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| Here is another type of case that happens to some level but rarely gets reported when it does. It probably “rarely” happens. But kids die in “discipline camps” from a number of reasons and it only makes “local news.” There is an investigation and a fine or two and it all “goes away.” If it goes to court or makes the news then those of us who dig like moles might turn up a tidbit, but the average American is totally unaware. In cases less than death the news is ordinarily completely silent about any and all child abuse injuries from “spanking” or paddling, whether at home or any institution, even in the very small percentage of abusive cases that they hear of. When it does come to light at all—generally because there is a court action—it most often makes only local news. | | There was a recent case that became a national news blurb where a black fraternity had a paddle initiation that was attended by many older adult male alumni. Dozens of freshman “plebes” were sent to the hospital with severe buttocks injuries that required hospitalization for a week or longer. One student suffered kidney failure from the paddling and had to be put on dialysis. It only made the news at all because of the high number of hospitalized victims, and the fact that it involved adult victims. If it were “just one kid,” or a few severely beaten children, it would have not have made national news. A kid suffering kidney damage would not be mentioned at all in most cases. “Just another child abuse statistic,” like thousands of others every year. | | Then there are the severe results that are scary because so many people overlook the damage. It is a fluke if any one person reports the harm, even when dozens are aware of it. We are thus left to wonder how many other cases exist where there isn’t the “one person” who had the combination of guts, knowledge, and empathy to report at all? The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran an article on May 8, 1999 called, “Four ‘church mentors’ flog, injure 8-year-old; pastor apologizes.” It has the sub heading, “A 3-inch square chunk of skin was torn from the child’s right buttock, police say.” | | If we hadn’t done the amount of research for this book that we have this story would have seemed unbelievable to me on many levels, or like some kind of “fluke”—but unfortunately this practice of “church butt beating” occurs in some backward but widespread areas of our country. I define "backward" here as an extreme ignorance or callousness of a population to the physical and sexual abuse of children, to the point that such abuse is common and accepted. These "Hee-Haw," as my kids would say, communities can be identified by the fact that the authorities do nothing, or further persecute the victim if anything, in the few cases where the victims have the “audacity” to complain. To some extent this exists in every state, but home and “church camp” type abuse is much more common, unregulated, and severe, in the areas that have a lot of public school paddling. School paddling serves as a reliable guide to a local attitude toward child battery. If hired school staff can beat children and teens black and blue routinely with full protection it is difficult to complain about church personnel, family members, or acquaintances of the parents doing the same or worse. The school paddling is both an indicator of these lax attitudes toward child abuse as well as a perpetrator of them. This is itself enough reason to leave school paddling to the history books. | | In this case the North Little Rock, Arkansas “Gloryland Baptist Church” had a team of “mentors” who would beat the children they were “enriching the lives of” with their “ministry of integrity.” An 8-year-old boy was enrolled in their “Soldiers of Christ” program. He got in trouble at school for hitting a girl. Four men picked him up, with permission from his mother, and took him to the church barbershop. The four men explained to the 56-pound, 8-year-old boy why it is wrong to hit people. Then all four adult churchmen, aged 23, 24, 32, and 42, took turns beating him with a board as he bent over a chair. The article did not say how many times they hit him or how big the paddle was, but that doesn’t really matter anyway. There is, as we’ve seen, no way to know how hard any of them hit him even if we did know the size of the paddle and how many times he was hit. | | Why did four men pick him up? Why did four men take turns paddling? You would think one with one witness would suffice. Do these men have nothing better to do? Is it an exciting part of the day for them and they all had to “jump on the haywagon” like they were on the way to a baseball game or some form of entertainment? That alone makes you wonder. Most of us who are competent people have a busy life of our own. We may squeeze some time out for a charitable cause—but these guys seem like they really had nothing better to do than participate in a four-man, “gang-bang” paddling of a small boy. Three were directly employed by the church. Was there nothing to do there that needed fixing or preparation that all four men could take hours off to pick one child up from school and take him to a third party location and beat him? | | Now for the real scary part. There was apparently no “extra screaming” during that paddling that told these men they had done anything wrong. If there was then they ignored it and didn’t think it important. Maybe he was one of those kids who could “take a beating well.” Maybe they “really wanted to break him.” Maybe he was “broken already” and they were too ignorant to see it. When the “gang bang” beating by all four men was finally over, in any case, the boy was hurting and walked stiffly, but “everything seemed normal” apparently to the paddlers. They didn’t rush him to the hospital. They took him home. He felt he “deserved the beating,” which he frequently got it seems. He said, “I get spanked a lot because I get in trouble a lot.” When he got home he could not sit down. He immediately went to his bed and took a nap. His guardian, who was not his mother (and that too may speak volumes), noticed blood on his underwear. This was apparently the first sign that something was wrong to her or to anyone else. She called police. When they arrived he was being held and was crying. He had to lay on his stomach. He could not sit or stand. His buttocks were described as, “extremely swollen, extremely bruised, and bloody.” “He had a large portion of skin that looked as if it had been ripped off his bottom.” |
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