SPANKING BILL

Making Spanking Illegal
Saturday, December 11, 2004
By Michael Coren

Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette has introduced a bill that would make parental spanking of children a criminal offence.
We speak here not of abuse, not of a closed fist on a child's face or any other such horror. No, this concerns the occasional and moderate use of an open hand on, perhaps, a child's buttocks. The bill, introduced in the Senate late last week as Bill S-21, is nothing new nor, forgive the pun, is the sentiment behind it.

The state has for some time assumed that it can raise families more efficiently and compassionately than, well, the family itself. The arguments against such intrusion are legion and will doubtless be repeated in the coming weeks. But first we should think of the Cleary family.

It was almost a decade ago and 5-year-old Gavin had kicked the cat. His father told him to stop, but Gavin was in a bad mood. So Joe Cleary did what many parents might do and spanked him. It left a very slight mark, and this was noticed by Gavin's swimming teacher. She reported it to her supervisor, who in turn reported it to the local Children's Aid Society.

The first thing that happened was a telephone call from a young social worker to Joe's wife, Perry, the mother of their six children. The social worker asked to interview little Gavin. "I'll have to speak to my husband first," said the heavily pregnant Perry. The social worker was incredulous and asked why a woman would have to speak to her husband?

"Because," replied Perry, "he is my husband, because he is Gavin's father and because he is the head of the house." One could have heard a radical feminist pin drop!

A month later the police came to arrest Joe Cleary. They handcuffed him in front of his workmates and employers, arrested him and charged him with assault.

This honest, hard-working man was incarcerated for two days. "It was hellish, it really was," he told me in a later interview. "I had to fend off sexual advances from other men, had to watch out for some guys around me who were in there for horrible, sadistic violence. Forgive the cliche, but it was like a dark, dark nightmare."

The court appearance was brief and bail was set at $1,000. Perry raised the money but her offer was rejected. The 22-year-old social worker who was handling the case explained that Perry had referred on the phone to her husband as being "the head of the house" and that this was to be used by the prosecution as evidence the couple had a "slave-master" relationship.

It wasn't easy for the money to be found elsewhere, but somehow the family managed. Bail conditions initially prevented Joe from having any contact with minors, thus stopping him from seeing his family. Perry, with a 10-day-old baby in her arms by this time, protested and eventually her husband was allowed to return home.

There were seven more court appearances, with the Crown demanding continuances and further investigations. "It was almost as if they were trying to punish us, as though they took a special delight in treating us as criminals," the Clearys said at the time. Finally the judge dismissed the charges, but the couple's legal bills came to more than $10,000.

The entire family was in shock and Joe said if it hadn't been for the strength of his union he may well have been fired. As for young Gavin, none of the people behind this persecution seemed to care about him very much. This happy, loving little boy was left to wonder why police officers and social workers were hurting his mom and dad.

No apologies, no contrition, no explanation. Nor is the case in any way unique. Spanking is illegal in Sweden, for example, and there are horror stories of families being torn apart on the flimsiest of pretexts. There, and elsewhere, it seems that over-zealous social workers take a particular delight in targeting Christian families.

Beware those who would try to fix what is not and has never been broken. Their smiling concern tends to be enforced with a brutal rigidity. A rigidity, by the way, that stings far worse than a spank on the bum.