The Empresses' new clothes or Smacking: Those Kiwis must
be crazy!
By Ruby Harrold-Claesson, Lawyer
|
This article was published on July 27, 2007
on SPCS and Family Integrity and on July 30, 2007 it was published in Challenge Weekly, Vol. 65
Issue 28, page 11, under the title "Letter
from Sweden: Those Kiwis are Crazy". On August
11, 2007 it was published in The Newman Weekly under the title "Smacking: Those Kiwis must be crazy! |
One year ago, I travelled 36 hours from Gothenburg,
Sweden to Auckland at the invitation of the Section 59 Coalition. I came to
testify at the Parliamentary hearing on the private member's Bill that proposed
a repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act and to inform - and to warn - the
general New Zealand public of the effects of the Swedish smacking ban.
When I left New Zealand after my two-week stay,
I was hopeful that the bill would not pass because over 80 % of the population
was not in favour of it. I had also thought that New Zealand was a democratic
country that respected the will of the people. My warnings were backed by my
presentation of 30 of the court cases that I have collected for my coming PhD
thesis on the Swedish anti-smacking law. These show how parents were prosecuted
and sentenced to fines or prison and their children were taken into forcible
public care and separated from them and placed in foster homes. But it all fell
on deaf parliamentarian ears. My hopes were finally crumbled in May when the
compromise was reached and the bill became law because the MPs were forced to
vote against their consciences. Fortunately, a few MPs with high integrity
refused to vote for the law: one even resigned from his Party because of it.
New Zealand has made a historical mistake by
following Sweden's example to ban smacking. New Zealand's law has gone even
farther than Sweden's in that it prescribes criminal penalties for smacking
parents[1]
and the Children's Commissioner cheered - just like the crowds did at the
Emperor's new clothes. The Swedish law doesn't prescribe criminal penalties,
but Parliament was informed that the new law would be sanctioned by the
provisions of the Penal Law. And so it has been.
Section 59 was good legislation and as such it should
not have been tampered with in any way. Sue Bradford sent three strong
messages:
1 - She knows best - better than the legally
educated judges on whose discretion it lies to decide what is "reasonable
force";
2 - She does not trust the judgement of the
courts;
3 - She thinks previous rulings were wrong.
Remember, the anti-smacking law was not
delivered to mankind on slabs of stone as one of the Ten Commandments. It was
imposed by the Swedish social engineers. So, the fact that Sweden repealed its
equivalent to Section 59 does not justify New Zealand repealing its own. In a
TV-debate on July 19, 2006, Sue Bradford said that it was irrelevant to discuss
Sweden. However, it is quite obvious that no one can discuss imposing a
smacking-ban on a country without taking Sweden - the pioneer - into account.
Also, the British Parliament engaged in similar legislative procedure in 2004.
It resulted in the Lester amendment, which
is called the "fudge".[2]
The Lester amendment is deemed as a progression towards a total smacking ban.
However, England is facing a re-think. In an article in The People, July 8,
2007, Tory children's minister Tim Loughton said: "The present law is
unworkable nonsense - it just criminalises parents. We need to clearly define
the line between chastisement by parents as they see fit and violence towards
children."
While the Swedish parliament may have been in
good faith in repealing their equivalent to Section 59 and consequently passing
the anti-smacking law despite the warnings of important judicial organs, the NZ
parliament cannot be deemed to have acted in good faith. Both Dr Bob Larzelere
and I informed them of the disastrous consequences that the Swedish
anti-smacking law has had for children, families and the society as a whole.
The NZ anti-smacking lobby claims that repealing Section 59 will stop child
abuse. They also claim that Swedish children are safer and that only one child
every four years dies from abuse in Sweden. These claims have been proven
mendacious so, imposing a smacking ban with reference to Sweden's "low
mortality rates" shows that they have failed to note that homicide rates
indicate only the extreme cases of child abuse. How often does one hear of
'death by a smack'? Homicide rates are
not the same as rates of supposed harm by smacking. And, the repeal of Section
59 of the Crimes Act will not change the situation for children who are subject
to abuse.
Not even the blanket prohibition against
smacking that was passed in 1979 has prevented child abuse in Sweden. In fact,
assistant professor Hans Temrin at the University of Stockholm has shown in two
separate press releases, the latter of which was published in May 2006, that
258 children in Sweden died at the hands of their parents or guardians between
1965 - 1999.[3] Incidentally,
those figures do not include children who have died while in state care, for
e.g. Daniel Sigström (1992) or Felicia Pettersson
(2005). A little reminder: in Sweden, in January - February 2006 three
children under the age of ten died at the hands of their parents and in May a
12 yr-old girl was murdered by her step-father.
You may wonder what the reason is for my
involvement in the New Zealand smacking debate. Well, Sweden was the first
country to ban smacking so it is cited as the model to follow. In my capacity
as a lawyer in Sweden, researcher on the Swedish anti-smacking law (PhD) and
president of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights (NCHR) for the Protection of
Family Rights in the Nordic countries[4],
I have close-up experiences of the that law. I find that Sweden is the model to
avoid - at all costs.
Parenting vs child
abuse
Here's
why: 1 - society accepts that parenting, by definition, embraces a corrective
role. Sweden, that prides itself in being the first country in the world to abolish
physical punishment - smacking - of children, removed the plea of
"reasonable force" in 1957. Sweden has thereafter taken further steps
to "protect children" from "abuse" and in 1979 the
"Anti-smacking law", which was promulgated in the Parent and guardianship
Code, came into force. Smacking was equated to "child abuse". Several
state organs that gave opinions warned against the law. They invoked the
indoctrination to violence that children meet in films and in the media and
also the administrative violence that children and their parents would be
subjected to because of the totalitarian nature of the law.
Despite the fact that Parliament had been
informed that the law would be sanctioned by the provisions of the Criminal
Code, the information given in the English summary promised that no parents
would be prosecuted because of the law. This was reiterated in similar words to
the international audience in Paris when the law was presented to the world
stating that the law does "not represent an extension of the punishable
area". However, the first prosecution for minor incidents occurred already
in 1978 - prior to the passing of the law. Swedish statistics published in
February 2007 show that there has been a 14% increase in child abuse[5]
despite the smacking ban, with 11 000 reports of "child abuse" per
year in Sweden. There are claims that "only" ten percent are
prosecuted.[6] Yet, the
Swedish and New Zealand lobbies and their experts and statisticians claim that
the Swedish smacking ban is extremely successful, and that polls show that only
a minor percent of Swedish parents smack their children.
With 11 000 reports of "child abuse"
per year and "only" ten percent being prosecuted there seemed to be a
need for more stringent laws to guarantee the success of the Swedish smacking
ban. So, in 1998 - 2000 the law "gross disturbance of the peace" -
which initially was drafted to protect battered women - came to include child
smacking. Since then parents are being prosecuted for "gross disturbance
of the peace" and their children are taken into compulsory care. The
difference between being prosecuted for "child abuse" and "gross
disturbance of the peace" is that in the former one had to present times
and dates, but in the latter the charges do not have to be substantiated.
Smacking = child
abuse?
2 - In my capacity as legal practitioner in
Sweden[7],
researcher and president of the "Nordic Committee for Human Rights (NCHR)
for the Protection of Family Rights in the Nordic countries", I have seen
the effects of the anti-smacking law on children and their families. Because of
my first-hand knowledge of the Swedish system, I was approached by two persons
from separate parts of NZ who had found the NCHR's web site and I have now been
engaged in the Section 59 debate for the past two years. I made both a written
and an oral submission to the Section 59 Select Committee. My oral submission
was accompanied by 32 case summaries in English and 30 photocopies of verdicts,
summary judgements and newspaper or other articles in Swedish.
Discipline in Sweden has become a word that is
despised and equated with child abuse. It is a very extremist view and one that
should be examined carefully. In his book "Basic theory of
Psychoanalysis"[8]
Robert Waelder wrote the following:
"... a psychoanalytic approach to
upbringing does not mean that children should get what they desire when they
desire something; instead it demands an attempt to find a suitable balance
between satisfaction and disappointment in every situation ... we have to find
the optimal combination of two equally important but partly opposite
ingredients for a healthy development, namely, love and discipline; to love
without spoiling and to discipline without injuring."
In his paper "Combining Love and Limits in
Authoritative Parenting: A Conditional Sequence Model of Disciplinary
Responses"[9] published in
2001, Dr. Bob Larzelere finds that several research programs have shown that
optimal parenting combines love and limits - not pitting both ingredients
against each other.
In May 2006, former UN Secretary General, Kofi
Annan, who is married to a Swedish woman, thus his interest to
promote the Swedish agenda, issued directives that every country in the
world should impose anti-smacking laws. Kofi Annan, also known for his
non-intervention in the Rwandan massacre, has completely ignored the gross
injustices being perpetrated because of the Swedish anti-smacking law; that
thousands of families have been - and are being - destroyed by unnecessary state
interventions and that parents are afraid to correct their children.[10]
To implement his directives, Kofi Annan appointed the Portuguese professor, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, to lobby all governments in the world "to
offer children the same protection under the law that adults have". This
is a most interesting phrase, because UNCROC in its preamble stipulates for the
protection of children as follows: "the child, by reason of his
physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including
appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth". Sweden fails
grossly to meet up to that requirement for ca 30 000 unborn children per year. The New Zealand figures are 18
000.
The ideological "child protection"
advocates claim that they are acting in the child's best interest when they
call for a total ban on smacking and heavy penalties for smacking parents.
However, they fail to realise that they are the very ones who are exposing
children to severe abuse. Normally, the vast majority of parents talk to their
children and try to make them comply. A smack is usually administered when
words and admonition have failed to have the desired effect. So, if a child is
smacked for something that he/she did or failed to do, subjecting the parents
to police investigations and subsequent social investigations and separating
the child from its parents will be double punishment for the child. This will
not only expose the child to severe trauma but also damage the child's
relations to its parents - maybe permanently. So, those Kiwis (MPs) must be
crazy!
Smacking: Those Kiwis must be crazy!
By Ruby Harrold-Claesson
The Empresses' new
clothes or Smacking: Those Kiwis must be crazy!
The
Empresses' new clothes or Smacking: Those Kiwis must be crazy!
The
Empresses' new clothes or Smacking: Those Kiwis must be crazy!
[1] Larzelere's parting comments http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0705/S00223.htm
[2] Was the Lester amendment
really necessary? By Kay Ma. Dissertation 2005.
[3] Hans Temrin "Styvföräldrar misshandlar oftare barn till döds", DN May 12, 2006
[4] Kathryn Rich claimed that I am "a fruit loop". See Prof Jacob Sundberg's letter to Kathryn Rich http://familyintegrity.blogspot.com/2007/05/letter-to-kathryn-rich-from-jacob-wf.html and his letter to Deborah Coddington, http://www.nkmr.org/english/coddington_letter.htm
[5]
14% Increase in Child Abuse despite Swedish Smacking Ban,
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0702/S00378.htm
[6] "Anti-smack campaign fails to pack a punch" quotation, Christian Diesen. Note in the article that Diesen wants more parents to be prosecuted.
[7] I am not a member of the Swedish Bar Association, a fact that Sue Bradford and her "child protection" lobby, unknowledgeable of the Swedish system, tried to make a big affair of in their attempts to discredit me because of my criticism of the Swedish anti-smacking law. Cf Note 4 supra.
[8] Waelder, R IUP, New York, 1964
[9] http://parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Larzelere/Larzelere.html
[10] European Report: Mummy and
Daddy spare rod - or go to court http://www.corpun.com/eud00002.htm