“You don’t know you’ve crossed the line until you get accused of crossing the line.”
That right there is a line crossed, as far as I’m concerned.
It came from the mouth of a guy named Jeffrey T. Schwartz in defense of one Cesar Rodriquez.
Whether Cesar Rodriguez, who is accused of beatings and abusive behavior that killed his 7-year-old stepdaughter, could not have known he had crossed a line is a matter for a jury to decide. He has admitted that he routinely beat Nixzmary with a belt, hit her with his hands using “all my force,” threw her on the floor. He has admitted duct-taping her emaciated 37-pound frame to a chair and binding her with bungee cords.
What he hasn’t admitted to isn’t reported.
The story in the NY Times points out that laws in that state, and all the rest of them for that matter, are “vague on corporal punishment.”
Hello?
On what planet, other than LegalBullshitWorld, is there dense cloudiness between grabbing a toddler and swatting her on the bum when she tries to run out in traffic and holding a kid’s head under water, beating her savagely, and forcing her to use a cat’s litter box for a toilet?
After all, that’s how Mr. Rodriguez was raised … at least according to Mr. Rodriquez and Jeffrey T. Schwartz … and look at what a fine specimen he turned out to be, so there’s a defense made in some version of legal heaven (which would by definition of ‘self-cancelling phrase’ have to indicate some pact with some devils).
Crossing a line? There is no case of crossing a line here. This is rappelling down a precipice (or repelling, actually), slogging across a vast Sahara of crushingly bone-dry nothingness, then pulling up ten miles of cliff face with nothing but fingernails. One can not possible be confused with the other, and the fact that, indeed, the two are confused, blurred, smudged, smeared, massaged, manipulated, into fitting under one banner is disgusting.
Another child is dead, and before she was dead she was tortured … for years … and those doing the torturing, her mother and her mother’s husband, got away with it right up until the time they snuffed the last of life from this little girl.
This is no special case, no rare occurrence, but just an example with a name of daily events.
And no wonder, when society deems torture “crossing a line” when it is perpetrated on a child.
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Paradise Preoccupied 
If I had my way corporal punishment would be banned. Hitting children just makes me so angry, there’s no reason for it. And yet, you can find quite a few books on the shelf instructing people how to do it over things like a child not staying in bed, or a child being “defiant.” They say folks can do it without anger, but it still seems to border abuse to me if not actually being abusive. I just can’t think of a good enough reason to hit a child. Especially a toddler who is just being a toddler.
Iorek,
The “spare the rod” folks will disagree with you, I’m afraid, and I’m not at all sure how helpful a ban on corporal punishment would be when there are laws on torture and murder that don’t seem to be doing a whole lot of good.
I have to wonder how many neighbors heard this child beaten over the years, how many teachers saw her wounds.
Linking a case like this to corporal punishment, is like linking child trafficking to adoption.
It’s perfectly valid to oppose it and make your case against it, but it muddies the water pretty badly when you lump child abuse…no let’s call it child torture…together with corporal punishment.
Also, it sadly takes the focus off of the horror of situations like this one, and moves it over to a softer debate.
This is the world of my adopted children, and I don’t ever want anyone to try and compare the swats on the rear that my bio children received, with the sorts of things my adopted children witnessed or experienced.
I know it wouldn’t help, but I wish it would at least become more mainstream not to hit kids at all. There are ways to discipline them without that. And these various books aren’t advicing a tap on the bottom. They are advising using switches, rods, spoons and paddles on children as young as 4 months. If that isn’t abuse, or at least the precursors of it, I don’t know what it is. The coldness of hitting a kid without anger is one of the things that bothers me the most.
[…] family, foster, fostering) (adoption, emotions, foster) I was reading blogs and came across THIS . It stirred up some feelings I have been having […]
When I hear of cases like this one, I am so sickened. My daughter is seven years old. Somehow that really made this story feel especially repugnant because I could never, ever, ever imagine allowing anyone to do anything like that with my daughter.
It’s so clearly not corporal punishment and so clearly physical, emotional, psychological abuse coupled with neglect.
The poor child. May she rest in peace.
The lawyers are doing their “job” by spewing BS. In the end, it’s up to the jury to see right from wrong. I still have faith that in the end, he will get what he deserves, be it in this world or the next.
I feel so deeply for the child…………
I get that lawyes are paid to pull off whatever they can pull off, but that seems to be where the system falls apart. Now, if perjury was punished, or if there was one iota of morality left that would convince the guilty to admit their guilt, or … or what? What else could change the mess that reduces law to a sick game that demands respect even though it so rarely deserves it?