Corinne’s Quest
Suite 1805, 719 Princess Street • New Westminster BC Canada V3M 6T9 • 1-604-258-9074 • www.corinnesquest.ca
News Release
For Immediate Release
May 27, 2020
Judge finds spanking parent guilty of assault.
A judge in Lethbridge has ruled a father who spanked his son went too far, and found him guilty of assault.
In a judgement released this week, provincial court Judge Jerry LeGrandeur placed the father on probation. The judge noted that, in holding the six-year-old down as he was spanking him, the father injured his neck, shoulder and back.
“He was,” the judge noted in his reasons for judgement, “only interested in restraint so he could administer the discipline that was intended. He administered whatever force was necessary to constrain him and stop him from struggling to break free and run away.”
Kathy Lynn, chair of Corinne’s Quest which is fighting to have Section 43 – the spanking law — repealed from the criminal code, noted this is precisely why we need to ban all forms of physical punishment of children.
“Parents know it is still legal to spank children but in too many cases they don’t realize they’re in fact causing serious physical and psychological harm.
“The idea that big people are legally able to assault little people is not lost on our children. Children learn all of their social behaviours from their parents. Beating up someone who is smaller than you is one of those behaviours, and it has to stop.”
Lynn and her group believe repealing Section 43 of the Criminal Code will send a signal to parents that they must learn other more effective means of disciplining children than simply giving them a beating.
Kathy Lynn is a parenting speaker and author of three books. In more than 30 years as one of Canada’s leading parenting speakers, she has committed to contributing to the safety of Canada’s children by advocating non-violent means of discipline.