Bermuda Sun, 5 December 1997

Why do we tolerate child-beating?

IF YOU go to Government Information Services at Global House on Church Street, you can purchase copies of Ministerial Acts and commissioned studies. One such study, the Report of the Task Force on Child Abuse, is free for the asking. It contains 52 comprehensive recommendations for the prevention, intervention and treatment of child abuse. Saul Froomkin and Dr. Norma Astwood headed the Task Force.

I turned initially to this report to better understand government's position on the practice of corporal punishment in its schools. Minister of Education Jerome Dill was reported by the Royal Gazette, during the last parliamentary session, as saying: "We take the view that corporal punishment is an important option for educators to have."

The Report of the Task Force strongly recommends (Recommendation 42) the banning of corporal punishment. The report quotes from the written submission by the Coalition for the Protection of Children that "research shows that children who are subjected to physical punishment behave more aggressively than those who are not. These children learn that physical assault is an acceptable tool for problem solving."

Armed with these disparate views, I set forth to learn all I could about this, and other issues raised by the Report, from two ministries: Education, and Health and Social Services who (via the Department of Child and Family Services) commissioned the report.

The journey towards enlightenment was neither easy nor satisfying, as Civil Service General Orders lurked behind virtually all my efforts to understand the complex issues surrounding child abuse in Bermuda. The appendices, listed in the table of contents of the Report, were denied to the Public. These included an interim report, a 1995 survey by the Coalition for the Protection of Children, and reports by the Department of Child & Family Services, the Bermuda Psychological Association, and Senior Education Officer Joeann Smith.

The explanation for this material being expunged was that certain, possibly libellous statements were made by alleged victims during the survey to determine the extent of child abuse in Bermuda. It occurred to me that names could have been deleted from the public record before release. But more importantly, I wondered if they should have been made available for police investigation. That, however, is another issue: The mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse (Recommendation 43) is not yet law in Bermuda.

After the usual delay, I learned Cabinet had also chosen to exclude the submissions as the information would have presumably shown up in the main body of the report. If the information was used, it would have appeared under the anonymous heading "We, the Task Force." But I worry that General Orders could have affected the nature of the report, or at the very least, its usefulness as a tool to educate the public.

I applaud the report as comprehensive and culturally invariant. But, it will not be worth the paper it is printed on unless cross-pollination occurs between appropriate ministries and society at large. Bermuda deserves -- and should demand -- unfettered debate and action on the issues raised.

We should not fall into the trap of being grateful that the report on Child Abuse was commissioned in the first place, let alone made public, in its censored form.

Except in matters of national security and individual right to privacy, Bermudians should have full access to information gleaned on their behalf and at their expense. The imposed confidentiality of information, that intimately affects the public, leads to an Us and Them mindset, with the withholders of information being perceived as elitist, while the public becomes increasingly suspicious, cynical and apathetic.

To date, I still don't know why government condones and participates in the physical correction (call it corporal punishment, if you want) of children. I suspect it has something to do with the initial discomfort of tinkering with the status quo. One thing I have discovered though, if you pay for your child's education by cheque, and not taxes, the major private schools, excluding Warwick Academy, will not threaten to or actively lay an unkind finger upon your child.