Anti-Abuse Group Berates Paddling Bill

An advocacy group against child abuse Thursday called state Assemblyman Mickey Conroy’s controversial bill to allow the paddling of juvenile offenders “ridiculous” and “archaic.”

Brandishing a wooden racket in one hand and a leather belt in the other, Sally Kanarek, director of Parent Help USA, said at a press conference here that using corporal punishment to deter juvenile crime would only increase the violence in society.

“We know that corporal punishment doesn’t work. The only thing it does is make an angry child angrier,” Kanarek said. “A child maintains that anger for many, many years and then acts it out as time goes on.”

A spokesman for Conroy (R-Orange) said in response that the group’s arguments are outdated and that youth crime has increased since corporal punishment was eliminated in California schools in 1986.

“That violence-begets-violence [argument] has been disproved by history,” said Pat Joyce, an aide to the assemblyman. “It’s just false. There is more violence in 1996 than there was in 1986” when a bill was approved outlawing corporal punishment in the schools.

The Assembly Public Safety Committee approved Conroy’s measure Tuesday.

The bill, which would allow a judge to order a parent or bailiff to paddle juveniles up to 10 times with a half-inch-thick wooden paddle, is expected to reach the Assembly floor for a vote in the next few months.

“This is an option the judge can use in addition to probation or community service,” Joyce said, adding that the measure provides that the child wear normal attire during a paddling. “The punishment will not be mandated by law.”

The measure drew widespread attention when Conroy introduced it in 1994 as a way to stymie the increase of graffiti in California, which costs the state $300 million annually in cleanup costs.

Conroy cited polls taken in response to the 1994 caning of a U.S. teenager in Singapore for spray-painting cars showed overwhelming support of the idea.

“It’s a bad idea,” said Joseph C. La Mon, an Anaheim psychotherapist and a Parent Help volunteer.

In most cases where a child commits crimes, La Mon said, “the child has low self-esteem. When a child acts out, it is usually because he was unable to express his feelings verbally. He becomes a spray-painter, for instance.”

La Mon said paddling is a humiliating experience, which erodes one’s self opinion even further. “It’s archaic, it’s ridiculous.”

Beatriz Quintero, 26, who was abused as a child both in a school and in her home, said the use of force as a means of punishment destroyed her childhood.

“I thought getting beaten was normal because my father did it at home, and then it was allowed at school,” she said.

“Even though I don’t have any scars on the outside, I still have scars on the inside,” she said.

Kanarek, who founded Parent Help USA in 1986, said parenting education could have helped Quintero’s family, and that it would be a better solution than the type of physical disciplining Conroy is proposing.

“If you heard a child speak a vulgarity, would you speak to a child with vulgarity?” asked Kanarek. “If the state sanctions the use of violence by parents, then more parents are going to start using violence.”