On the way back from their summer holidays in a car were two parents, and their two girls, one of whom started to get carsick and vomited.
It ended in the father slapping the 10-year old but it had started with his angrily telling her that she was “useless” and threatening to leave her on the roadside.
The father ended up going to trial for causing injuries in the context of domestic violence, which went all the way up to the Supreme Court before being dismissed.
It is worth noting that it was not the first time he had slapped her across the face: one afternoon in November a year earlier, he was with his two daughters at home (Alcobendas in Madrid). He told the oldest, who was in her underwear, to get dressed to sit and eat, and she refused.
Instead she stomped off to her room with her father in hot pursuit, It ended in his slapping her.
On the first occasion she got a split lip, which had to have a stitch. Because it had been registered in a Centro de Salud, he ended up in court, sentenced to ten months in prison, but receiving a suspended sentence that would last three years.
This second time, however, there were no “accredited” injuries. A few days after it happened, an investigative court barred him from coming within 200 metres of his daughters, and a criminal court later convicted and sentenced him to another ten months in prison. This was in 2021.
He appealed before the Supreme Court; among his arguments was an interpretation of the Constitution and the claim that, holding parental authority, the slap was not aimed at “impairing the physical or moral integrity of the minor, with no injury whatsoever.”
The Supreme Court’s rulings stated: “the so-called, right of correction can be defined as an educational power of guidance and containment, inherent to the parental role, the content of which is limited by the best interests of the minor, their dignity, and the prohibition of actions that prove harmful to their physical or psychological integrity.”
However, the magistrates acknowledged that there are “vague limits” in that, “parent-child relationship,” and “conflicts” between criminal norms and the function of raising children. It was already established in the court’s case-law that if the physical aggression did not require medical or surgical treatment, or psychological impairment, it could be considered a “moderate and proportional right of correction” in the face of potential defiance of the “obedience of children toward their parents.”
“Only in this way can parents act, within limits, to correct the inappropriate behaviour of their children,” explains the ruling, signed at the beginning of October. “If we were to consider the right of correction suppressed, and under its protection certain parental actions such as giving a light smack or grounding children for a weekend, these acts could constitute criminal offences such as mistreatment or unlawful detention.
(News: Alcombenda, Madrid)
Keywords: Slapping a Child, Supreme Court, Ruling, Limits, Absolved, Daughter, 10-Year Old
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