I suspect he is mad about both the underlying beating and the specifics of the beating, but accepts that people have the right to knock their kids about to some reasonable degree.
Oooh but I thought it made me all quirky and lovable 
No. That’s the specific thing I was trying to get you to figure out but flew right over your pointy little head. You assert these rules and distinctions and lines in the sand that are utterly bizarre and come off, quite frankly, as absurd.
For example, if you’re OK with belts, you crazy asshole you, then what’s wrong with an extension chord ? Both are whip-like objects, both will cause pain without lasting injuries. But there’s a rule ? Well OK then. Can’t argue with the unspoken crazy rule, I suppose.
Can’t I be steamed about both ? Also his language, the emotions he betrayed, the emotions (or lack thereof) *she *betrayed, the general package of fucked up as it were ?
Nope. Gotta stick with one element, and one element only. Thems are the man’s rules. Well OK then.
Judging by your… offerings… in this thread, you don’t have a goddamn clue what “within reason” entails.
Return of the absurd distinctions ! Weee !
So can all of the items you listed as fine and dandy for the purpose of fucking up your kids.
Not really. I just pity them.
Because you consider what we’re seeing in this video to be “within reason” and no big deal. Also because you’re a complete muppet and more than a bit of an asshole in general, but CPS doesn’t handle that, more’s the pity.
Let’s hope so. From the link in post 296:
The saddest part of all this is that the statute of limitations has expired, so he won’t be facing any jail time for it.
True.
And what I said was that it wasn’t ten years. And that’s precisely what I said in this post, when I mentioned the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure - Article 12.01. Felonies.
It’s true that I excised some text from my quotation of 12.01, because I was answering the specific claim that ten years was involved.
The complete Article 12.01 is here, and again I will excise non-relevant portions, but now quoting a different section:
Quick Anecdote:
Years ago on a different board (sports-related) I enjoyed much of the postings since I was only just then learning about Baseball. Fortunately and unfortunately, depending on your point of view, an actual MLB umpire frequented that board as well.
On the one hand, you have a great resource for the actual rules.
On the other hand, you have a guy who kills discussions with the actual rules.
I stopped visiting that board because it was all so boring and tedious.
Very true.
Which is why I always waited until I was feeling particularly chipper before beating my children.
Regards,
Shodan
Excellent advice, Sir.
Yeah. There’s nothing measured in the guy’s approach: he’s screaming profanities and swatting at her wildly and basically acting like an enraged and dangerous person out of control. The spankings I received, at least ones I remember, had a terrifying formality about them. My father maintained a dispassionate affect, and the anticipation of getting whacked with the belt had more of an impact than the actual blows. I certainly didn’t like it, but he never seemed out of his senses and I never felt any fear of serious harm.
There’s a reason we don’t perform executions Libyan-style, letting a wild mob jam a Leatherman tool up the condemned’s asshole and knock him around like a bloody rag doll before killing him in whatever manner best satisfies our lust for revenge. (A disappointment, no doubt, to some of our right-thinking posters in this thread who look back with sepia-toned fondness on their own physical abuse.)
OK, OK, I surrender counselor. I don’t want to argue the point to death but rather just point out that despite all the speculation (yours and others) the charge would have been “Injury to a child” and ‘possibly other assault related charges’. This, despite her being over 14 years old and having no documented injuries. And even being his child, non child abuse type assault charges might apply. Among the many theories presented one was that 14 was some magical age in Texas whereupon child abuse was no longer a felony. Another was that a parent can’t be charged for simple assault and battery if it is against their own child, it would have to be proven as child abuse.
It’s telling that he switched off the lights before starting the beating. Even while upholding all that is good and right in the world he sure didn’t want the neighbors to see it happening. Those shadows on the curtains might lead someone to think there was a savage beating going on in there instead of just good parenting, and call the police before the statute of limitations had passed.
His desire to hide the activity indicates he knew it was illegal at the time. He is probably very lucky the kid or wife didn’t dig one of his shotguns out of the closet in the middle of the night and prosecute the case themselves, then hold up the video as their defense. He is further lucky the daughter seems to honestly, if a bit naively, wish no bad consequences for him as a result of all this but rather for him to ‘seek help’ now that his abuse is a matter of public knowledge.
I would imagine she could make additional complaints that were from more recent years if she chose to. Despite not having taped evidence for newer crimes her testimony and her mothers would be much more believable now with the evidence of the past abuse now public. But that isn’t her desire based on the statements she has made to the press. She probably told the police outright during her interview that she wouldn’t pursue criminal charges. So if the state wanted to prosecute him themselves the video would be only evidence they had to go on.
That would be an interesting trial. I suspect that especially after the fact it isn’t legal to pop your parent.
Jesus fucking Christ, I just watched the whole thing.
I have 3 girls. One with special needs. I could see how someone borderline fucked up could harbor anger and resentment over that and end up blowing up like this on their own child, and become really fucked up in the head. There’s a ton of stress with special needs kids, and with the wrong disposition, situation, lack of support, I can see how that might trigger someone already on the edge. (I don’t feel that way but can understand how it could happen.)
I get why some of the posters may say that well it wasn’t that bad as she obviously didn’t suffer any permanent damage. It was *just *a belting. I think that misses sight of the fact that the guy could have escalated and killed her. He was out of control. Not a “normal” angry reaction that a few licks from a belt couldn’t salve. It was clearly beyond the grey area.
I don’t even want to imagine what he does to his wife when he thinks she is out of line.
I grew up with corporal punishment at home and in the school. The highschool woodshop teacher was missing his two middle fingers. He used to pick you up by the neck with his other two fingers, pin you to the wall with feet off the ground, and then lecture. I know for a fact he beat his wife, kids and maybe worse. So, yes, in bumfuck Colusa County this certainly happend in the 60’s when I was a kid. Don’t make it right. I would intervene if I saw or suspected something like this.
It’s called the battered woman defense (now more politically correct: “battering and its effects”) and it has been used in trials with mixed success. The idea is that in an abusive environment the depression, fear, powerlessness, possible substance abuse, and many other factors may render an abused person unable to simply walk away and seek help, something that seems so obvious and easy to an outsider.
Regardless of whether or not it would have been a successful defense, I would say it is still very lucky for the Judge they didn’t decide to test the theory. It wouldn’t change the outcome for him.
I know it bothers me because the guy is angry and how long it lasted. I went in all prepared to say it was no big deal, but what I saw was a vindictive little fuck.
I was spanked as a child. It involved one or two swats, carried out in a stern and apologetic manner. Perhaps once or twice my parents were angry, but it never got to that level. And they knew that, once a few swats became ineffective (as it inevitably does as you get older) that it was pointless to keep on escalating. Still giving out spankings at 16 is a sign of poor parenting: you have to be rather abusive to equal the level of punishment simply revoking privileges would accomplish.
Oh, and it doesn’t surprise me at all that Africa has a high number of this type of abuse. It probably correlates with the more violent countries. There have been studies correlating violence to high levels of corporal punishment in kids.
You can argue that it happens, but to argue that it is acceptable, after knowing so many people who believe it cruel and still grow up well? That takes some willful ignorance.
All I want to say right now is, if that were a sister or cousin of mine being beaten like that or worse (which according to OMG Its A Fucking Idiot is OK), it’s a fair chance I would try to kill that scumbag.
Hitting children (or anyone really, excepting very particular circumstances) is always unnecessary. Having worked with some very, very difficult children & teenagers, I can firmly state that hitting children is just not necessary to raising & educating them.
Additionally, this man seems very unstable. The response to her disobedience is clearly out of proportion (computer-related naughtiness would get you a week with no computer privileges, and after a few days the option of earning back each hour’s privilege by means of doing a job, where I worked. Additional consequences if it was not the first time). He is clearly enraged, it seems he is trying to assert dominance, trying to scare her, but also to humiliate her. There is no measure in his punishment whatsoever.
Of course he can both be wrong in the principle act (hitting a child) and also be wrong in extent to which he does that (this is more wrong than regular spanking).
I’m sad that the mother gets off the hook so easily. She may have been abused herself, but that is no excuse. She participated, and as a mother she just has the responsibility to make better decisions for her children & herself. It is sad for her, but that is what we need to expect from parents. Her responsibility as a parent takes precedence over her role as a victim. We aren’t about to start absolving pedophiles of responsibility just because they were abused. We expect people to know better.
I know of a family from Kenya who are supposedly in the US illegally; the son was at our place one day with a broken writst reportedly caused by one or both of the parents. The son turned around and started abusing his girlfriend while she was pregnant with their child then in front of the child a year later.
Girl finally kicked his abusing ass out.
The cycle of violence. It takes effort to break it.
Beyond a certain age, and beyond a certain threshold of the reasons for doing it, hitting a child basically just teaches them that when you run out of ideas you should just use your fists. Mommy spanks me because she doesn’t want me to go outside after dark, so if I don’t want that kid at school to take the last candy bar I should hit him since I have no other valid means of preventing him from doing it and I don’t like it. As the twig is inclined so grows the tree and all that.
For a great number of people all around the world it is just simpler to perpetuate this lesson than to search for creative intelligent ways to curb undesired behavior. For a family judge, someone who’s job is ruling on parents fitness and handing down sentences that are supposed to fit various crimes, it would seem he might have been able to think of something else. He could have made her get a part time job and donate the money to an anti-piracy group. That sounds like something a family judge might do to a teenager for illegal downloading.
Crazyhorse, I think it always teaches that. Children learn from an adult’s violence that a) violence is a solution to getting what you want and b) that being stronger means you are right.
It doesn’t teach why what they did was wrong, it allows them the opportunity to shift the blame to you (ie “mommy hit me because she is mean”, instead of “I have no tv because I did something I shouldn’t have, but mommy is kind to allow me the opportunity to earn that privilege back”). Hitting is a slippery slope, and its impact indeed diminishes as children grow (in my case & where I worked fairly quickly, I wasn’t physically stronger than the 12-year old boys). It is likely to perpetuate the circle of violence.
But most of all, it is just not necessary. At all. Ever. Raising children can and should be done without violence.