ZERO TOLERANCE FOR VIOLENCE TOWARDS
CHILDREN
A psychologist’s opinion on the Crimes
Amendment Child Protection-Excessive Punishment Bill 2000.
Imagine for a moment that your world is controlled by a species
whose knowledge and skill is vastly superior to your own. You have
known no other world, and your individual survival is totally
dependent on their goodwill towards you. While often benevolent,
these creatures deliberately inflict pain upon you whenever you have
sufficiently transgressed their complex social rules. They attempt to
control your behaviour through the fear of various painful and
humiliating physical punishments because they (wrongly) believe this
to be the most efficient method to help you learn the rules and
conform to their ways. Now imagine that these beings are also much
larger than you, - say about four times your own body weight and
height.
Currently in NSW, parents may “lawfully correct” their
children by the use of "reasonable force". This provision remains
entrenched as a legacy from past centuries of English common law that
formerly also sanctioned the corporal punishment of wives, servants,
apprentices, soldiers and prisoners. "Reasonable force" is described
simply as force that was reasonable in the circumstances, and has
never been legally defined in terms of the type of physical force and
the nature of the harm inflicted upon the child. Given such lack of
clarity, "reasonable force" has sometimes been interpreted even by
our judiciary to have lawfully encompassed shaking, beating,
punching, kicking or hitting with objects such as belts, wooden
spoons, chains or cricket bats. "Reasonable force" used with the
intention of “lawful correction” has caused children and
infants to suffer all types of injuries including bruises, welts,
haematomas, head injuries, broken bones, and death. Even without
extremes of abuse, the evidence has been mounting that all corporal
punishment inevitably causes psychological harm as well as posing a
physical risk to children [1]
Corporal punishment is the intentional infliction of pain through
physical violence against a child's body in order to exert coercion
through fear or humiliation. Some act of violence by an adult
responsible for the child, and the intention to inflict pain are both
integral to the very concept of corporal punishment. The term
"physical discipline", which is used exclusively in reference to
children, still carries connotations of respectability while being
too often a euphemism for physical assault and battery. By pairing
the two words, "physical" and "discipline," the meaning of the latter
serves to lend virtue to the former, obscuring the true description
of the adult's behaviour towards the child. (We do not hear the
self-respecting parent demanding of his or her screaming child in the
supermarket: "Do you want a good physical assault?") It is crucial
that our society comes to understand that physical violence towards
children is not discipline.
If corporal punishment is essentially an exploitation of the
power to inflict pain, fear and humiliation, then why is it not more
generally recognised as unreasonable under any circumstances? How
can this be reconciled with the fact that the overwhelming majority
of parents who occasionally “smack” their kids are
well-intentioned responsible citizens, highly valuing their
children’s welfare and actively protecting them from
others’ behaviour which could cause them harm? Unfortunately
(for both children and parents) we have inherited a vast historic
legacy of confusion, ignorance and hypocrisy concerning corporal
punishment that has contributed to a kind of cultural stupor around
the whole issue. Legislation not only reflects but also often
perpetuates the societal attitudes of the time, and society can be
slow to question what has been historically entrenched in law. Only
in relatively recent times have laws been enacted which prevent those
in positions of power from using physical violence in order to
"manage" or "control" those with lesser power. The "rights" of
masters to beat their servants and of men to corporally punish their
wives was constitutionally protected until the previous century, and
corporal punishment was still being administered as part of the
Australian judicial system as recently as the 1950's.
[2] It is noteworthy though, that the growing
number of countries which have now outlawed the corporal punishment
of children have retrospectively attained overwhelming public support
for this pro-active legislation which has proven effective in
altering societal attitudes toward the use of physical force in
childrearing. [3]
Many readers will be aware that legislation has again been tabled
before the NSW upper house which, if passed, will rule that it is
unlawful for children to be hit around the head or to be hit with
objects. [4] Perhaps, in terms of social
progress, this proposed “excessive punishment” amendment
should be welcomed as a definite improvement on the current
legislative situation in NSW. There has been an inevitable
reactionary backlash from fundamentalist religious forces, who may
sincerely misunderstand the context of King Solomon’s advice
concerning sparing the rod and spoiling the child
[5] Despite the controversy, most
professional organisations are in agreement regarding the urgent need
to provide clearer child protection legislation, and discernible
attitudinal shifts in our society as a whole have been reflected by a
high level of public support for the Corbett Bill.
However still retained by Alan Corbett's proposed amendment is
the legally sanctioned parental right to hit children and even to
cause them “harm”. I predict that in years to come, similar
legislation will come to be considered barbaric, because it accords
the status of legal sanction to the perpetuation of violent behaviour
towards children and thereby fails to protect the moral right of
children to develop in an environment free from violence.
[6] With ironic inconsistency, this right
is legally protected for all children while they are at school but is
not yet protected in their own homes. (Corporal punishment is banned
in all NSW schools.) It also seems anomalous, that we legally
enforce parents use of seat belts to help protect their children from
physical harm, and yet the majority of politicians have been
unwilling to legislate that parents refrain from directly harming
their children by hitting them, being swayed by the vocal minority
who claim that this would be an infringement of their parental
rights. In my opinion, it would be logically and morally indefensible
for me to expect a parental right to do to my child what is, by
definition, a violation of human rights and a criminal assault when
done to other adults, and a prosecutable offense which is legally
recognised as cruelty when inflicted upon animals. As such, I am one
of many who find myself unable to support any legislation that
maintains the principle that hitting a child is legal as long as you
don't hit on the head etc. I am deeply concerned that such
legislation simply reinforces the idea that children are hittable,
and if passed in the form of the Corbett Bill could serve to relieve
the pressure for true social and legislative reform for many years to
come.
Concerning the question of corporal punishment I am undoubtedly
as biassed as the best. As a child psychologist I am familiar with
the accumulation of evidence from recent neuropsychological research,
indicating the previously underestimated harm corporal punishment is
causing both to individual children and to the future society they
are then likely to re-create as adults. [1]
However, the strength of my conviction regarding the need to
completely abolish corporal punishment comes primarily from my own
experience. Sixteen years ago as a parent of a young child I was one
of the majority who never questioned the assumption that
“smacking” was a necessary (though minor) part of the
parental repertoire that helps a child learn right from wrong. Today
I remain perfectly well able to understand the perspective of the
“average parent” who likewise has never questioned this
assumption, while at the same time maintaining that we need to adopt
a policy of “zero tolerance for violence against children ”
within our legislative guidelines for parents. Having worked for over
fifteen years with too many children who had been profoundly
traumatised by "reasonable punishment" or "physical discipline" I now
have little tolerance for compromise legislation that attempts to
define the ways in which it is still right and reasonable to hit
children.
There is a high proportion of children who have never been hit
around the head or with objects, but who have nevertheless been
severely traumatised by having been frequently slapped, beaten,
shaken etc, by those entrusted with their care. The "excessive
punishment" amendment would have done little to help these kids, and
may if passed, actually help entrench the ignorance behind this
behaviour until well into the future. The Corbett Bill attempts to
differentiate "reasonable force" from physical abuse by specifying
that to be reasonable the harm caused to the child must last for no
more than a "short period" but the subjective interpretation of this
would obviously prove highly problematic. How long is short and how
do we assess the duration of harm? Much of the harm caused by
corporal punishment is not immediately obvious or measurable.
[1] It is readily apparent that the extent of
the harm inflicted upon the child is likely to be related to the
frequency, duration and severity of the violence and to the degree of
pain, stress and fear involved for that child as an individual.
Contrary to the assumptions which seem to be reflected in the Corbett
bill however, I can find no evidence that the extent of the harm
suffered by the child is primarily determined by whether an object is
used, as most young children who are injured or killed by their
caretakers seem to be injured or killed by hand.
[7] So what kinds of force would still remain
“reasonable”? Would shaking, slapping, hair pulling, ear
pulling, pinching and beating (repeated slapping) all remain possibly
reasonable for “lawful correction”? And what type of harm
would still be permissible to cause to children? ; - nightmares?
soiling? external bruising? internal bruising? Ask five different
parents to answer these questions according to their interpretation
of the Corbett amendment and we would be likely to get five different
interpretations.
While I fully acknowledge an obvious continuum of harm, I choose
not to argue for the abolition of corporal punishment in terms of the
generally acknowledged danger that a “smack” may escalate
into “abuse”. This seems analogous to arguing that feeding
children a little bit of arsenic each day is not a good idea because
one day they may accidentally receive too much. If it is completely
unnecessary to administer a harmful substance in the first place then
any amount is too much.. [8] It seems to me that
the most compelling argument against all corporal punishment of
children is actually disarmingly simple:
A) Our laws rightly protect adult persons from being
hit by other adult persons.
B) This is because hitting another person would be wrong. It would be
harmful, hurtful, disrespectful and humiliating to them.
C) Children are persons too.
The first point is beyond dispute, and the second rarely
contested. Therefore it would seem that it is primarily the question
of the child’s status as a person that is at issue. We would
appear to be a nation divided concerning children’s fundamental
human rights and their need for equal protection under the law as
guaranteed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (to which Australia is a signatory). [9]
History teaches that the perception of human violence has more to
do with the status of the victim than with the nature of the act.
[10] Our laws are unambiguous concerning
adults who physically attack or threaten other adults but it is not
until children reach their eighteenth birthday (their legal
personhood) that they are then automatically entitled to the same
protection. Domestic violence is no longer protected by law in our
society unless that violence is inflicted upon children.
[11] Moreover we have enacted progressive
legislation to actively protect partners from spousal violence but
have yet to grant children the same rights to protection from
physical violence while at home. Perhaps the most fundamental reason
to enact legislation which reflects zero tolerance for violence
against children, is simply that children have no ability to promote
this legislation on their own behalf, and so are dependent upon child
advocates to lobby for legislative change. His Excellency the
Honourable Sir William Deane, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of
Australia maintains that the true test of a society is how well they
treat their most vulnerable citizens. Who are our most vulnerable
citizens, if not our children?
(2)
Corporal
Punishment Archive - 1648 to 1975
(3)
Global
Progress - Sweden
(4)
Details
of the proposed legislation--
(5)
The Bible and the
Rod
(6)
Social Change and
Trends in Approval of Corporal Punishment by Parents from 1968 to
1994
(7)
Child Abuse and
Neglect: Incidence and Prevention
Child
Abuse Homicides in Australia: Incidence, Circumstances, Prevention
and Control
Current
Trends In Child Abuse Reporting And Fatalities (US)
(8)
Why People Hit
Children: Answering Common Arguments
(9)
The United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child
(10)
Not for
light reading- The History of Child Abuse
(11)
Suggestion...
E. R. Lyons
© February 2001