Smacking Intimidation
There seems to be an awful lot of strangeness going around about the various aspects of the anti-smacking legislation. The police report that minor child assaults have increased from 32 to 45 a month since the inception of the new law. They dismiss this as an inconsequential increase in the police workload and thus entirely miss the point. The extra 13 cases a month either represent 156 cases of parents being persecuted for smacking, or they represent as alarming increase in children being assaulted. The anti-smacking brigade argue that this represents just and increase in reporting, but the police stats themselves suggest that good parents are being persecuted. Of the 200 cases investigated only 12 were prosecuted. That is 188 sets of parents who have been subjected to an entirely unnecessary ordeal.
But the strangeness does not end with the casual attitude of the police to pointless investigations, it also extends to absurd observations about some child-violence cases. Bomber at Tumeke! for instance, seems to think that someone who hits his daughter on the head with a piece of concrete is a pro-smacking “poster boy”. In reality the man is a simple child abuser with an anger problem whose actions would have been completely condemned under the old law. Only an idiot would think that this case has anything to do with normal parenting practices.
Tracey Barnett has a go at the Jimmy Mason case, although, in fairness, she does recognise that Mason would also have been convicted under the old law. The place where Mason’s case is different is in the fact that the first man does not deny his abuse, whereas Mason is adamant he only flicked his son’s ear rather than punched his face. This is why some of the smacking lobby seem to rally around Mason. Personally, I think that the evidence was good enough for a jury, so I am not going to dispute it. Mason is not a “poster boy” for the cause.
Which brings me to my final point. Has anyone actually been convicted of a simple light smack? It seems to me that every case I have seen in the media about this issue is unequivocal and would have been a conviction under the old law. This means that what is happening is that ordinary parenting is not being criminalised per se, but being persecuted in a hidden, uncontested manner that can only be described as subversive. It is as if the police have been given the power to stamp out smacking not through the courts, but through fear and intimidation.
I don’t know about you, but the thought of that makes me more than a little queasy.
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Jul 12 09 8:20 am
Its even more important to get reports from the agencies dealing with childrens welfare to see what they are experiencing.
For example, there were about 117,000 notifications of child abuse or neglect in the last 12 months for the 600,000 children under ten. Dunno about you but that looks like the average kid in his first ten years is reported abused several times. Of course, if we say that only a small group abuses kids, then theres several notifications every year for each child!
Either way the piffling number reported to the police and the tiny number prosecuted against over 100,000 complaints every year shows a serious disconnect with reality.
JC
117,00 notifications? Where did you get that figure from JC? It sounds horrendously high.
Jul 12 09 9:23 am
But you must know Bomber Bradbury IS an idiot.
My neighbour’s wife is afraid to smack her naughty son in public ”for fear of being dobbed in.’
Says it all really. You are spot on.
Indeed, I believe I did intimate that Mr. Bradbury has somewhat deficient reasoning powers…
Jul 12 09 10:08 am
MacDoctor, while I agree with most of what you say I do not accept that Mason would have been charged let alone convicted under the old law. The police waited some time before they charged Mason. It was not until after Mason went to the media perhaps foolishly that the police changed their minds and decided to charge him. If the police believed he punched his boy in the head they were negligent in not charging him in the first place. If Mason punched his child in the head and just received a warning I doubt if he would have gone to the media.
Due to the law we will never know what the jury discussed in the jury room and neither will the judge. A hard flick on the ear is assault if done in a different context. If a boss came up behind an employee and flicked her in the ear and said I told you no private emails he could be charged and convicted of assault. If a teacher flicked a young student in the ear the same would apply.
If Mason told the police he punched his son in the head where is the signed statement?
My understanding it that Mason was convicted on the strength of a witness statement. I heard that the second witness did not come forward until Mason had made an issue out of it.
Jul 12 09 11:08 am
“..It is as if the police have been given the power to stamp out smacking not through the courts, but through fear and intimidation.”
Exactly. And that’s how the Stasi kept an entire population cowed and controlled. Clear, understandable laws are nowhere near as useful as an atmosphere in which one’s liberty and reputation depends on the whim of bureaucrats….
.-= kg´s last blog ..Leftist scumbags in action: =-.
Jul 12 09 12:03 pm
Well, we had the Human Rights Commissioner writing the other week that pro-smackers are being dishonest in saying that smacking has been criminalised because no-one’s been convicted for it, and then a couple of paragraphs later saying that this law change was a big step towards ending physical punishment of children. So, if her first point is correct, how is her second one also correct? I think you’ve just pointed out how, Macdoctor.
.-= Psycho Milt´s last blog ..A Close Shave For David =-.
Jul 12 09 12:05 pm
It’s interesting that the anti-smacking brigade – those who wish to tell other people how to raise their children – distort the truth beyond all recognition. Presumably they hold to the Marxist doctrine of “the end justifies the means”.
It is as if the police have been given the power to stamp out smacking not through the courts, but through fear and intimidation.. I call it terrorism, but it would appear that you and I are thinking along the same lines…
The increase in reports to the police (and Child Youth & Family) is significant and supports my thesis, which is as follows:
1) the state wishes to control the raising of children, as per the Communist Manifesto (compulsory schooling is a policy from there). In this instance they wish to control how parents respond when a child misbehaves.
2) the state started a witch hunt aimed at parents who smack.
3) at the same time the state bought in the anti-smacking law, which made it far easier for state authorities and citizen-spies to interfere in other people’s private business, i.e. their parenting methodology.
4) parents know that they are being watched and that citizen-spies are willing to report them to the state authorities, so they modify their parenting methodology.
4) effectively and legally the state now controls the parenting of every child in NZ. Imagine Bradford in your lounge telling you how to respond when your child misbehaves – not forgetting the two cops waiting outside – and you’ve got the idea
It’s all explained in these posts:
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/the-anti-smacking-law-lets-citizens-be-agents-of-state-terrorism/
http://kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/update-the-anti-smacking-law-lets-citizens-be-agents-of-state-terrorism/
.-= Kiwi Polemicist´s last blog ..• Swine flu stupidity: Hospital visits restricted over swine flu fears =-.
Jul 12 09 12:36 pm
I must admit I feel immense sympathy for anyone who cannot tell the difference between a bash over the head with a lump of concrete and a smack. It must be really debilitating to be that stupid.
Jul 12 09 12:54 pm
Only an idiot would think that this case has anything to do with normal parenting practices.
True. So the huge number of those orange posters saying things like “should a punch in the head blah blah blah” continue to conflate physical discipline with child abuse, and then to assume such people get off free. Please provide the full list of court cases and the details where this has happened – this is something that has not actually been put under public scrutiny in this debate.
Another problem is that the language used: like Mason being found guilty of a “punch to the head”. Was the boy hospitalised? Was there medical evidence? Whilst I don’t disagree that Mason may have used unreasonable force, it is very tempting to believe this has been blown out of proportion.
Unfortunately, proportion is something sadly lacking in this debate. Idiot/Savant, for example, continues to call people who use physical discipline as one of many parenting tools “child beaters”. The man needs a rap across the knuckles every time he cries wolf.
.-= ZenTiger´s last blog ..Grow Government by testing children =-.
Jul 12 09 6:43 pm
We are getting the same rubbish in response to Matt’s Fisks of various “Vote YES” articles. They typically run “why do you put so much effort into defending the right to beat children?”
ARGH!!!!! Talk about completely and utterly not even being on the same planet as the point!
I think Lucy summed it up nicely.
.-= Madeleine´s last blog ..Fisking Ian Hassall: The Arbitrary Ethical Reasoning on the Smacking Referendum =-.
Jul 12 09 6:53 pm
“117,00 notifications? Where did you get that figure from JC? It sounds horrendously high.”
http://tinyurl.com/n6fx5x
Money quote
“A CYFS document distributed to staff yesterday said public awareness was now high, with notifications to CYFS of suspected child abuse or neglect up from less than 30,000 a year through the 1990s to 107,585 in the latest 11 months to the end of May.”
107585 /11 X 12 = 117,365 notifications.
Now for some more off the cuff stats..
NZ Statistics on Population say there were 133,000 Maori kids 0-9 at the 2006 Census; if we assume that Maori are 50% involved in the abuse and neglect stats then 58500 notifications are for those 133,000 kids!
Whatever.. if the police prosecution rate for 117,000 notifications is just 12 then we have the ultimate in pointless incompetence.. or we need to take a very long and hard look at the rationale for having a CYFS, the way we gather our stats and our strange awareness of child abuse.
Such an exercise looks very much like it should find that we actually have an entire industry (child abuse) built on very shaky grounds, an unbelievably poor policing regime or many thousands of fantasists.
JC
Jul 13 09 10:56 am
MacD, the Tizard Creature admitted that she deliberately left S92A of the copyright act, vague. Her reasoning (if one chooses to so describe it) was that it was avery complex area and should be decided through the court system.
Apply the same stupidity to the smacking garbage and your suspicion of a deliberate legalising of intimidation is on the money.
Jul 15 09 2:53 pm
ChuckBird, Mason would have been charged under the old s59 as the only valid use of reasonable force for the old law was for correction. Mason was correcting his child’s unruly behaviour, which is legal, but the judge would have drawn the jury’s attention to the issue of whether Mason had used reasonable force in the situation.
Under the new law any use of corrective methods of any type is automatically criminal assault. The only argument that Mason could have had, if he could have paid a lawyer, was to argue that he used reasonable force for reasons other than correction (ie for reasons incidental to good parenting). Reasonable force is part of both the new and the old law, so he also would have been charged under the old law in my opinion.
Jul 15 09 3:26 pm
Jonnieboy, the issue still is whether Mason punched his boy in the head or flicked his ear. I recall the judge told the jury on summing up that they did not have to accept that Mason punched his child in the head for them to find him guilty. A flick on the ear is assault as is a push or a shove. If a teacher flicked child in the head for say talking in class the teacher could well be found guilty of assault as could a boss in the work place.
MacDoctor mentions that a second witness came forward after Mason went public. I understood a school teacher and her 16 year old son witnessed the event. We do not know the distance the witnesses were from Mason or other factors. If the second witness was independent why the delay if they seen a serious assault on a young boy?
I was not in court but from media reports we have no way of knowing what version of events the jury accepted.
Jul 15 09 5:06 pm
Well Chuckbird, I wasn’t the one who brought up the proposition that Mason would not have been charged under the old law- you were. I was addressing that aspect of your statement which I still think is just plain wrong.
The judge would have had to go through this process, by looking at s59:
1. Was the force used on the child for the purposes of correction? If yes, it doesn’t matter what was done, as long as there was an attempt to correct, therefore Mason is guilty of criminal assault (due to the s2 definition of assault, which makes any action to bend the will of the child to that of an adult to be criminal assault).
2. If the force wasn’t used for the purposes of correction (unlikely to ever happen, said the judge, but I’ll give this train of thought a stab cause parliament must have a more vivid imagination than I do), then the use of force was not criminal- as long as it was reasonable in the circumstances. In this case, the judge must have thought that the ear flick or the punch was unreasonable force.
The judge would have used one of these two justifications for conviction- do you agree with the tortuous logic that has to be applied within our new s59? Seems like absolute rubbish to me, contrary to good law and any sort of justice.
Jul 15 09 6:03 pm
Johnnieboy,if Mason was not charged the judge would not be involved. If the law had not changed it is likely that the police would not have been called. If they were called Mason would not have been charged as was the case initially. The reason Mason went to the media because of the new legislation.
I do agree with the tortuous logic that has to be applied within our new s59? The old law was simple. A punch in the head was not reasonable. If the police thought that he had happened they would have charged him. If the police thought that he had just flicked his son’s ear they would not have charged him.