Yvonne Ba­boolal

A video gone vi­ral of a moth­er beat­ing her 12-year-old daugh­ter, which was post­ed on Face­book, was yes­ter­day de­scribed as not be­ing the first of its kind.How­ev­er, the moth­er is now fac­ing vary­ing forms of pub­lic crit­i­cism for the pun­ish­ment she met­ed out to her child."I have seen oth­er par­ents do some­thing sim­i­lar about a year ago," said be­hav­iour­al ther­a­pist Wen­dell de Leon, who is wor­ried it may be­come a trend in T&T.He is not in sup­port of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment of that na­ture.

"Peo­ple are seek­ing to hu­mil­i­ate oth­ers in the pub­lic do­main rather than in the pri­va­cy of their homes. They are us­ing the so­cial net­work as a medi­um of pun­ish­ment."

The six-minute video shows the moth­er ad­min­is­ter­ing some 63 lash­es to her daugh­ter with a belt on most­ly her arms and back while scold­ing her about try­ing to send out an in­de­cent pic­ture of her­self on the In­ter­net. The words of the moth­er are not all com­plete­ly clear, how­ev­er, and some web view­ers thought the girl was be­ing pun­ished for send­ing her un­der­wear to a male friend."This is a nice show," the moth­er says in one seg­ment of the video, look­ing in­to the web cam­era set up in the kitchen.

She said the video was to show peo­ple her daugh­ter was not a big woman, and that she (the moth­er) was the big woman.She paus­es oc­ca­sion­al­ly in the video to call out to most­ly un­seen fam­i­ly mem­bers for cer­tain in­for­ma­tion.In one in­stance, she wants to know how the pic­ture would have been sent and what her daugh­ter post­ed on her Face­book page. "I don't know about these things," the moth­er is heard telling her oth­er chil­dren.

The voice replied that the girl, who had been sent to school, said she ac­tu­al­ly went to the mall that day."What you go­ing to school for?" the moth­er shout­ed, throw­ing more belts on the girl."For book," the sob­bing daugh­ter replied, while try­ing to dodge the ma­jor im­pact of sev­er­al of the blows.The moth­er want­ed in­for­ma­tion about a singer the daugh­ter lis­tens to. "What is the boy name? Justin?"When she found out it was US singer/song­writer Justin Tim­ber­lake, she puts a fresh beat­ing on her daugh­ter.

There is no in­for­ma­tion on when and from where the video was post­ed, who did it and the names of the moth­er and daugh­ter.But up to yes­ter­day, there were 636 shares and 122 com­ments. There were mixed com­ments, some de­scrib­ing it as abuse and oth­ers say­ing the girl "looked for that".Sev­er­al peo­ple the T&T Guardian spoke to had sim­i­lar re­spons­es.Asked if he thought it was abuse, de Leon said the aim of pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing should be to change un­de­sir­able be­hav­iour.

Cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment at a par­tic­u­lar point in a child's life does not ef­fec­tive­ly pro­mote be­hav­iour change, he said.This "point" would be be­tween the ages of 11 and 13 and beat­ing some­one around this age can on­ly fos­ter re­sent­ment, de­fi­ance and fear, he said.

De Leon, al­so the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Pro­mot­ing Re­spon­si­ble Fa­thers, said in­flict­ing cor­po­ral on some­one, and high­light­ing it on Face­book can on­ly cause em­bar­rass­ment and hu­mil­i­a­tion. He said "deep­er is­sues" may have caused the 12-year old to want to ad­ver­tise her­self in that man­ner on Face­book."She may be seek­ing some kind of at­ten­tion she is not get­ting."

Sin­gle dad of two young sons, Den­nis Allen, who hosts the tele­vi­sion show On the Record!" for WI Sports, had a dif­fer­ent take on the video."I can't say whether the child is be­ing abused. It is a six-minute video of one iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent." Allen said he al­so found the licks looked "cos­met­ic".He added, "As a par­ent, I won­der what mes­sage she is try­ing to get across to her child but I don't think pub­lic sham­ing is the most ef­fec­tive way to do this.

"We don't know what went on be­fore the beat­ing. I don't know if the moth­er had made oth­er at­tempts to get the mes­sage across."But things had reached the stage where the child had to get a pub­lic cut tail."Allen said he saw a Texas par­ent shoot­ing his daugh­ter's lap­top and an­oth­er rolling his car over his child's Ipad in oth­er in­stances of par­ents re­act­ing to chil­dren abus­ing so­cial me­dia.

Min­istry con­cerned

The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment said yes­ter­day it is con­cerned about the beat­ing of the 12-year girl by her moth­er."The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment has not­ed with con­cern the vi­ral video of a moth­er beat­ing her young daugh­ter for al­leged­ly post­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate pho­tos of her­self on the pop­u­lar so­cial me­dia site Face­book," a re­lease from the min­istry said.

"The min­istry wish­es to ad­vise par­ents there are dif­fer­ent forms of dis­ci­pline which should be con­sid­ered when deal­ing with chil­dren."The min­istry strong­ly ad­vo­cates the use of non-phys­i­cal forms of dis­ci­pline. Phys­i­cal forms of dis­ci­pline can lead to harm and un­in­tend­ed con­se­quences, in­clud­ing se­ri­ous in­jury, poor men­tal health or even death."

The re­lease said the min­istry al­so recog­nis­es that dur­ing ado­les­cent years, many chil­dren face chal­lenges which may lead to in­ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour such as the post­ing of un­suit­able im­ages on so­cial me­dia.

"This may be a sign of deep­er is­sues which need to be ad­dressed. Par­ents are al­so en­cour­aged to mon­i­tor their chil­dren's use of so­cial me­dia and oth­er in­for­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies, es­pe­cial­ly as these re­late to the post­ing of in­ap­pro­pri­ate pho­tographs and videos. This can have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for the child's rep­u­ta­tion and char­ac­ter."

The min­istry, through its Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, pro­vides free guid­ance and coun­selling ser­vices to mem­bers of the pub­lic on a 24-hour ba­sis, sev­en days a week, to those need­ing help in deal­ing with life's chal­lenges.Those wish­ing to utilise the ser­vices of­fered can call 627-1163 ext 2005; 2032; 2053 or 2046.