Getting away with battering a child

[MrsMarzetti]

Would link but don't know how. I have just read in the DM about a father battering his 15 year old daughter outside of her school with a metal pole. No jail time ! What on earth is going on in our country. It seems females can battered, raped or murdered and our courts just turn the other cheek. If men aren't jailed for such crimes surely it sends the message that their behaviour is acceptable?

I should clarify that beatings are permitted if they are done as "discipline".

Possibly you're thinking of Quran 4:34 with the bit about "striking" Florissante?

I think you'll find that the modern interpretations have become more moderate, but as with all religions it's true that some will pick, choose and twist bits to suit - something that's often culturally driven, which brings us right back to community

And sadly I've no doubt that some in this horror's community - or at least among his family - will consider him completely justified, especially now he's been given little more than a slap on the wrist

Awful story with no winners.

That poor girl's statement is heartbreaking

@HazelHair but the father won. Men won. Again. He showed that men are allowed to beat women, and Muslim women are allowed to be beaten more than other women, because ‘culture’?

I felt sick when I read this article. The girl and this is a child we are talking about was the victim of long term abuse. In these cases how can anyone be sure that her statements are of her own free will and not borne out of fear or coercion or simply having been brainwashed to believing she is somehow at fault. It is not ok whatever anyone's culture to think that this behaviour is in any way acceptable. The man should have gone to prison and provision made for the care of his wife and children otherwise what message does it send to young women in our country that a man can publicly batter you senseless and get away with it merely because he is your father. I don't want to live in such a place and I fear for my daughters when this can happen.

Yes, absolutely because otherwise there will be even more pressure on victims to remain silent.

I mean if the abuser knows that the victim can get them off lightly who knows what threats or manipulation they (or their family) will use to make their victims comply.

Nothing makes my blood boil more than honour beatings which lead to honour killings. These men are evil bullies. He should 100% have gone to prison for this, absolutely pathetic excuse for a father.

Sadly the culture is within the individuals, not the country they live in. But it's appalling when the judiciary fails to send out a clear message that these are will not be tolerated here in the UK.

Is there any other country with a better record in prosecuting "honour"-based violence than the UK?

*Acts, not are, ffs

Awful. The whole thing is sickening.
Working in school myself, I just hope staff there keep a good eye on her and report anything suspicious.

Of course he should of gone to jail it’s irrelevant he no longer lives with her family

she would have been put under a lot of pressure to say that she didn’t want him to go to jail and maybe she didn’t he is her dad but he carried out a violent attack on his daughter publicly so he would have been doing this behind closed doors too

male violence against females once again treated seriously enough

Shocking.
She had makeup to cover an earlier beating. And he gave her concussion.

The judge should have ignored her plea not to jail him.

Toooldtobesoyoung

Yes, absolutely because otherwise there will be even more pressure on victims to remain silent.

I understand the argument, but it's because once you tell you will be responsible for destroying what little you have left, that keeps children silent.

The current status quo is a no win situation for many children.

As I said I have very mixed feelings, but quite simply lots of parents don't get sent to jail when convicted of violence against their children.

Either way, the child becomes the person who broke up and damaged the family, and is often then sent away or taken away by the state. The outcomes for the child are rarely good.

Often the biggest sentence is actually silently served by the child and the repercussions are never ending, while the parent/s go on to have new lives.

In this case the judge has actually handed some power to the girl.
It does bring it's own problems and risks, but it' all no longer behind closed doors.
It's out there - you want to prove those parenting courses have changed your views - do it with your actions- lay a finger on that girl again and your immediate sentence is automatic. Nothing will save you.

IMO it's all in what charges are brought.

If the parent is charged with common assault and similar as if their victim was an adult, then it's doubly harsh on the victim to say their voice means nothing in the proceedings because they are by law a child without agency, and this is about the interface of their parents culture with UK society.

So in IMO if people believe the child shouldn't be allowed a voice, then they should be lobbying for automatic charges of cruelty to a child – assault and ill treatment, etc, in all parent on child cases. The charge reflects that this is a voiceless child victim, and has different sentencing guidelines and mitigating circumstances that must be taken into account, including other children witnessing it, rather than charges that allow focus on the reasoning or culture of the offender.

Working in school myself, I just hope staff there keep a good eye on her and report anything suspicious

I hope so too, except now they've seen the father freed would they really risk speaking up?

It would be only too easy for the usual enablers to insist "it's been dealt with" and to start issuning the all too predictable claims of harassment and racism, and for the real racists to insist this horror's "to be expected with muslims - and look, nothing's ever done about it"

Very true. I won't stop being on the lookout though. I lived abroad a lot in SE Asia, Africa and elsewhere in Europe before I had my own children. I saw a lot of abuse as you can imagine but it was never seen as 'abuse' and everyone had to mind their own business.
My dad also used to 'punish' us on a regular basis with the slipper. We did used to get bruised backsides from it. Now, I realise it was all about fear and control (lots of PA as well). My mum never did anything about it. Our relationship is strained.

My children are actually half Nigerian and we've had conversations about this with wider family. They are a lovely family who've brought up their own children successfully in this culture and well educated around the issue. When I stayed in Nigeria years ago though I saw some women hitting their maids (usually young girls) and being horrible to them. Likewise parents with their children. It's just accepted but I think it's slowly changing.

Anyone who lives or comes and lives in this country needs to obey the law. If they don't, they should be punished the same as anyone else. No excuses.

This is horrendous. I don’t even understand the reason for no prison sentence

And no, I doubt those poor kids will speak up now. They are more likely to suffer more abuse in some form or another otherwise, we're likely to hear about another honour killing.

It’s not racist to reject the abuse other cultures inflict on their families while they’re living in Britain. The dad says himself he’s adjusting to a different culture. He should adjust himself back in his home country if he finds it so difficult to not beat his child with a metal bar.

This has absolutely nothing to do with racism, it's pure misogyny, and racism is being used to divert attention from misogyny so that men can continue to be abusers.

The exact same thing happened to me when I was a pre-teen/teen, and my (white English) stepfather got away scot-free, while I had male police officer corner me alone in my bedroom without a parent or female chaperone present to tell me off, tell me I was a naughty disobedient little girl, tell me random men my mum picked up and brought home for sex were allowed to do whatever they wanted to me, and tell me if I ever phoned the police again he'd "sling me in a jail cell to teach me a lesson."

There are many MANY personal stories online of men being allowed to abuse their children and the mothers being demonised as anxious, "hysterical" or trying to engage in "parental alienation", even in cases where the father has been charged or convicted of child abuse, the mother is still told if she doesn't let him have visitation, that she'll go to prison. And those are cases where the mother is trying her hardest to protect the child from an ex-husband. Cases where the mother is defending the abusive father are even harder to prosecute as no one is supporting the child at all.

And most of these men are white. White men absolutely get an easier ride when they're accused of child abuse.

It's just a racist dog whistle to pretend this particular man escaped jail because of his race. Do you really think a middle class, educated white man in his exact position would have been locked up and had the key thrown away?

British prisons aren't exactly full of posh white men who hit their kids, are they??

It's the same as the Rotherham scandal, the majority of grooming gangs in the UK are white, they get away scot-free and the press don't say a word about it, the one time it's Asian men the press blow it up into a huge scandal (while ignoring the much bigger scandals of white grooming gangs) because they know that tabloid readers don't actually give a fuck about abused children, they're just salivating at the chance to indulge in a bit of racism.

If this was a case of a white man beating his daughter with an iron bar he most likely would never have been arrested in the first place, and there definitely wouldn't be anguished Daily Mail articles about him escaping justice.

There was a great article today (in DM but available online if you put this vile criminal's name into Google - his name is Hussein Alinzi). The article was written by another Muslim man called Dr Rakib Ehsan and he makes very good arguments about this sentence was so wrong in so many ways. The second villain of the piece imo was the judge Peter Wright KC. What was he thinking of? This ridiculously lenient slap on the wrist will give the green light to other similar misogynistic bullies that they can get away with beating women unconscious. Part of the mitigation of sentence appears to have been that this violent man was his wife's carer! So does that mean he is still in the family home with his daughter and six other children? It beggars belief that he may have been allowed to continue living with his children given the violence to his daughter. Would this have ever been allowed to happen if it was a mainstream community?