Killer Dads (36 page)

The “challenge of ending child abuse is the challenge of breaking the link between adults' problems and children's pain. It ought not to be part of family culture, or of our societies' culture, for the psychological, social or
economic stresses of adults to be vented on children, or for problems and frustrations to be so easily translated into abuse of the defenseless,” states the UNICEF report. “The task is therefore one of creating a culture of non-violence toward children, of building a barrier of social and individual conscience which says that it is totally unacceptable in any circumstances for adults to express either their will or their frustrations in the language of violence towards the young.”

Nordic countries have been the first to take the lead in criminalizing corporal punishment in the home. The movement has also involved campaigning against the “promotion of ‘violence-as-normal' in everything from toys to television programming,” with its centerpiece a drive to end the “most common violence of all—the hitting of children by parents or care-givers for the purposes of chastisement and discipline,” notes the UNICEF report.
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Many countries would consider cracking down on spanking by parents a “radical idea,” the report acknowledges. “Probably a large majority of the world's children are subjected to some degree of physical violence at the hands of their parents or care-givers, and it may be that there are very few societies, past or present, in which this has not been the case.” The report cites a survey in Britain that found that 97 percent of four-year-olds were subject to physical punishment at home, almost half of them more often than once a week. Research in the United States found that 94 percent of three- and four-year -old kids are “smacked, spanked or beaten,” notes the UNICEF report. Such punishment often begins at a very early age. Two-thirds of moms in a sample survey in the United Kingdom cited in the report admitted to “smacking” their children before the child's first birthday. The same study in the United Kingdom found that about 25 percent of children were hit regularly with straps or canes. The use of physical punishment at home usually declines with age, but a 1995 Gallup poll found that 40 percent of American thirteen-year-old children were regularly hit, and a quarter of kids ages fifteen and older were struck. “In short, the hitting of children by parents or care-givers is, by a significant margin, the most common form of violence in the industrialized world,” states the UNICEF report. “Is there then a case for attempting to end a practice which is widely accepted as normal in almost every society, past and present, and
is today practiced by a clear majority of adults, most of whom regard occasional physical punishment of children as not only normal but necessary?”

The report presents an argument that hitting a child at home is a violation of fundamental human rights. Physical violence against another person is recognized as illegal in all nations, the report notes, yet it's acceptable against the “most vulnerable members of society.” If it's illegal to slap a stranger in a grocery store, why is it not illegal for a parent to do the same to a child? A number of European nations have now begun to reconcile that inconsistency. The first to do so was Sweden, which in 1957 deleted a legal provision exempting from the definition of “common assault” parents whose use of physical punishment caused minor injuries to their children. Similar amendments became part of the law in Finland in 1969, Norway in 1972, and Austria 1977. By 1979, Sweden banned corporal punishment outright in the home, declaring in law that “children are to be treated with respect for their person and individuality, and may not be subjected to physical punishment or other injurious or humiliating treatment.” The groundbreaking “anti-smacking” legislation stunned many and triggered debates about overly intrusive “nanny states.” But it was generally viewed in Sweden as a logical step in increasing strictures against violence at home and was supported by a “clear majority” of the population, notes the UNICEF report. It was passed in the Riksdag 259 to 6. Within years, Finland passed a law that a child “shall not be subdued, corporally punished, or otherwise humiliated,” and Austria passed family legislation stating that “using violence and inflicting physical or mental suffering is unlawful.” In 1994, the government of Cyprus declared illegal “the exercise of violence on behalf of any member of the family against another member of the family.” Similar restrictions were passed in Latvia, Croatia, and Germany, which declared that “children have a right to a non-violent upbringing,” and prohibited corporal punishment, psychological injuries, and other “humiliating measures.” In 2003, Iceland joined the list by passing a new Children's Act outlawing physical punishment of children. Among those nations, only Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden currently have laws that
explicitly prohibit
physical punishment. “They are persuaded, and are persuading others, that legalized violence toward children is a breach of
human rights even when it takes place within the home. They are convinced that removing the bottom rungs will make the ladder of serious child abuse more difficult to climb,” the UNICEF report notes. Far from regarding physical punishment as a “socializing discipline,” the laws recognize it as a model of “bad behavior,” and challenge the “legitimacy of violence as a means of resolving conflicts and asserting will.”

Several nations have vastly increased protections of children not in legislation but through court decisions. In a landmark case in Italy, which the UNICEF report refers to as creating “Ippolito's law,” a father was brought to court for repeatedly hitting and kicking his child for lying and doing poorly at school. His lawyer argued that because his intent—to correct and discipline his child—was good, and because he had caused no significant physical harm, he committed no crime. Judge Francesco Ippolito eventually ruled in Italy's Supreme Court in 1996 that physical punishment, regardless of intent, could not be used. He later called the case an “opportunity to establish the legal principal that parents in Italy are absolutely forbidden from using any violence or corporal punishment to correct their children's conduct.”
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Decades after the end of Fascism in Italy, it was time to drop the concept of the authoritarian father, he argued.

In the United States, laws relating to physical punishment are up to each state, and as of 2003 only Minnesota had a law that bars corporal punishment at home, according to the report. Several states allow corporal punishment in schools, which is permitted worldwide only in laws in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Mexico, notes the UNICEF report.

Strictures against corporal punishment of children at home is part of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every member nation except Somalia and the United States. Article 19 of the human-rights treaty requires all countries to protect children against “all forms of physical and mental violence . . . while in the care of parents, legal guardians or any other person who has the care of the child.” The Convention recognizes the rights of children to express their opinions, to participate in decisions when they are able, and to grow toward maturity in an atmosphere of “mutual trust and respect—rights which are unlikely to flourish in a climate that is constantly darkened by the threat of physical
punishment,” stress the authors of the UNICEF report. Rights of children to be protected from physical violence at home is increasingly being recognized, notes the report, which cites a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that found that the beating of a British child by his stepfather was a breach of the boy's human rights.

Such social change is likely slow in coming to the United States, where parents tend to zealously guard their rights to raise their children the way they want without interference from a Big Brother government, and where “spare the rod, spoil the child” is a principle still followed by many Americans. The American belief that physical punishment has a social benefit is clear in our continuing use of the death penalty, many believe. Michael Petit is convinced a key reason that the United States will not ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Children is because of its clause banning the death penalty for children.

Beyond banning corporal punishment at home, laws against such action have the added effect of elevating the recognized “personhood” of children. Laws that protect children from the same kinds of assaults that adults are shielded from defines a status in society for children separate from their “minor” roles within a family. As Britain has struggled with issues such as forced marriage, a key strategy has been to equip children to bypass parental control and go directly to the courts for protection. Its groundbreaking Forced Marriage Act was passed in 2007 and allows children to obtain a Forced Marriage Protection Order against their own parents, protecting them from being forced to marry someone against their will. The protection orders can require a variety of actions, including being removed from a home, or passport confiscation to stop daughters from being sent overseas to a forced marriage. In changes to the law expected in 2013, a forced marriage would be a crime, and parents, friends, and relatives responsible for arranging such a marriage could face prison, though potential victims could still opt to use civil, rather than criminal, orders and penalties. Opponents of such changes fear that criminalization of the problem will force the practice deeper underground, where victims may be more difficult to protect. Britain's Forced Marriage Unit, established to deal with the problem, gave advice or support in 1,468 instances related to possible forced marriages in 2012. Of those, 78 percent involved females and 22 percent males.

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How far have we come from the langurs—and how far can we go? Are we still buying in to the idea of the legitimacy of an alpha male in our troops, no matter how violent? Maybe we're all “drinking daddy's Kool-Aid,” concocted in our evolutionary past, whether daddy is an intimidating patriarch at home or a patriarchal Congress or police department reluctant to adequately challenge violent fathers. But that leaves thousands of children unprotected. “When people ask me the best way for kids to be safe, I tell them, ‘be born to the right parents,'” Michael Petit told me. “If you don't have the right parents, pray you're in a culture that will look out for you.” We can make this culture one that looks out for kids and saves a little girl from being beaten to death before her fifth birthday.

Even one life saved would be a tremendous victory.

INTRODUCTION

1
.
Fiscal Year 2012 Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President of the United States
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2012): 53, 55, 90.

2
.
Fiscal Year 2012 Budget in Brief, US Department of Homeland Security
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2012): 12.

3
.
“America's Child Death Shame,”
BBC News Magazine
, October 17, 2011.

4
. Wood, Joanne N., et al., “Local Macroeconomic Trends and Hospital Admissions for Child Abuse, 2000–2009,”
Pediatrics
130, no. 2 (Aug. 2012): 358; “Poor Economy Leaves More Children at Risk,”
New York Times
, December 2, 2011, sec. 1, A25.

5
. Violence Policy Center, “American Roulette: Murder-Suicide in the United States,” 4th ed. (Washington, DC: Violence Policy Center, May 2012): 8.

CHAPTER 1: RAGE

1
. CBC News, “B.C. Man Admits Killing Girl, 5: Police,” June 28, 2010.

2
. “Mother of Murdered B.C. Girl Speaks Out,” CTV News, October 23, 2010.

3
. Ibid.

4
. “Tragedy Unfolds for Abby Family,”
Abbotsford-Mission Times
, January 4, 2011, sec. 1, A3.

5
. “Mother of Murdered B.C. Girls Speaks Out,” CTV News.

CHAPTER 3: MUG'S GAME

1
. Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer,
The Langurs of Abu: Female and Male Strategies of Reproduction
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 242–266.

2
. Ibid., 242.

3
. Jay, Phyllis C., “The Social Behavior of the Langur Monkey” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1963), 8.

4
. Calhoun, John B., “Population Density and Social Pathology,”
Scientific American
206 (1962).

5
. Hrdy,
Langurs of Abu
, vii.

6
. Ibid., 76.

7
. Ibid., 243.

8
. Ibid., 68.

9
. Ibid., 11.

10
. Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer,
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1999), 232.

11
. Hrdy,
Langurs of Abu
, 11.