BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese educational services provider RYB Education Inc said it had removed the head of one of its kindergarten, as allegations of child abuse at the Beijing nursery rocked the country’s booming childcare industry. 
 
 A security camera is pictured at the kindergarten run by pre-school operator RYB Education Inc being investigated by China's police, in Beijing, China November 24, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee 
 
 In a statement issued late Saturday, New York-listed RYB also said it had fired a 22-year-old female teacher at the RYB Education New World kindergarten. It said the teacher, surnamed Liu, had been detained by district police on suspicion of abuse. 
 
 Beijing police were investigating claims of child abuse at the kindergarten in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, after state-run Xinhua news agency reported they were checking allegations that children were “reportedly sexually molested, pierced by needles and given unidentified pills”. 
 
 Several teachers at the kindergarten had already been suspended since Thursday. 
 
 RYB’s New York-listed shares plunged 38.4 percent on Friday as the scandal sparked outrage among parents and the public. 
 
 Another woman surnamed Liu was also arrested for allegedly disrupting social order by spreading false information about the alleged kindergarten abuse, Chaoyang police said. 
 
 The second woman, a 31-year-old from Beijing, was arrested on Thursday. 
 
 A child walks with a parent at the kindergarten run by pre-school operator RYB Education Inc being investigated by China's police, in Beijing, China November 24, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee 
 
 Parents said their children, some as young as three, gave accounts of a naked adult male conducting purported “medical check-ups” on unclothed pupils, other media said. 
 
 The Chaoyang district has launched an investigation into all childcare facilities in its area. 
 
 It had also dispatched officials to the kindergarten and asked the school to communicate with the parents and make sure that the children there are safe. 
 
 Founded in 1998, RYB provides early education services in China. At the end of June, the Beijing-based company was operating 80 kindergartens and had franchised an additional 175 covering 130 cities and towns in China. 
 
 It was not the first case of alleged abuse at an RYB school. 
 
 In 2015, a court in Jilin province found two teachers guilty of physically abusing children at one of its kindergartens in the city of Siping. In that case, staff at the school on “multiple occasions used needles and intimidation tactics to abuse many of the children under their care”, according to a court ruling document. 
 
 China’s education ministry said on Thursday that it had begun a special investigation into the operation of kindergartens, and told education departments nationwide to take heed of “these types of incidents”. 
 
 Separate cases of children in China being slapped, beaten with a stick and having their mouths sealed shut with duct tape have also gone viral and fueled anger online. ||||| Beijing (CNN) Police in Beijing have detained a teacher as they investigate allegations that children were drugged and molested at a kindergarten. 
 
 A 22-year-old female teacher surnamed Liu at RYB Xintiandi, a private kindergarten in Beijing, was taken into custody Saturday for allegedly abusing students, Beijing police said in a statement. Chinese police often don't provide the full names of suspects. 
 
 The police also announced the detention of another woman for "rumor mongering," accusing her of posting fabricated information online about the involvement of military personnel in the incident, which prompted an unusual denial from the Defense Ministry in a press release Friday. 
 
 RYB Education, the Beijing-based and New York-listed company that runs the kindergarten, apologized to children, parents and the public in a statement issued Saturday. It said it had fired both the detained teacher and the head of the kindergarten, while continuing its full cooperation with the authorities in the investigation. 
 
 "There was serious breach of duty in our management," the statement said. "We must bear responsibility, deeply reflect, and thoroughly investigate and rectify (our operations)." 
 
 The company promised to provide psychological counseling to the victims, upgrade safety measures in its facilities and set up an independent supervision system. 
 
 The outside of RYB Education New World kindergarten in Beijing. 
 
 Public outcry 
 
 But the latest developments appear to have failed to quell intense nationwide debates about the incident, which has triggered public outrage, parental soul-searching, government pledges and online censorship. 
 
 The story broke last week after numerous parents accused RYB Xintiandi of drugging and molesting their children. 
 
 According to one parent -- in a video posted on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter -- at least eight parents told police that their young children had fallen victim to abuse and molestation while attending the school. 
 
 The video was viewed millions of times before being deleted from Weibo. 
 
 The unidentified mother told reporters Thursday that her 3-year-old daughter said she was injected with a brown liquid by a teacher and made to strip along with other children before being "examined" by a naked adult male stranger. 
 
 She said she and other parents allegedly found multiple needle marks on their children's bodies, adding that the kindergarten and the police had not allowed them to review videos from the school's surveillance cameras. 
 
 "My child said the teacher told them it was a secret and they were not supposed to tell anyone else, including parents," the mother said. "She now bursts into screaming at night, saying, 'I'm not sick, why do I have to get a shot?'" 
 
 Beijing police have performed forensic tests and obtained surveillance camera footage from the kindergarten, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. 
 
 Company criticized 
 
 RYB Education saw its stock price plummet almost 40% Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. The company announced a plan to buy back shares worth $50 million in a call with investors Friday, prompting criticism online that it puts profits before public interests as it had not held a press conference on the incident. 
 
 The company and its franchisees operate in approximately 300 Chinese cities and run about 1,300 daycare centers and 500 kindergartens. 
 
 In an earlier statement, released Friday, RYB Education said it had provided the relevant surveillance videos and equipment to the police, adding: "Before a clear conclusion can be drawn, our priority is to help the students and their parents emotionally, and try to minimize the impact of the incident on the children." 
 
 That statement also said the head of the kindergarten had filed a police report that alleged "false accusations and being framed by certain individuals" -- without specifying who. 
 
 As more details emerged, the government scrambled to respond to the incident. Both the national education ministry and the municipal education authority in Beijing have pledged cooperation with the police and swift investigations on their own, with local officials sending a team to the kindergarten. 
 
 CNN sought a direct response from the company and the local education authority on Sunday but those calls were not answered. On Friday, attempts to contact the kindergarten and local education officials on site were thwarted by security guards, who said no one would make additional comments beyond previously issued statements. 
 
 People leave the RYB Education New World kindergarten in Beijing on November 24, 2017. 
 
 Anger on social media 
 
 It was relatively quiet around the RYB Xintiandi campus Friday, with some parents and onlookers gathering outside the gate where a copy of the corporate statement was posted. 
 
 One grandfather, who had just picked up his granddaughter but declined to be named, told CNN that the 4-year-old mentioned her classmates being forced to take white pills for disobedience and everyone was told to keep it a secret. 
 
 Another resident of the neighborhood who identified himself as Mr. Liu said the kindergarten is the best in the area and costs as much as 5,000 yuan ($750) a month for bilingual class students. He said he was furious upon hearing the news, but still believes those were isolated cases based on what he had learned about the school from a relative whose child went there. 
 
 Many internet users, however, have continued to angrily reject RYB's response as "inadequate" and have called for severe punishment for those found responsible. 
 
 Past incidents involving RYB kindergartens included two cases in northeastern China, where four RYB teachers were each sentenced to more than two years in prison for abusing 17 children. 
 
 Amid growing public outcry over the scandal, Chinese government censors seem to have moved to contain the fallout. Many users have complained about the disappearance of their posts on the subject on social media. Comment sections are turned off for many online news reports on this story. 
 
 Even one of the most influential news executives at a state media outlet questioned the wisdom of such heavy-handed tactics on Weibo before his post was taken down. 
 
 "The authorities should be cautious when deleting posts," Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Global Times, a popular state-run nationalistic tabloid, wrote Thursday as news of the scandal had begun to spread online. "They should only target those posts that maliciously stretch the topic to politics, in order to prevent the deletion from arousing more suspicion." 
 
 Parents share tips 
 
 Across Chinese cyberspace, parents of young children have started sharing tips on detection and prevention of such cases -- some directly copied from school literature in the United States. 
 
 Earlier this month, videos of teachers at a Shanghai kindergarten physically attacking kids and force-feeding them what appeared to be mustard went viral. 
 
 Shanghai police quickly detained several employees at the facility, while the municipal government's women's affairs agency, with which the kindergarten is affiliated, had to apologize to the parents and public. 
 
 Critics have long said current Chinese laws are too vague and lax on child abuse and sexual molestation cases. 
 
 Media in China have documented a rising number of incidents of abuse at childcare facilities, often in small cities and towns. In a lengthy investigative piece published last year, Xinhua said only 968 cases of sexual abuse against children were recorded nationwide between 2013 and 2015, involving at least 1,790 children, with many remaining unreported.
– Authorities in China detained a woman suspected of abusing children at a Beijing kindergarten run by a US-listed company in a case that has caused nationwide anger. Police in Beijing's Chaoyang district said in a statement Saturday that an investigation into a kindergarten run by Beijing-based RYB Education has led to the criminal detention of a 22-year-old female teacher on suspicion of abusing children. The statement, posted on the district police account on the Sina Weibo microblog platform, identified the woman only by her surname, Liu—CNN notes Chinese police often don't provide suspects' full names—and didn't provide further details on her. RYB Education, meanwhile, said it was "extremely shocked and distressed" about the crimes the teacher is suspected of committing. The statement didn't provide details of Liu's alleged abuses. RYB said it had fired Liu, removed the head of the kindergarten, and is cooperating with further investigations. It also said the company is hiring doctors and psychologists to aid the children who'd been affected, as well as inspecting other branches. The Beijing scandal erupted after local media quoted parents as saying their children were forced to strip as punishment and were found with unexplained apparent needle marks on their bodies. The claims couldn't be independently verified. Chaoyang police said a 31-year-old Beijing woman, who Reuters notes is also surnamed Liu, was detained after admitting to spreading false info about the involvement of a military regiment in sexually abusing the children. The statement said the woman expressed "deep regret" for her actions. RYB and its franchisees operate 1,300 day care centers and nearly 500 kindergartens in 300 Chinese cities.