The Casper Journal :: Casper's Community Newspaper

It was abruptly brought to my attention last week that it is legal to strike your child in Wyoming.

Not only is it legal, it appears that as long as there are no weapons used -- belts, boards, coffee pot cords, Hot Wheels tracks, etc.-- that the parents will be cleared of all responsibility.

The child and the rest of the family have no recourse if the parent abuses a child, causing emotional or physical distress including severe bruising.

Isn’t it sickening that if you lose your temper and hit a stranger, leaving a bruise, you face criminal charges? If you do the same to your child, well, that’s just good parenting.

Corporal punishment has its place in discipline. I’ve used it myself with my children. But, when parents or caregivers lose their temper so much and hit the child causing physical harm, it is no longer discipline, but abuse.

In the state of Wyoming, the child’s story is seldom taken into account unless there is grievous bodily harm -- broken bones, internal organs ruptured, or coma -- as well as sexual assault or death.

Even if the agencies respond to these cases and know it is abuse, if the DA’s office decides not to press charges, the most the agencies can hope for is that the parents will come around and start “working a plan.”

Or there will be a relapse so that they can step in again.

If no charges are filed, the work done through DFS must be on a volunteer basis.

This means a child either gets real lucky or they face weeks, months or years of abuse before their abusers are caught and stopped, if they ever are.

As an example of the costs of these lenient parenting laws are two Wyoming children who suffered the worst fates. These little girls can no longer speak for themselves or ask anyone for help.

Brandy Jo Imhoff, 5, of Cheyenne, was kicked to death by her mother’s abuser and live-in boyfriend on Dec. 22, 1991; and Ashley Hood, 5, of Casper was found in a dresser drawer in a garage nine months after she had been killed by her mother. This child’s family was working a plan and being monitored by DFS the entire time.

Other costs to the community are young adults unable to parent because they never learned the proper way to punish their children, an influx of people seeking psychiatric care to deal with the things they endured as children and increased acts of violence in the community. The list goes on and on.

It is up to the agencies and offices of our communities to give each case a quality review and to enforce the laws.

This means looking at the pictures of the children and their bruises and acting on them, not brushing them aside with a statement that it is OK to spank your child with your hand.

It is up to US and our Legislature to create clear-cut laws that will untie the hands of these officials and protect these children from parental punishment that oversteps the boundaries of discipline and destroys the kids’ childhoods.

Holly Strother

Casper

258-2584

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