Female genital mutilation?
Thankfully a crime in most places I can think of.
Middlebro is 10 years older than me. When I was ~12, he dangled me headfirst over the stairwell between the living room and the family room. We were the only ones home at the time.
My 2nd grade teacher. I don’t think she’d be allowed to teach today. At least I hope not.
Nobody had ever seen Miss G. smile. She was more of a disciplinarian that a teacher. She would give us an assignment every morning, and you wouldn’t be allowed to eat lunch until you were finished with it. I was very meticulous in my work, so most days I ate my lunch in the bus, on the way home.
In the back of the classroom was the “cloak room,” hidden by heavy doors that lifted up, like garage doors. There was neither light nor fresh air in the cloak room. If a student misbehaved, he had to stay in the cloak room until given permission to come back. The rest of us were instructed to ignore any crying or screaming that came from the cloak room.
Another of her favorite punishments was to not allow the kid to go to the restroom, for the rest of the day . . . then ordering the kid into the cloakroom for going in his pants. It wasn’t unusual for all of our coats to smell like piss or shit.
One PTA meeting, Miss G. told our parents that she hated children . . . especially boys.
There’s the Shi’ite Muslim Ashura ritual where adults cut children’s heads to make them bleed all over, to celebrate Muhammad’s grandson.
Warning: bloody pictures
Ever read Jane Eyre?
The Lowood School was based on real life. Yeah, including the bits where large numbers of the girls started dying from disease because they were so malnourished.
On a similar note, I would think a search based around the English Public School system of fagging would provide enough material for an article all by itself
How about the National Coal Board taking funds from money donated by the public after the Aberfan Disaster in 1966 that killed 116 children?
ETA: Typo
My mother hated me, pure and simple. She kept me out of school for a year, and insisted I go into kindergarten, then I was old enough for first grade. When the school gave me an IQ test and I scored 148, my mother still refused, saying “She must have guessed lucky.”
I never had a real birthday, being born on December 25th. Christmas wrapping, red and green cake, standard Xmas dinner. Never special for me ever.
Might I suggest a thread title edit/addition that includes something akin to “That Made the News”? I realize some folks will still wind up posting personal anecdotes, but you might get more on-topic responses that way.
My mother was born on December 24th. She had the same basic complaint when she was growing up. Plus she never got separate birthday and Christmas gifts like her siblings. When she hit her mid 30’s, December 24 wasn’t Christmas Eve, it was Dot’s birthday. One would be shamed if they dared bring her a birthday gift in holiday paper.
Even I hate her. That’s horrible.
I wish there were a way to take away the pain of having had a cruel parent. What a sad thread. 
You know, if the principal had made a moderate effort, other people from the community would have bought tickets for the poor kids to attend the school carnival. The idea of the poor kids having to sit in a room able to hear the sounds of the luckier ones having fun at the carnival stirs up some really dark feelings such that even a child hater like me, would have probably bought tickets for kids in that situation.
Not that that’s not true, but if you read the article, those comments went over their heads, and they were more upset about people laughing at their proposal.
Luckily for us, my mom’s experience made her think “what would my mom do?” and do the opposite. I’m blessed she didn’t repeat her mother’s errors.
I have remembered another story too - but my google-fu’s not good enough to find it. An American or Canadian couple adopted a girl from somewhere in Eastern Europe - Hungary? Romania? somewhere like that. Then after a bit they decided they didn’t want her and “unadopted” her and sent her back.
Bad enough, but even worse - her original citizenship had been cancelled and she couldn’t get it back. So she had to live in <whatever country> as a non-citizen, being ineligible to go to school, or get a job.
Anyone remember a story like that?
Sadly, googling “adopted girl left stateless” brings up a shit-ton of different cites
one thing which comes to mind is the “Balloon Boy” incident. I saw a video of them on TV shortly after that shook out where they were trying to “explain” the whole thing, and something the kid involved said (“you said we were doing it for the show.”) During that he puked on live TV and I could clearly see that asshole only viewed his kids as a way to make money.
This happened to me three times that I can remember, all for poetry I had written.
This may be why I’ve never seriously tried to become a published author.
There is some evil talk show host who encourages people to tell their kids that they ate all the halloween candy, and film the children sobbing. You can just see these kids trying not to believe that their own parents would do such a horrible thing. And once the parents get them good and convinced, and the kids are sobbing, having finally lost all faith and trust in their parents, then the big “reveal” is supposed make everything OK again.
“No, I didn’t really do that!” says Dad. But you watch the faces of the kids, and you know that their world has changed forever. It’s horrifying. Poor kids.
Also, there’s that whole “Krampus” thing that Nordic parents do. I’m betting it’s at the bottom of the terrible alcoholism and suicide rates over there . . .
Then there are a horrendous number of stories out there about so-called Christians who beat and/or disown their children when they find out the child is LGBTQ. Those parents should be horse-whipped.
What about the you tubes a while back about vicious punishments in Japanese boarding schools? Those were heinous.
Yep, Pat Benetarpretty much nailed childhood.