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Opinion piece by
Ruby
Harrold-Claesson
11 August 07
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 So, the fact that Sweden repealed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.
UN
and Unicef Directives
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!
Ruby
Harrold-Claesson, Lawyer, President of the NCHR/NKMR.
If you
would like to comment on this issue please click
>>>
[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
[9]
http://parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Larzelere/Larzelere.html
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