On the heels of the Ray Rice scandal, the National Football League has been rocked by yet another controversy - this time involving the winner of the 2012 NFL MVP Award. Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson beat his 4-year-old son with a tree branch - or “switch” as it is commonly known - resulting in injuries to the child’s back, buttocks, ankles, legs and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the child’s hands.
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| On the heels of the Ray Rice scandal the National Football League has been rocked by yet another controversy. | |
| This time involving the winner of the 2012 NFL MVP award, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, who beat his four-year-old son with a tree branch or switch, as it is commonly known, resulting in injuries to the child's back, buttocks, ankles, legs, and scrotum, along with defensive wounds to the child's hands. | |
| Before we get to the details about this absolutely horrifying story, I want to revisit the supposedly remarkable monologue of CBS sports announcer James Brown in discussing the Ray Rice domestic violence situation. | |
| And it starts with how we view women. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| For instance, when a guy says, you throw the ball like a girl, or you're a little sissy, it reflects an attitude that devalues women, and attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion. | |
| Yeah, James, language is important and it reflects an attitude that devalues and attitudes which will eventually manifest in some fashion. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, let's remember that. | |
| I think it's very important. | |
| According to police reports, the four-year-old victim told authorities that Daddy Peterson hit me on my face and put leaves in his mouth when he was being hit with the switch while his pants were down. | |
| He stuffed leaves in his helpless child's mouth and beat him with a stick. | |
| The child also reported that there are lots of belts in Daddy's closet. | |
| The Daddy likes belts and switches and has a whooping room. | |
| Concern was also expressed that Daddy would hurt him further if he reported the assault. | |
| When questioned by police, Peterson admitted that he administered two different whoopings to his son during the visit to Texas, with the other being a punishment for the four-year-old scratching the face of a five-year-old. | |
| Because, you see, violence is wrong, of course. | |
| I wonder where the child may have learned that violence was an acceptable way of resolving conflicts. | |
| Peterson was very relaxed and calm when describing the incident to the police, appearing to believe he had done nothing wrong, reiterating how much he cared about his son, and claiming that he only used whoopings or spankings as a last resort to Our language is important. | |
| Peterson later told police that the marks on his son's buttocks were similar to the marks any of his other children get when he spanks them with a switch. | |
| Spanks? | |
| If Ray Rice did this to his fiancée, it would rightly be called assault. | |
| And an adult isn't completely dependent and has infinitely greater capacity to leave and remove himself or herself from the situation. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| It's not spanking. | |
| It's not popping. | |
| It's not whooping. | |
| It doesn't matter what fancy cute words you call it. | |
| It's assault. | |
| It's the abuse of a completely helpless and dependent child by somebody six times their size. | |
| It's disgusting, immoral, and downright evil. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| When Peterson was asked how he felt about the incident, he said, To be honest with you, I feel very confident with my actions because I know my intent. | |
| He also described the incident as a normal whooping in regards to the whelps, I think he means welts, on the child's buttocks, but that he felt bad when he saw the injuries on the child's legs. | |
| Peterson estimated he swatted his son... | |
| Ten to fifteen times, but he's not sure, because he doesn't ever count how many pops I give my kids. | |
| Pops. | |
| Is what Ray Rice did to Janae Palmer a pop, too? | |
| If we call it snuggle-punched, does it make it any less vicious and vile? | |
| Our language is important. | |
| Peterson has at least five children out of wedlock. | |
| And could have as many as seven, according to one of his many ex-girlfriends. | |
| Peterson reiterated again how much he loves all his kids, and that he only whoops them because he wants them to do right. | |
| So love involves assault, and to do right by somebody involves beating the hell out of them. | |
| Yeah, that sure sounds healthy. | |
| Peterson did say he would reconsider using switches in the future, but that he would never, quote, eliminate whooping my kids because I know how being spanked has helped me in my life. | |
| Yeah, it helped him become an irresponsible, out-of-wedlock-having, child-abusing monster who was capable of running fast and holding onto a ball to cross a line. | |
| Yay, spanking! | |
| And, by the way, it's not spanking or whooping. | |
| It's assault. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| Peterson's lawyer added, Adrian is a loving father who used his judgment as a parent to discipline his son. | |
| He used the same kind of discipline with his child that he experienced as a child growing up in East Texas. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| It's important to remember that Adrian never intended to harm his son and deeply regrets the unintentional injury. | |
| Unintentional. | |
| But the entire stated purpose of spanking is to cause pain on the child, and thus supposedly conditioned a child to not reproduce whatever behavior prompted the spanking. | |
| But studies have shown it to be completely ineffective. | |
| In that children often misbehave again within 10 minutes of being spanked. | |
| But for the love of all that is wholly in the world, unintentional injury? | |
| Didn't mean to harm his son? | |
| Yeah, okay, beat another child with a giant stick on bare skin, stuff leaves in their mouth, and then tell me about unintentional injuries. | |
| You'd be going to prison. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| In Texas, Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Phil Grant said, Reasonable discipline is a defense to a charge of injury to a child. | |
| Quote, Obviously parents are entitled to discipline their children as they see fit, except for when that discipline exceeds what the community would say is reasonable. | |
| Oh, oh, oh, right, right, right. | |
| So the community decides. | |
| What if the community decides that stoning homosexuals in the town square is reasonable? | |
| Does that make it okay, too? | |
| What about genitally mutilating women? | |
| If the community thinks that it's perfectly fine, can we just go to town inflicting abuse after abuse? | |
| You know, in the South, communities once thought that slavery was okay, too. | |
| So I guess that was fine. | |
| And so a grand jury, having indicted this case, looked at the injuries that were inflicted upon this child and determined that the discipline was not reasonable. | |
| Well, that's great. | |
| Oh, what a relief. | |
| The community has spoken, so all is right with the world. | |
| Okay, not the world if you happen to be a four-year-old with leaves stuffed into his mouth having your nutsack cracked open with a switch. | |
| Okay, so, hang on a sec. | |
| Let's try to figure something out. | |
| So, this incident happened in May. | |
| Yes, let's see. | |
| June, July, August, September. | |
| Wow! | |
| That... | |
| When you think about it, that's actually quite a long time to figure out if beating the shit out of your child is reasonable. | |
| What if Peterson did the same thing to his girlfriend? | |
| Would it take months and months for him to be arrested? | |
| Or would they cuff him on the spot? | |
| Long-time listeners to Freedom in Radio know that I have frequently spoken about the scientific consensus on the horrific dangers of spanking, aka abusing, your children. | |
| Spanking alters the child's developing brain and has been proven to lower the child's cognitive ability, to shrink gray matter, to increase aggression, to destroy the parent-child bond, to increase children's likelihood of engaging in risky sex, transmitting sexually transmitted diseases. | |
| It increases delinquency, the likelihood of engaging in criminal activities, future drug use, cigarette smoking, and a litany of further mental health and social issues. | |
| I strongly encourage you. | |
| Look, again, if you're skeptical, I understand this is a human tradition that has gone back since there were human beings. | |
| But so what? | |
| We've changed other things in the past. | |
| I really strongly encourage you to check out a presentation called The Facts About Spanking. | |
| And the many interviews I've done with the leading researchers and experts in this field of study Dr. | |
| Elizabeth Gershoff, who has been studying corporal punishment for 15 years, has said that there's no study that I've ever done that's found a positive consequence of spanking. | |
| Not to mention that hitting a helpless, dependent, and defenseless child is completely immoral and evil. | |
| But wouldn't it be productive if this collective outrage, as my colleagues have said, could be channeled to truly hear and address the long-suffering cries for help by so many... | |
| Helpless and dependent children. | |
| And as they said, do something about it, like an ongoing discussion of the dangers of hitting your children, including outright and vociferous moral condemnation of anybody who practices, condones, or doesn't speak out about and against this disgusting and barbaric practice. | |
| Because our silence is deafening and deadly. | |
| I'm waiting with bated breath for James Brown's monologue and the overwhelming public outcry against hitting children. | |
| Ultimately, violence in the world, all across the world, from war to prisons to spousal abuse, starts with how we view and treat our children. | |
| Our language is important. | |
| For instance, when somebody says, spanking, discipline, pop or swat, to describe child abuse, it reflects an attitude that devalues children. | |
| And attitudes will eventually manifest in some fashion. | |
| Like the fact that 90-95% of parents in the United States still assault their children, damaging their brains and priming them for a future of horrific mental health and social problems. | |
| People who hit their children say, they were hit and they turned out fine. | |
| Well, it turned them into child abusers. | |
| And by any reasonable definition, that is not fine. |