A man who beat his 9-year-old daughter with a belt, in an attempt to get her to tell the truth has been placed on a two-year probation order by the Summary Court.
The man, who cannot be named due to a court order, faced a single count of cruelty to a child.
The incident, which occurred on 21 June 2022, is said to have stemmed from notes that the child was passing in school, the details of which were not disclosed in open court.
However, Magistrate Angelyn Hernandez said the contents of the notes “were scary”.
“The father became aware of the notes and spoke to his daughter over the phone before arriving home,” said prosecutor Greg Walcolm. “When he arrived, the defendant, together with the child’s mother and the child, in the master bedroom discussed the notes. However, when he believed she was not speaking the truth, he told her to put her hand out palm up and took a belt and hit her.”
Walcolm added, “He continued to question the child, but when she continued to deny the incident, he turned her around and, using the belt, he hit her on the buttocks and repeatedly told her to speak the truth.”
Walcolm told the court that eventually the child’s mother attempted to intervene and so the father sent her out of the room, where he continued to question and hit the child. The entire incident is said to have lasted approximately 25 for minutes.
“When the child went to school the following day, she told her teacher, who reported the matter, which led to police investigation being launched,” said Walcolm.
‘Out of character and an isolated incident’
When offering mitigating evidence for the defendant, attorney Gregory Burke told the court this was “out of character and an isolated incident”.
“He is a devoted family man, who is hard working with no history of drug or alcohol abuse. In fact, he is 35 years old and has never been before these criminal courts,” said Burke.
“His wife describes him as a stickler for the truth, and it is against this backdrop of having the child consistently attempting to mislead him that he struck her with the belt to get her to speak the truth.”
Burke told the court that the following day the father apologised to the child, and when he was called in by police he was “contrite and accepted the wrongdoing”.
According to experts from a victim impact report, the child is quoted as telling officials that she had a very loving relationship with her father, and normally he would suspend her privileges as a form of punishment.
Burke told the court that the father is a volunteer with a youth programme which requires him to travel with its competitors, and for this reason, coupled with the previous good character, he asked that no conviction be recorded in line with the recommendations for the Department of Community and Rehabilitation Services.
Jail time narrowly missed
When returning her sentence, Magistrate Hernandez noted that, if the prosecution had charged the defendant with assault ABH or a similar charge, he would have been jailed.
“Had this been any other legislation, the custody threshold would have been passed and you would have been looking at jail time,” said Hernandez. “However, the prosecution chose to go with the charge of cruelty to a child, and I accept [the defence counsel’s] submissions that, when drafting this law, legislators had hoped it would serve as an intervention in the home to assist parents get the right tools to assist them with disciplining children.”
Hernandez added, “I understand, and being a parent as well, and I am not justifying it, I can understand the frustration. My mother used to say, ‘A liar becomes a thief, and a thief becomes a robber, and a robber a murderer,” but we as parents cannot allow our frustration to be taken out on children in this manner.”
In Cayman the use of belts and thin branches or ‘switches’, often from tamarind trees, have been used to discipline children for generations, a matter Hernandez said she is all too familiar with.
“They would send us to pick our own switches, do you know how cruel that is? But as a visiting Grand Court judge once said, it is OK to use your hand, but never a belt or a stick or a switch, because those things are weapons.”
Hernandez sentenced the father to two years of probation, and ordered that he attend parenting classes from the Department of Children and Family Services. No conviction was recorded.
- Editor’s note: The story has been updated to change the name of the defence counsel.
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