Florida Principal Who Paddled Girl, 6, Was in the Right: Authorities

Years ago I turned down a position in Lake Havasu, NV because the schools permitted paddling. I didn't just think of my son enduring this treatment, but even seeing it and knowing about it is bad enough. It's atmospheric. How dare they!
This is why I love you so. 🥰
 

I don't believe in beating children, period. And for the life of me, I can't understand parents who boast about how much they spanked their kids. Children can be taught, and even disciplined, without using physical abuse against them. "Go to your room" or "you are grounded" work just as well.

Saying "physical abuse" may sound like an exaggeration, but all too often it really is serious abuse. And even if it doesn't leave visible scars and bruises, it is still an assault against the child's body.

Bad enough when parents do it. But teachers should be immediately dismissed the minute they dare to lay a hand on a child.
 
Our Catholic school principal used a cat-o'-nine tails. I was on the receiving end one time. I think it instills a bitterness in the recipient. Buckeye wrote about setting off a firecracker. I set off a cherry bomb years later in the church hall during a church bazaar. It was done, I'm sure, as a subliminal method of retaliation.
Ever wondered why Catholic church congregations have fallen? If you have to teach that God is love by means of corporal punishment, why be so surprised by resentment?
Another regular type of punishment was mass detention. That's mass as in the whole class not mass as in the religious service.
If a culprit couldn't be found for a misdemeanour, then everybody would be punished. The assumption was that someone who knew would come forward. Nobody ever did.
 
Ever wondered why Catholic church congregations have fallen? If you have to teach that God is love by means of corporal punishment, why be so surprised by resentment?
Another regular type of punishment was mass detention. That's mass as in the whole class not mass as in the religious service.
If a culprit couldn't be found for a misdemeanour, then everybody would be punished. The assumption was that someone who knew would come forward. Nobody ever did.
That's like when the USSC ruled if drugs are found in a car and no one admits ownership, ALL can be arrested!
 
I don't believe in beating children, period. And for the life of me, I can't understand parents who boast about how much they spanked their kids. Children can be taught, and even disciplined, without using physical abuse against them. "Go to your room" or "you are grounded" work just as well.

Saying "physical abuse" may sound like an exaggeration, but all too often it really is serious abuse. And even if it doesn't leave visible scars and bruises, it is still an assault against the child's body.

Bad enough when parents do it. But teachers should be immediately dismissed the minute they dare to lay a hand on a child.
Let's not overdramatize a few simple pops on a child's butt and compare it to beating, Sunny.

Adding, I have yet to come across a single post where a parent "boasts" about spanking their children.
 
I don't believe in beating children, period. And for the life of me, I can't understand parents who boast about how much they spanked their kids. Children can be taught, and even disciplined, without using physical abuse against them. "Go to your room" or "you are grounded" work just as well.

Saying "physical abuse" may sound like an exaggeration, but all too often it really is serious abuse. And even if it doesn't leave visible scars and bruises, it is still an assault against the child's body.

Bad enough when parents do it. But teachers should be immediately dismissed the minute they dare to lay a hand on a child.
You make a good point Sunny, what happens to some though is that having been beaten as a child, at home and at school, they then beat their own offspring. I have heard people, whom I would describe as intelligent, say: "I had a beating at school, never did me any harm."
Really? Marg made a point previously:
That, and psychological damage. I wonder what the scare factor is in the child now, her level of trust (or lack thereof) in authority.
My father had it really tough, raising four children alone, after his wife had died young. Angry he would get, but violent, never. In fact, my father taught me a very valuable lesson. When it was not up for discussion, a time to shut and put up, he would let his glasses slide down his nose and give you a glare of pure napalm.
Many years later, as a head honcho at work, I mastered the same trick. I once heard a recalcitrant mutter: "I ****ing hate it when he stares at me like that, over his glasses."
Thanks Dad!
 
Sounds like my Catholic school back in the 1950's. Admittedly they didn't use a wooden paddle, one teacher used an old slipper, the head teacher used a wooden cane. Right across the buttocks. And this is on children aged between four and ten years old.
Often times, perverts are abusive under the guise of "Doing God's Work." Likely the same way they justify child molestation.
 
Last edited:
I don't believe in beating children, period. And for the life of me, I can't understand parents who boast about how much they spanked their kids. Children can be taught, and even disciplined, without using physical abuse against them. "Go to your room" or "you are grounded" work just as well.

Saying "physical abuse" may sound like an exaggeration, but all too often it really is serious abuse. And even if it doesn't leave visible scars and bruises, it is still an assault against the child's body.

Bad enough when parents do it. But teachers should be immediately dismissed the minute they dare to lay a hand on a child.
"Go to your room" or "You are grounded" do not allow a parent to get the feeling of power over their children they need to feel by hitting someone smaller who can't fight back. Like any bully.
 
According to the article:

"One staff member gave a statement claiming that when the girl's mother was contacted by phone about the incident, she said her daughter was also damaging items at home, but that she was "afraid to discipline her by spanking, because her daughter threatens to call the police and [the Department of Children and Families]." She says the mother then asked that school staffers spank her daughter, CNN reports. The staffer says she then told the mother she'd need to come to the school to ask in person for the spanking to be carried out, and then remain in the room while it happened, and that the mother did just that.

In a memo, Deputy Chief Assistant State Attorney Abraham R. Thornburg says that upon review of the incident, it does appear "the child's mother sanctioned and consented to the spanking of her daughter as discipline for misbehavior," and that on the video of the incident, which was secretly recorded by the mother, she can be heard thanking staffers afterward. The memo notes that per Florida law, parents have the right to spank their children or authorize others to do so for them and spanking is not considered child abuse. The office also found no evidence of "great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement." The mother, however, filed a police report after the incident, and her attorney says she was confused about the school's policy and was scared when she went in and witnessed the spanking."


The mother permitted, witnessed and thanked the administrators and now wants to sue? Gimme a break.

p.s As of 2018, school paddling is legal in these states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_the_United_States

1Capture.JPG
 
According to the article:

"One staff member gave a statement claiming that when the girl's mother was contacted by phone about the incident, she said her daughter was also damaging items at home, but that she was "afraid to discipline her by spanking, because her daughter threatens to call the police and [the Department of Children and Families]." She says the mother then asked that school staffers spank her daughter, CNN reports. The staffer says she then told the mother she'd need to come to the school to ask in person for the spanking to be carried out, and then remain in the room while it happened, and that the mother did just that.

In a memo, Deputy Chief Assistant State Attorney Abraham R. Thornburg says that upon review of the incident, it does appear "the child's mother sanctioned and consented to the spanking of her daughter as discipline for misbehavior," and that on the video of the incident, which was secretly recorded by the mother, she can be heard thanking staffers afterward. The memo notes that per Florida law, parents have the right to spank their children or authorize others to do so for them and spanking is not considered child abuse. The office also found no evidence of "great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement." The mother, however, filed a police report after the incident, and her attorney says she was confused about the school's policy and was scared when she went in and witnessed the spanking."


The mother permitted, witnessed and thanked the administrators and now wants to sue? Gimme a break.

p.s As of 2018, school paddling is legal in these states:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment_in_the_United_States

View attachment 164408
So the principals wind-up of the wooden paddle is in order with what you would deem as being a suitable (acceptable) spanking?
 
So the principals wind-up of the wooden paddle is in order with what you would deem as being a suitable (acceptable) spanking?
I disagree completely with schools administering any form of corporal punishment and am aghast that it's still legal in so many (mostly southern, deeply conservative) US states. Heaven help any administrator who would have dared lay a hand on one of my children.

My point was that the mother knew what was happening and then cried foul. That she videoed it makes me suspect she'd had this idea in the back of her mind all along. Sorry if I wasn't clear about where I stand on school paddlings.
 
I disagree completely with schools administering any form of corporal punishment and am aghast that it's still legal in so many (mostly southern, deeply conservative) US states. Heaven help any administrator who would have dared lay a hand on one of my children.

My point was that the mother knew what was happening and then cried foul. That she videoed it makes me suspect she'd had this idea in the back of her mind all along. Sorry if I wasn't clear about where I stand on school paddlings.
Yes and no, Star.

Sure, the mother may have knew what was happening, but as the mother said in the video, "the hatred in which she hit my daughter, I mean it was a hatred that, really, I've never hit my daughter like she hit her, I had never hit her". Mother breaks down crying.

The mother goes on to say, "I sacrificed my daughter, so all the parents can realize what's happening in this school".

I believe the mother. I believe the mother was under the pretense that one, two, maybe three reserved spanks would be administered, but not the wind-up that the principal took upon herself to apply. I also believe the mother may have felt that a school administered paddling would resonate more with her daughter than at home.

There's shock value attached to this for the mother, and it did unfold fast, allowing little to no time for the shock value of the event to register with the mother before she could act.

The most scary part of all this, is the total and complete disregard the principal extended to both child and mother, completely and totally on a mission to show the world what a hero she is, which makes me wonder just how the child would have been punished had no parent been there. Now that's scary!

And even MORE scarier (and creepy) is the school system asking that parents come to the school in order to administer spankings on their misbehaving children. What sort of demented freaks are behind school policies in Florida?

I encourage any and all parents to take the law into their own hands if ever their child is abused like that. No one should be allowed to get away with that! You don't even discipline your own child that way, so who the hell does the school system and principal think they are!
 
As for the mother’s behaviour. I wonder how well she understood English since she spoke in Spanish to the interviewer. Also, she probably had no idea of the severity of the punishment. I hope the child’s derrière has been checked for bruises. They do not always show up right away
 
As for the mother’s behaviour. I wonder how well she understood English since she spoke in Spanish to the interviewer. Also, she probably had no idea of the severity of the punishment. I hope the chi,D’s derrière has been checked fir bruises. They do not always show up right away
I thought of that, too.
 
In Canada, Corporal punishment in schools was largely abandoned in the 1970s due to increased oversight by parents. In 2004, our Supreme Court declared it illegal. So far, the Canadian sky has not fallen, and our children do not run amok.
 

Last edited:

Back
Top