked serious concerns among viewers online.
Many worry that the pupils wouldn't be able to inform their parents about the punishments because they couldn't speak properly.
However, Ms Wu said in an interview with Pear Video that the video was unfair as it had been lifted out of context.
Ms Wu said: 'There were many caring moments that the reporter did not show in the video.
'All it shows were the moment when the teachers lost their temper.'
Nanchang Hope Speech Therapy Centre charges 1,800 yuan (£204) a month for parents to send their disabled children for daycare. It also offers overnight stays at 3,000 yuan (£339) a month.
Nanchang Disabled Persons' Federation Rehabilitation Centre issued a statement on Weibo, a Chinese equivalent to Twitter, on April 23.
The authority has closed the centre temporarily and is assisting the police to investigate the case, according to the statement.
A thorough check on other therapy centres in the city has been launched to prevent similar incidents from happening.