Cover Story
Hands off
by Joanne Black
MPs are about to decide whether parents should lose their legal right to physically discipline their children. Some Christians say that it will remove parental authority. As the crucial vote nears, pressure is increasing to ensure ordinary New Zealanders are not criminalised.
Newspaper columnist Linley Boniface braced herself for the response when she listed in print all the ways in which she had deliberately hurt or roughly treated her children. “I was very nervous about publishing it. In fact I considered pulling it at the last moment because I thought it might get a very negative reaction and I knew I was putting myself on the line,” Boniface says.
Published in the Dominion Post about a year ago, the column began with a list of the things she had done to her young son and daughter. It included smacking them, squeezing their hands very hard, shouting at them, pushing and shoving them and throwing things at them. She wrote it, and had the nerve to publish it, only because she was convinced other parents did the same but did not talk about it.
The overwhelmingly supportive reaction backed her view. “I was mobbed in the school playground by relieved mothersand people stopped me on the street. I heard that the column was sent all around the country and to people’s friends and relatives overseas – I had people quoting it to me six months afterwards, not knowing I’d written it. I’ve never written anything that’s had as much life of its own.”
Since writing it, Boniface has smacked her children less frequently. “It was a relief to find out that other people did it, and to talk about other ways of disciplining kids. If people were more honest about what they did to their kids, we might be able to have a discussion about what else could be done.”
Boniface supports the member’s bill sponsored by Green MP Sue Bradford, who says a child’s right to be free from violence is more important than a parent’s right to smack. If passed by Parliament, her bill will repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which allows parents to use force on a child if the force is for “correction” and is “reasonable in the circumstances”.
Without Section 59, tens of thousands of parents like Boniface potentially risk being charged with assault if they manhandle their children, even lightly. Potentially, they could expose themselves to an assault charge by smacking their child on the bottom, or by picking up the child and carrying it to a room for “time out”.
Bradford says that is certainly not what she intends her bill to do, and supporters of her measure say that such scenarios are ludicrous because police simply would not charge someone for mildly physically admonishing their child.
“It’s hard to see why the anti-repeal people keep raising this as a possibility,” says EPOCH (End Physical Punishment of Children) spokeswoman Marie Russell. “They almost seem to be suggesting that for every complaint about someone smacking their child, the police will be there charging them, the courts will hear the case and the parents will be locked away, or something. It just seems very unrealistic to me that anything like that would happen.
“For one thing, the police don’t seem to have resources to deal with what they have to do at the moment. When there are minor assaults between adults they are almost never even called to the attention of the police. It is only when someone is really concerned, and I think it will happen with children, too, that they will be phoning the police saying, ‘Look, I’m worried about someone hitting their kid.’”
But even moderates on the issue, including National MP Chester Borrows, who has sat on the select committee that has been hearing submissions on the bill for months and whose job it is to report back to his fellow National MPs, believe there is a small but genuine risk of people being charged for minor transgressions.
“I don’t believe a lot of parents are going to be charged [if the bill is passed], nor will a lot of kids be taken off their parents, but I have seen agencies get used as pawns in custodial battles, and their hand gets forced, so they end up by saying, ‘Let the court decide’, which means they lay charges,” says the Wanganui MP, who was a police officer for 24 years before entering Parliament at the last election.
Family Integrity national director Craig Smith, whose group is lobbying hard against the bill, says there is no question that ordinary parental behaviour will be assault under the new law, and the only question is whether courts will vigorously enforce it. He also foresees the measure being used vindictively.
“We’ve seen similar things happen when parents split up and mum has custody and some dads try to think of ways to be vindictive. He’ll get ERO or the Ministry of Education and say, ‘My ex is homeschooling the kids and doing a hash job of it and you need to check this out’, so the ministry and ERO are obliged to check it out. I’ve talked to far too many mums who’ve been in that position and vindictive guys will use the authorities to hassle them.”
Borrows says that if Bradford intends the new law only to be used a certain way, then it is Parliament’s job to make that clear when the bill comes back to the House next month.
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