More Brazen Lies from the Perfect Parent Lobby

No Right Turn once again lets the world know he has no regard whatsoever for truth if it gets in the way of a political agenda he supports.

Steel-capped kick ‘over the top’

A Waitara widower kicked his teenage daughter in the backside with steel-capped boots and tweaked her ear when he caught her smoking, the New Plymouth District Court was told.Graeme Taputu, 41, pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of assaulting a child on July 1.

His lawyer, Patrick Mooney, said Taputu’s wife, the mother of their three teenage daughters, had died 18 months ago and Taputu had been struggling to bring them up on his own.

He came home to find his 13-year-old daughter smoking after warning what he would do if he caught her.

“He was endeavouring to discipline his young child and was somewhat aggrieved to find her smoking.”

The girl had not been injured, Mr Mooney said.

This is the behaviour – along with punching children in the face and repeatedly shoving them over – that the child beaters are defending. Under the old law, it would likely never have been prosecuted, due to the defence of “reasonable force for the purposes of correction”. Now it can be. And that is a Good Thing.

Once again, we repeat.

1. No one is defending anyone punching anyone in the face.
2. No one is saying that shoving a child is good behaviour or parenting
3. We are saying that taking a shove to court as assault (on the basis of one witness, out of the blue weeks later) is insane. I’m personally amazed that the yes vote lobby pushes this case having promised us that light smacking wasn’t going to be prosecuted. How can they justify that?
4. No one is defending anyone who abuses their child. We are only defending behaviour that is reasonable in the circumstances, by a parent and for the purposes of correction. By definition, behaviour that is reasonable is not excessive and by definition, abuse can only be excessive force.
5. The law allows reasonable force for purposes other than correction anyway – so I/S is defending it anyway, just not for correction.
6. Under the old law, simply saying you were disciplining your child never gave you a get out of jail free card. In fact, research suggests that 2 out of 3 section 59 cases were convicted.

Here’s a prime example that occurred just before the law change.

“I proceeded to pull down his pants and smack his bottom, and yeah, put him in the shower, cleaned him up, and cleaned up the mess,” he told 20/20.

Three days after his son was returned to his mother, Donselaar was charged with assault. He believes he has been unfairly judged for his actions.

…Donselaar’s jury had trouble deciding his fate and if he had crossed the line, and so did he.

“I might have used a bit of excessive force, I hope I didn’t use excessive force, but I do not believe that I did.”

Police decided Donselaar should stand trial because of extensive bruising to his son’s buttocks.

The bruising shocked his former partner, O’Keefe, who says there were at least two handprints – the handprint outline on his bottom and bruises down his legs.

“They were literally black and blue,” says O’Keefe. “I couldn’t believe the pain he would’ve gone through just to get those.”

Even Donselaar was disturbed by the police photos. He admits causing some of it, but claims the rest of the bruising came from his son falling off his new bike.

So the court convicted, even though no implement was used, and the smack was to the bottom. But the fact was, it was excessive (not reasonable) in the circumstances as evidenced by the extensive bruising.

The “Yes Vote” lobby constantly tells us that the old law allowed children to be beaten with bits of wood, pipes and whips.

What they don’t tell you is that the bit of wood was the size of a ruler, that the “whip” was actually a riding crop and about the same as being spanked with a cane, and that these are almost the only cases on record that got let off.

Plus, what they present as an avalanche of cases thumbing their noses at justice were actually a handful of parents who “got off in court” only to find CYFS on their doorstep the next day. The mother who used the riding crop for example, had her child removed in spite of the jury’s findings.

The fact is that Section 59 helped a very small number of parents. It did not help a far larger number who claimed their abuse was discipline, and even those who used it to avoid a criminal record found themselves simply under the eye of another government institution.

This was only 2 years ago. What does it say about people like Idiot/Savant who are prepared to lie so brazenly about something that happened such a short time ago?

I’ll tell you: Vote No.

Because a “Yes” vote is simply encouraging this sort of despicable behaviour.

And brazen lies are not the basis of good policy.

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