By
Ruby Harrold-Claesson,
Attorney-at-law
The
EPOCH (End Physical Punishment of Children) Bulletin dated July 2000 states:
"In
the following nine European countries there are explicit bans on corporal
punishment by parents and all other carers: Austria (1989), Croatia 1999),
Cyprus (1994), Denmark (1997), Finland (1993), Germany (2000), Latvia (1998),
Norway (1987), Sweden (1979). In
addition, in January 2000 a judgment of Israel's Supreme Court effectively
banned all corporal punishment, and in 1996 Italy's Supreme Court in Rome
declared all corporal punishment to be unlawful."
However,
not all is as it might first appear. Back in 1991, EPOCH claimed that Denmark
had already passed a law against smacking. In reality, however, Denmark did
not pass such a law until 1997. And while EPOCH asserts that Finland passed
its anti-smacking law in 1993, the truth is that Finland passed its
anti-smacking law in 1984. Many other examples of inaccuracies in EPOCH's
literature could be cited which give rise to the question: Can we trust the
claims made by EPOCH? and What are their motives? ¹)
I
have previously written several articles about the Swedish law of 1979. My
experience of cases where parents have used physical punishment of their
disobedient, unruly and even potentially delinquent children, aided and
abetted by their day-care givers, school teachers, social workers and the law
enforcing authorities to report their parents to the police if they should
dare lay hand on them, is that the law is a disaster for children and their
families, but a great success for the system. It gives the social workers,
police and prosecutors easy work. The repressive authorities no longer seek to
fight crime in the society - the family is the main prey.
Consider
the following facts:
•
The Swedish law on the abolition of the physical punishment of children has
resulted in hundreds of normal parents being harassed by the police and social
authorities, prosecuted, sentenced and criminalised, because they have smacked
their children for bad behaviour.
•
The claim made by EPOCH (End Physical Punishment of Children) that only one
Swedish parent has been prosecuted for smacking a child since 1979 is far from
the truth. In reality, there have been hundreds of cases, but they are
difficult to trace because they appear alongside cases of assault and battery.
•
While having the appearance of being altruistic and humanitarian, the 1979 law
has led to unwarranted interference in private and family life, and has caused
serious damage to the relationship between parents and their children, to the
detriment of the family.
•
Before the Bill abolishing the physical punishment of children was presented
to the Swedish Parliament, several leading lawyers expressed strong
misgivings. Their
fears that the law would lead to prosecutions of parents who employed mild
physical sanctions, while doing nothing to reduce the number of cases of
genuine child abuse, have materialised.
•
Parents belonging to ethnic minorities and parents with strong religious
convictions, in particular, have been victimised under the 1979 law.
•
The social authorities and the courts enforce the law concerning the child's
right not to be subjected to physical punishment, irrespective of what the
child has done. Many Swedish parents are therefore afraid of their children
and dare not correct them for fear of being reported to the police, indicted
and fined or sent to prison.
•
The law against physical punishment does more damage to children than a smack
from a mother or father. When the authorities intervene in the life of a
well-functioning family, its life is destroyed. There is nothing that can mend
the resulting hurt, pain and bitterness, and the children are the losers.
•
When children are removed from their supposedly 'abusive' parents and taken
into care, they suffer the torture of forced separation from parents, brothers
and sisters, and other relatives and friends. They are also exposed to the
risk of real abuse. Such children are frequently subjected to physical,
mental, and even sexual abuse, but social workers and the police seldom listen
to the complaints of children in care. (cf The Waterhouse Report).
•
The 1979 law has caused incalculable damage to countless families where
allegations have been made and investigations carried out, even where the
charges have been dropped at an early stage.
•
The law has given rise to cases where children have accused their own parents
of ill-treatment, without appreciating the consequences of their actions. The
public prosecutor then takes over the case and may pursue it even where the
parents deny any abuse and where children withdraw their accusations. In this
way, the legislation has been directly responsible, not only for the
destroying relationships between parents and children, but also for the
break-up of many marriages and families.
The
damage caused by this legislation is so serious that it should not be followed
by any civilised country. Rather, Sweden needs the help of other nations to
have this destructive legislation repealed.
BACKGROUND
In
July 1979 the Swedish parliament passed legislation banning physical
punishment of children. This
law was made in commemoration of the United Nations Year of the Child. When
the law was presented to the international arena the spokesman for the Swedish
government wrote:
"This
provision does not represent an extension of the punishable area. It
is still the provisions of the Criminal Code which will decide whether an
action shall be subject to penalty or not."
To the Swedish population the law was presented as a
"recommendation" and placed in the Parents and Guardianship Code,
not in the Penal Code. The Standing Law Committee made it quit clear to the
Parliament that if the parents' rights to use physical punishment were
abolished by law, the laws of the Penal Code were the only laws that would be
applicable.
Following
the passing of the law, a group of parents submitted a complaint to the
European Commission for Human Rights in 1979 (Application 8811/79). The
European Commission declared the parents' complaint inadmissible in 1985 since
the Swedish government had claimed that the law was a lex
imperfecta and that no parent would ever be charged under the law.
My
reaction to this is that unfinished laws have no place in civilized democratic
societies and one would have expected a similar response from the European
Commission. The Swedish government also omitted to inform the European
Commission that a teacher in Gällivare ²), in the north of Sweden, was being
prosecuted for having spanked his 12-year old son's bottom. In this case - and
in all similar cases - the courts have shown that they follow the desires of
the Swedish legislator, which is to punish parents who physically punish their
children, no matter what the child has done and no matter how slight the
punishment to the child might have been.
Unfortunately,
the European Commission failed to examine the Gällivare case, which was the
only one that made news headlines internationally. Since then hundreds, may be
thousands of parents have been prosecuted in Sweden, and their children have
been removed from their care and placed in foster homes, causing severe trauma
to the children and their parents. The parents and children who have first
hand knowledge of the law know therefore that it is not a recommendation, but
a harsh law that breaks up their families.
Recent
investigations (SOU 2001:18 'Children and abuse') show that of a population of
2000 university students 300 admitted to having been physically punished as
children. Evidence on Swedish trends indicates sharply increasing rates of
physical child abuse, at least in criminal records of assaults by relatives
against children under the age of 7. This frequency increased from 99 in 1981
to 583 in 1994, a 489% increase.
Other
countries with smacking bans
Finland
-
The first country to follow
Sweden
's
example was
Finland
.
Finland passed its
anti-smacking law in 1984 and not in 1993 as EPOCH claims - i.e 5 years after
the Swedish law was passed. So far there is one famous case where the Supreme
Court found a step-father guilty of minor/slight abuse and he was fined -
under that law - for pulling his step-daughter's hair and 'flicking' his
finger in face.
Norway
- the second
country to follow was little-brother Norway in1987 - is eight years after
Sweden. From my research I have found that the Norwegian anti-smacking law has
been invoked in one case where a child had been severely neglected, but the
parent had not hit the child.
Austria
- passed a
child protection law in 1989. According to information I received from the
Austrian Embassy in Stockholm, when I was preparing a paper a few years ago,
the law does not explicitly forbid parents to smack their children. Instead
the law makes neglect to seek hospital assistance for a sick child a
punishable offence.
Denmark
- passed its
anti-smacking law in 1997 in a deal struck between the government and the
radical opposition. According to information I have received from the Danish
civilians - and judging from my own observations - the law is a paper product.
True, it was invoked in a recent case where a small boy was ill-treated to
death by his step father. However, with or without that law, the stepfather
would have been charged with manslaughter or murder.
With
regard to Cyprus, Croatia,
Latvia and Germany,
which according to EPOCH's claims, passed anti-smacking laws in 1994, 1998,
1999 and 2000 respectively, information is hard to come by. As to EPOCH's
claims that in 1996 Italy's Supreme
Court in Rome declared all corporal punishment to be unlawful", I would
like to point out that Italy, like France, Sweden and the majority of European
countries, do not have a common law system i.e. judge or court made laws.
Rather, all laws are codified and emanate from Parliament. The same goes for
EPOCH's claims that "in January 2000 a judgment of Israel's
Supreme Court effectively banned all corporal punishment".
The
Swedish government boasts about the success of the law. Yet we keep reading
headlines like the following: "Child abuse is increasing. Many beaten
children call the BRIS (Children's rights in the society) help line". (Gothenburg
Post, 26 March, 1999); "Alarming increase of deadly child abuse"
(The Swedish Daily 26 October,
1996; "Increased violence against children in Sweden - Twenty years after
the law against smacking many children are still being ill-treated" (Gothenburg
Post 25 April, 1999)).
The
results or the Swedish smacking ban have made themselves felt in all kinds of
ways. Swedish
youths are well-known in continental Europe for their unruly behaviour. In the
1980's and 1990's, the Swedish embassies and consulates of the ski-resort
countries of Europe sent letters to the Swedish Foreign Office to urge High
School principals to stop their pupils from going ski-ing during their
February sports week.
Newspapers
continue to carry articles reporting on declining standards among young
people. The following headline which appeared in Aftonbladet,
the social democratic tabloid, is not untypical: "Many teenage girls in
fights. The police: 'They are just as bad as the boys'" (17 May, 2000).
However, the media dare not demand a return to discipline and common values.
There
are 177 countries in the world. Only four of them have confirmed anti-smacking
laws - Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Their populations are relatively
small. The population of Sweden (8 million inhabitants) is inferior to that of
London (10 million inhabitants). Only a tiny fraction of the world's
population has forbidden parental physical discipline of children. The Swedish
anti-smacking lobbyists have tried to market their law all over the world, but
the results are obviously quite meager. Common sense has prevailed.
Notes
¹)
Lynette Burrows gives us some answers in her article "How to Control
Adults by means of Children's Rights".