What does a young person LEARN from being handcuffed to a chair and desk and held prisoner? It's wrong if I steal, but it's OK if Momma handcuffs me to the desk? It's ok to treat your children using illegal tactics, as long as you believe in God and don't steal, and don't listen to music? Has he learned how to parent his own children when that day comes? Has he learned that when we get to the end of our rope, we get to do "whatever" comes into our mind, with no regard to the law?
I very respectfully disagree that this woman did "whatever". Her punishment was extreme, but she took every precaution she could think of to keep him from being harmed. She did not tie him to a tree outside, he was not locked inside a closet for years and beaten with rods, he did not have a bucket for a restroom, he was not left alone; He was fed, watered and cared for - perhaps not as you would have done, but he
was cared for. Should she have handcuffed him to a desk?
No. But given many of the cases on this board, I cannot see this as the horrific trauma others see it as....The poor child in my siggy died with 80 contusions on her little body, vaginal and oral herpes, a fractured skull and a large vaginal tear. At the hand of her mother's boyfriend and the mother helped to cover it up -
THAT, IMHO is "whatever" . I see shades of gray, not just black and white. Should this mother have been able to come up with something better? Undoubtably, but I'm not her, I do not live her life, I do not know her child or the circumstances surrounding his arrest, and therefore I'm going to refrain from judging her. The court didn't seem to think this warranted jail time, they know all the circumstances, I do not.
In reference to the Bible/bad connotation comment: My stance may be only truly understood by others who have had the "Word of God" used as an excuse for a parent/authority figure to inflict extreme punishment or judgment. One does not need to read the Bible or even to believe that the Bible is the word of God to suffer abuse in the name of God----the fact that the PUNISHER believes and uses the Bible in justifying the punishment is enough to turn a person away from God for a long, long time, if not forever. I guarantee you that if the Bible had been used against you in the way it was used against some of us, you'd understand.
I can assure you the Bible has been used against me in the most egregious way possible; my uncles used it to justify sexually abusing me from the age of 2 to 8 yrs old. I do not blame that on God or the Bible, that was completely the *
human beings* who did the abusing. That is called
free will, and they exercised theirs - God nothing to do with it; His only role is judging them for those decisions. I find the Bible to be a source of comfort, because I see the true meaning behind the words,
not simply how I was lied to. So, no, I don't understand. I am able to see the difference between the message the Bible is trying to convey and the selfserving b.s. that was spouted at me to justify behavior that has
NO justification.