A court in the Dutch city of The Hague has given what was regarded as a lenient sentence to Ethiopian parents who severely beat their children – because they had a different cultural background.
A 55-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman were on trial for using excessive corporal punishment on their children.
For more than a year, two of the children, eight and 10 at the time, were repeatedly hit on their heads and bodies and had their hands struck with a stick.
Both were also forced to sit on their knees, having to hold their arms outstretched until they apologised, the court heard.
The parents, both from Ethiopia, defended themselves by saying these were common practices in their country of origin. The father said he had received similar punishment at school when he was a pupil while the mother denied any form of abuse of the youngsters.
The father reportedly did give varying testimonies about how he punished his children, saying different things to the police and the court, Dutch newspaper AD reported.
A football coach had reported potential issues regarding the children to the authorities. He had seen that the son had bruises on his face and hands. In addition, the boy had said that he had to put his hands on the table, after which his father hit them with a stick.
This was corroborated by a mother of another child with the team, who said that the boy told her about being beaten at home.
The parents denied during the trial that they abused their children. They indicated that they loved them very much and therefore could not be capable of hitting them.
According to them, the scars on the children’s backs – considered by a forensic doctor as possibly the result of being beaten with a stick – were due to traditional healing methods used to combat issues the kids reportedly had in learning to walk.
The judge did consider the cultural differences in her final ruling.
She remarked: “If individuals with different cultural backgrounds were involved here, my judgment would differ.”
Ultimately, she only found the beating with a stick on the hands of the children to be proven. Additionally, she observed that the couple was actively working on improving their parenting skills.
Consequently, both parents were given a conditional community service sentence of 100 hours.
The prosecutor had demanded 12 weeks in prison, six of which would be suspended for the father and 120 hours in prison and one month of suspended imprisonment for the mother.
In 2007, The Netherlands banned corporal punishment by parents, making any physical discipline illegal, regardless of cultural context. This ruling appears to be an exception.
The case and its outcome prompted condemnation from some.
“So we should just approve of honour killings and female circumcision? After all, it’s also culture,” one person said according to NieuwNieuws, a Dutch-language news website
