UK case: Slapping kids part of Indian culture?
Thursday, 11/06/2015
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
THE JUDGE SAID PROPER ALLOWANCE HAD TO BE MADE FOR WHAT IS A DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXT IN COMMUNITIES WHERE KIDS WERE SLAPPED FOR MISCHIEF
LONDON: A high court judge has irked many by ruling in a case involving an Indian family that allowance should be made for “cultural context” while investigating allegations that children had been physically abused by parents.
Justice Pauffley said that the police and social workers tasked with implementing Britain’s stringent chid protection laws should consider the cultural background of immigrants who had recently arrived in the country. Under the laws parents hitting children can be jailed for up to five years.
Sitting in the Family Division of the high court, she said that within “many communities newly arrived” in the UK, children were “slapped and hit” for misbehaviour in a way which “at first excites the interest of child protection professionals”. Proper allowance had to be made for “what is almost certainly a different cultural context”, she said, infuriating child protection groups, such as the National Society for the Preventing Cruelty to Children.
The group said that children needed to be protected from being physically abused by parents irrespective of “cultural sensitivities”.
In the case, an 8-year-old boy born to unnamed Indian parents had complained his father had physically assaulted him with a belt. The judge said the man denied striking his son “with a belt or otherwise”. Asked to describe what he meant by a “slap or a tap” the father said, “This was not to slap badly but to keep him disciplined.” The judge concluded that he had not suffered “physical abuse”.
The boy’s parents met and married in India in 2005, travelling to England on a six-month visa. They decided not to return when the visas expired and became “overstayers”, the court was told.
In 2013 the woman returned to India, and flew back to England 15 months later and claimed asylum. The man has launched proceedings for return of their son to his care after he had been arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife and told to stay away from her and the little boy.
