“I believe it is called for sometimes,” said Mandy Haynes of Hamilton. “Not all kids respond to time out or grounding. It is not abuse if you bust their butts, contrary to what some people say. If it causes bodily harm or trauma, then you can say ‘Abuse.’”
Susan Shern-Macke of Ross Twp. said she goes by what her parents did.
“A spanking with your hand on the butt never hurt anyone,” she said.
Butler County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser said his office must deal with on a regular basis those who do harm their children in the form of thrashings with belts and belt buckles, cigarette burns or slappings that leave welts.
While many parents feel the need to hit when children are out of control, “there needs to be some kind of restraint,” Gmoser said.
“Unconscionable brutality is something that I won’t tolerate in this office, and we don’t,” Gmoser said. “Where it can be real serious is where, instead of a swat, we see somebody grabbing a child, especially an infant, by an arm or a leg and yanking that child in such a manner that it will actually break bones, and we do see that from time to time.”
In such cases, the prosecutor’s office relies on a medical support group at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to review those issues and share their advice and counsel when it comes to the severity of each injury, Gmoser said.
Also helpful to his office are the determinations made by emergency room doctors and pediatricians, who are “very tuned into child abuse,” Gmoser said.
“There’s always a medical component beyond the expertise of a lawyer to make these judgments,” he said.
The reasoning by parents that hitting a child with their hands or with an object is just the way they were raised is something Gmoser said he has heard for years.
“It is commonplace because we know that from sexual abuse that is often times handed down generationally, so that a person who is an abuser … we often find the abuser himself or herself has been abused,” he said. “The same can be said for physical abuse. When the tradition of a family is that the switch comes out to teach manners and proper conduct, that is something that is transferred onto the next generation.”
Gmoser said that as a prosecutor he is happy to see the attention being given to domestic violence cases because he has been dealing with it every week since he took office in early 2011.
“I guess it takes a pro football player to take a stick to his kid to bring national attention to it, and now we’re hearing the mantra of ‘We’ve got to get it right,’” Gmoser said. “Well, hell, we’ve been trying to get it right with the cases that we’ve had for years, and it doesn’t get that much attention unless somebody really is crippled or killed, then obviously it’s a big news item. Now, with the NFL involved, it really highlights it.”
The biggest obstacle to prosecuting people for child abuse is the lack of reporting of the crime, he said.
“There’s a certain element of shame in households with respect to the abuse that they bring on their children and they don’t want people to know,” he said. “They want to keep it secret. They don’t want to disclose it. We sometimes don’t see this until the child goes to school and the welts are seen by a school counselor.”
Mothers and fathers don’t want to report the other spouse for fear that “bad things are going to happen,” Gmoser said.
“They’re certainly educated enough to know that what just happened to Johnny or Sally might have been a crime and they don’t want to see dad or mom hauled away and the legal fees, media attention and neighborhood scorn and all of the other negative attributes of this,” he said. “They feel that they can solve the problem, they can calm the anger, but then the anger comes back next time.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents not spank their children, according to Dr. Robert Sege, a member of AAP’s Committee on Childhood Abuse and Neglect and a professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine.
“There are a lot more effective alternatives that allow parents to teach their children right from wrong without hitting them,” Sege said. “We know that physical punishment of any sort has the potential to break down the trust between the parent and child.”
Sege said that AAP knows from surveys and from its own clinical experience that despite that advice, many parents will still spank their children.
“The place where we draw the line is that children should never be physically injured or made to fear for their lives or well being,” Sege said. “That physically injured part includes being beaten to the point where the children have bruises or the skin is broken. That’s obviously a situation that’s intolerable. In all states in the country, that’s considered child abuse.”
The NFL’s Peterson allegedly used a thin tree branch, referred to by many as a “switch,” to discipline his son in Texas, “a part of the country where corporal punishment is quite frequent and quite acceptable,” Sege said. “Even in the schools in Texas.”
Peterson isn’t the only NFL star accused of lashing out at his child. During a domestic dispute with his wife, Arizona Cardinals backup running back Jonathan Dwyer allegedly hurled a shoe at his 17-month-old son, hitting him in the stomach.
While the physical dangers of child abuse may be apparent, the psychological dangers are more complicated than a wound with which to deal.
“Children are supposed to trust their parents,” Sege said. “Usually they do, and when their parents hit them, particularly when they’re young, like four, it’s a little difficult for them to understand what’s going on, so it decreases their trust.”
The second issue, Sege said, is that children do love their parents and, as a result, tend to copy them.
“What the research has shown is that the children who are subject to physical punishment at home are often the same children who are quite aggressive with their playmates at school later and have other issues,” he said. “In fact, parents often will spank their children or otherwise hit them out of love, they want them to do the right thing, but it turns out to be counterproductive. We often see kind of a vicious cycle.”
There are indicators that suggest that children whose parents primarily used corporal punishment when they were young have more mental and physical health problems when they reach adulthood, Sege said.
Rather than hitting, a more effective way of disciplining children includes time outs for younger children and removing privileges from older children.
“The most powerful thing a parent can do is tell their children what behavior is expected, and when they do the right thing, look at them, give them a thumbs up, give them a kiss, give them a smile,” he said. “Because the children really want to please their parents, and parents who do these things consistently have many less discipline problems.”
The fact that such high-profile cases are controversial, and many are so horrified by what they’re seeing, to the point the NFL has been forced by public opinion to act, “represents a major change over the past generation in how Americans feel and accept the way that children are treated,” Sege said.
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