Is It Child Abuse?
Posted on December 12, 2007
Filed Under Child Abuse, Criminal Law |
I’ve been following a Minnesota child abuse case with a kind of fascinated horror. The facts go something like this: a twelve year old boy is disobeying his father, sneaking out of the house at night and doing other naughty 12-year-old boy kinds of things. The father, at his wits end, warns his son that he is going to be “paddled” if he sneaks out again. Inevitably, the naughty child sneaks out. His father gets out the paddle (flat wooden thing with a handle) and hits his son on his upper thighs 36 times, in twelve blow increments. He pauses between beatings to recite bible verse. The child then runs out of the house and reports his father to the authorities. The trial court determines that the child needs protection, the appellate court reverses, determining that the father was not abusive. The Supreme Court of Minnesota heard the case on November 28th and has not yet rendered an opinion. The parents’ argument basically boils down to this not being abuse because there was no physical injury — they were even told by a social worker beforehand, that this in fact was the case under Minnesota law.
So, this made me wonder about California law (land of political correctness). If a parent hit a child with a paddle 36 times in California, would they get away with it?
To answer this question, I started with California Penal Code § 11165.4, which defines “unlawful corporal punishment or injury” as a situation where any person willfully inflicts upon any child any cruel or inhuman corporal punishment or injury resulting in a traumatic condition. Under California Welfare and Institutions Code Section 300(a), reasonable and age appropriate spanking to the buttocks where there is no evidence of serious physical injury does not constitute abuse. Would it be child abuse in this case because the child was paddled on the fronts of his thighs? Apparently, this child had no bruises or permanent injuries as a result of his beating. So, would that mean that there was no “serious physical injury”?
I next went to the California appellate court cases. I found two helpful cases, unfortunately, they were both “unpublished.” In In re Alexis (2007 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 7997), where a father hit a child on the buttock with a belt hard enough to leave a bruise, the court stated “section 300, subdivision (a) does not define “serious physical harm,” except to say that it “does not include reasonable and age-appropriate spanking to the buttocks where there is no evidence of serious physical injury.” (§ 300, subd. (a).) There is no requirement that a child receive medical treatment, sustain bleeding, swelling, or a fracture, or be unconscious, before an injury can be considered serious physical harm.” In In re Robert S. et al (2005 Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 4109), the court used paddling as an example of child abuse. These cases, although not available as precedent, would seem to support a finding of child abuse when a child is paddled 36 times on the fronts of the thighs, regardless of visible injuries.
In my perfect world, there is no doubt that the child in the Minnesota case was a victim of child abuse. Regardless of the support in the bible for corporal punishment, this dad was simply out of control. Come on! He hit his kid 36 times with a stick
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