Practice Areas

Child Beating

We have all heard about situations where a parent seriously beats and abuses his/her child, sometimes even to the point of death. Obviously these are horrendous crimes. But what about situations where a parent is disciplining a child, and the child suffers a minor injury. Should such an incident be punished as a crime?

Recently I handled a case where the father disciplined his daughter by hitting her with a belt on her legs, causing a bruise. No blood, no broken skin. The girl, 10 years old and with a history of throwing temper tantrums, was throwing water on the floor and refused to stop when asked by her nanny. The nanny called the mother, who called the father, who had to come home and discipline his daughter. The next day, the girl went to school and the teacher saw the bruise. The police are called, and the father is subsequently arrested. Not only is he arrested, but a restraining order is issued which requires that he can no longer live in the family home, and cannot even talk to or visit with his daughter. When we go to court for his arraignment, the criminal judge refuses to even consider amending the restraining order because the deputy district attorney, a young woman with no children, thinks this man is a monster.

Luckily, child abuse cases are also handled through the child dependency courts, where there are experts available to assist the family in working out such problems. In my case the dependency court referee issued a different restraining order allowing monitored visits by a neutral party, and some weeks later rescinded the separation order so the father could return home. We resolved the criminal case without jail time, along with anger management and parent counseling sessions, but another deputy district attorney, this time a young man, objected mightily to the father coming home. Why? Because he hit his daughter, that's why. Luckily, the judge had more sense and amended the criminal restraining order to allow the father to return home in accordance with the child dependency court order.

Child beating cases can be very tricky. Parents are allowed to "reasonably" discipline a child, and may administer "reasonable" punishment, including the infliction of "reasonable" corporal punishment. So in California it is still lawful for a parent to hit his child, as long as the punishment was not excessive under the circumstances. But if you end up with the kind of prosecutors we had on this case, you can be in big trouble. Their idea of reasonable can be a lot different than a normal parent who has to deal with the difficulties of a recalcitrant child. And if you have a child who seriously misbehaves, gets hit, and then tells his teacher or nurse that mommy or daddy hit him, expect the police to be knocking on your door, and you'll end up living in a hotel somewhere. So physically disciplining your child is a risky proposition, at best.