Christians vow to break smacking law

Conservative Christian groups say they will be forced to break the law if Parliament stops allowing the reasonable use of force to discipline children.

A string of churches, Christian schools and individual Christians told a parliamentary committee in Mangere yesterday that Green MP Sue Bradford's "anti-smacking" bill flouted their biblical beliefs and would "open the way for religious persecution and intolerance".

Pastor Peter Boyd of Manurewa's Covenant Presbyterian Church, part of a breakaway group that split from the Presbyterian Church in opposition to homosexuality, said Christians believed the Bible was the authority and they were bound to follow it.

"Christians in general are law-abiding people. They pay taxes even though they might not agree with what their taxes are spent on," he said.

"But when you have a case where the law of the Bible and the law of the land conflict, they are forced to obey the law of the Bible.

"In this case too sharp a line is being drawn. Christians in particular, and others too, will be forced to disobey the state to do what is right according to their conviction."

Of 55 submitters heard yesterday, 22 supported the bill. Kim Gosden of the Waitakere Abuse and Trauma Counselling Service said that almost all parents who came to counselling about violence had experienced violence in their own childhoods.

"They may have intentions that they do not want to parent the way they were parented, but they do. They do end up using weapons or something. They do end up hurting," she said.

She tabled an anonymous statement by a client who had wept as she told the story of how she and her five siblings were slapped and strapped by both their parents. She and three of her siblings had chosen not to hit their own children because "we all feared our mother in particular and did not want our kids to feel about us as we felt about our parents".

"I do not believe our parents would have changed their behaviour and attitudes voluntarily, but any legislative intervention would have at least alerted them to the values that were prevailing in society," the client said.

An Epsom teacher, Peter Luiten, said his father used to punish him by hitting him on the side of his head, once giving him injuries that put him in bed for three days.

When Mr Luiten himself started teaching, he hit his students in the same way until one boy's parents complained. He then stopped hitting his pupils.

He kept on hitting his two daughters until his marriage broke up. He married again and hit his two step-sons.

"It was only a court order that finally stopped me," he said.

"I never believed that what I was doing was right in the first place. I knew it was wrong. I just did it anyway.

"What stopped me was being forced to face up to what I had done."

But a Drury father of five, Joe Sonneveld, said he had never smacked his children in anger, but always in love.

An airline pilot and member of the Covenant Church, Paul Burton, said the law allowed him to exercise reasonable force to keep order in his aircraft, and he felt he should have the same right as a parent in his home.

"I care for the life of my child. If I believe the best course of action for my child as he or she grows is to use reasonable force to break that behaviour, I will use that force," he said.

The principal of Carey College in Panmure, Michael Drake, said Christians were entitled to believe in the Bible and should not be criticised by Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, who had recently published "a booklet telling parents what Christianity is".

"What we are hearing is that certain Christians should not hold to their beliefs, marginalising people because of their beliefs," he said. "We argue that no agency of state should engage in telling people what their faith should be."

Former Radio Rhema breakfast host Bob McCroskie, who now runs a lobby group called Family First, said only six parents in the last 12 years had been acquitted on assault charges by claiming the protection of section 59.

One of these was a Timaru mother who was said by the media to have whipped her 12-year-old son with a horse whip.

Mr McCroskie flew the mother to Auckland and had the "whip" on hand to show MPs if they had asked to see it. He said it was actually "a riding crop, which is slightly larger than a wooden spoon".

National MP Chester Borrows said he planned to move an amendment that would keep section 59 but with changes, such as defining "reasonable force" or allowing judges to interpret the meaning of the term, leaving juries to rule only on the facts of whether force used in a particular case came within that meaning.

Proposed law

* Green MP Sue Bradford's bill would repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act.

* The law now says parents are "justified in using force by way of correction towards a child if that force is reasonable in the circumstances".

*Last month, Ms Bradford proposed rewording the commentary accompanying the bill to make it clear it did not seek to outlaw light smacking.