Love Does Not Cause You To Bleed

 By Gaetane Borders

Is it possible that parents no longer know how to discipline their children? Maybe something happened within my lifetime that caused a major disconnect such that I simply cannot relate to anything I see, hear, or read lately.

Here’s the source of my current rant:

A month or so ago, a news report surfaced because there was an online video showing what appeared to be a young father who was so upset by his son’s misbehavior at school that he shaved the boy’s hair and eyebrows, spanked him with a belt, and forced him to do exhausting exercises. He filmed the entire 7 minute and 44 second clip and posted it on social media sites. The sad irony is that this parent did this as a means of showing other parents how to properly discipline their own children. I was disturbed by what I heard. The video is difficult to watch.  However, despite the disturbing contents of the video…I have to say that it’s the nation’s reaction that shocked me most. (I’ll get to that a tad later)

The man in the video is identified as Devery Broox. He is not the boy’s father, but has been described as being his "mentor." Orlando, FL officers arrested him after learning about the video via a tip originally received by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. While the 7-year-old boy initially claimed that marks and scars on his legs were caused by a bicycle accident, he later “disclosed that Devery ‘whips’ him ‘all the time.’” The child told the police that “Devery made him tell the story about the bicycle because ‘he don’t wanna’ go to jail.’”

I am sharing the video below for you to view, but I do want to caution you that it is not safe for work or for children. It contains extremely foul language and violence.

Now....Here’s my rant:

Of the two people in the video, who do you think people are defending? The 7-year-old you say? Well, that would make too much sense. In fact, it is Broox who people are passionately defending online and at the water cooler. “A parent can’t beat their kids [expletive] anymore without the government getting involved!” an angry listener said when she called into a radio show. Again I ask, what happened in the world that causes confusion between discipline and abuse. Those arguing in Broox’s defense say that the incarceration rate of Black men is the reason why such “discipline” is important. They go on to say that this will help young black men because it will make them successful and productive citizens. I vehemently disagree!

Violence begets violence…ALWAYS. Fear and intimidation does not set a healthy framework for relationships! A child is supposed to feel safest at home. A child is supposed to feel comforted by a parent’s touch. Appropriate discipline cannot occur when a parent is enraged. Leaving scars on children means that you caused them to bleed! How does that show love? Condoning “Beating a Child’s [expletive]” is wrong….simply put. 

So where do you stand on this issue. Did this mentor offer appropriate discipline, and should his self-help parenting video be viewed as good training material for parents? The comments below are just some that were posted in the abuser’s defense. Do you agree with them?

Gaétane F. Borders is President of Peas In Their Pods, an organization that helps to spread awareness about missing children of color.  She has dedicated her life to helping families and children, and is a noted child advocate.  Gaétane often lends her expertise to various media outlets such as CBS, CNN, and FOX.  In addition, she frequently contributes to magazines and newspapers.

• When did disciplining a kid become a crime? He may have went a little overboard with the eyebrow shaving but come on, he just teaching the kid to act right or get faced with consequences...Soft world we live in.

• I support the Mentor. Was it extreme? Yes. Will it leave an impression on the young boy to get his act together? Yes. All this is showing is that parents lose their rights to raise their children.

• I know this guy PERSONALLY! Devery is a very nice man he is a mentor and helps boys in the community along with a group of guys I went to college with. He isn't cruel person nor evil and ten years is to the EXTREME. I am going to make sure I go to the courtroom and support Devery because he is somebody who cares about our youth and in the black community we all know that this form of discipline is 100% normal and most of us were raised this way. We are not dead and are parents are not in prison. Those whoopings we got saved many of our lives. I don't get it that you cant whoop your kid with a belt but cops can break your bones with night sticks, tazer you or shoot and kill you. What sense does that make?

• If this child grows up to be a prison bird or terrorize society they will look at him as another black child gone wrong. Now someone is trying to right his wrongs early on and its a crime. I hope next time it isn't made public but when this same black boy goes astray because he does not have a mentor you all who are against the punishment will be looking to point fingers again.  He was retarded for posting it.... That's all!

• Mentor, father, caretaker...young black boys especially need someone to discipline them. This is evident by how many are winding up in juvenile facilities and the penal system in general. While I believe that whipping with a leather belt is extreme, cutting the boys' hair and maybe his eyebrows is not that extreme. Hair grows back but you can't erase a felony conviction. Making him run sprints and doing the duck walk and push ups my impress upon the boy to get his act together and straighten up in school. Parents and guardians need the support of the systems to reinforce discipline and even suggest non corporal, effective ways to turn kids around in their behaviors before it becomes too late.

• See this is what’s wrong with the world today....they gone punish a black man for actually giving a damn....he could not be there, and not even care...and then the child would be just another statistic...another want to b thug, in jail, 2 3 babies he not taking care of.. letting the cycle continue. Somewhere the cycle has to break with our youth. My granddaddy whooped my a*s, my uncles, my momma, even my grandma....not to make me tough to learn some damn discipline and some respect..for elders..and for people trying to teach you something..but I guess some of you rather have rappers be role models..i don't understand..somewhere in the last 10 to 20 years we lost it...kids have no fear..no respect...no tradition....then some of you have a nerve to complain about it....its a shame...make that boy do some push ups....sprints..cut grass all that...and then whoop his a*s.....i bet he wont go in that class room no more acting a fool...respect that man for stepping up because half of yall wouldn't even give that boy a time a day...so shut up.

• I don't have a problem with what was done. So many people come to the boys defense by saying "this poor innocent kid..." If he was so innocent, he wouldn't have been acting a fool in school. So often we as a society talk about the problems with children now a days, and so often do we forget how things were back during the times when children were better behaved. Times when most children had a basic level of respect for adults, and those that didn't were taught a lesson. There was a time in our history where teachers and other school officials were allowed to spank kids. There was a time when if a child got in trouble at school, he would get a beating from the teacher, neighbor, mailman, corner store owner and stranger before having to answer to his parents. Now a days, kids are terrorizing society with their reckless behavior.

Judge William Adams, A Camera, and the Power of Light

By Roger A. Canaff, JD 

Roughly 2000 years ago an itinerant rabbi gave a sermon about light. The right thing to do with a lamp, said the rabbi, was to let it shine, not put it under a basket. That made sense in a time where light after sunset was a luxury; hence the parable. And of course, in the spirit of parables, there are other forms of light, and other functions for what we know as light. Light illuminates, and in so doing exposes.

In 2004, a remarkable young woman with a disability shined a light in the form of a video camera on the pathology, hatefulness and pure evil of a man who, until recently, had been a sitting judge in Texas. The video shows him, her father, beating her with a belt in a breathtakingly brutal way, over seven interminable minutes.

I am using words like “pathology” and “evil” distinctly, although as the study of psychology evolves, the difference between what we might call mental illness and what we have historically called evil are blurring in ways that make people like me- prosecutors, and arbiters of legal blame- uncomfortable. But for now, I’m comfortable, perhaps recklessly so, with discussing the two separately. I believe the man is probably sick. I also believe he’s evil.

Millions have seen the video. Millions more, thanks in part to the appropriate “trigger” warnings that have been associated with it, have demurred. I watched every second of it, and more than once. The video’s subject is my job, after all; I have seen things far worse, but in many ways I haven’t seen anything quite as naked and telling as this. Because sometimes it takes a camera in the right place at the right time to truly expose what lies beneath far more facades of normalcy than most of us understand. A camera won’t flinch. It won’t turn away. It will simply record with passive silence, and in situations like this one perhaps its growing ubiquity in our lives is a positive thing. After all, it allowed a 16 year-old Hillary Adams to preserve something that is simply unbelievable to many- that a respected member of the judicial bench, a smiling, reasonable looking man, would nevertheless be capable of a vicious beating laced with profanity against a young girl with cerebral palsy.

You see, I have prosecuted and assisted with hundreds of cases where I knew the truth, but also feared I’d never be able to infuse a jury with the courage to convict. I never had proof like the kind Hillary possessed; the kind she had the wherewithal and technology to create. And so doubt would creep in at the edges, doubt fueled by myths that protect men like William Adams and his now estranged wife. Myths that whisper that couples like the Adams’ aren’t the types who could hurt a disabled child that way. Myths that education, privilege, community stature, the genetic accident of white skin, and other niceties can’t co-exist with methodological torture and wanton cruelty. Myths like the one William Adams is selling right now, that the issue was really “discipline” and that what the video shows “looks worse than it is.”

Ah, but then sometimes, in blessed fashion, a camera shatters the myths; a camera placed by an intelligent and desperate child who has learned, as many family violence survivors do, to predict the escalation of hostilities that leads to violence.

So the video depicts exactly what occurred; it was Judge William Adams, community leader, outwardly decent parent, arbiter of justice, ripping into his child’s body with a lustful but eerily calm exuberance, armed with a leather strap. It was this man, uttering the word “f—king,” 14 times as he did so.

It was also Hillary’s mother, Hallie, whose participation was less violent but no less sickening. I’m glad that she has repaired her relationship with her daughter, and that Hillary has forgiven her. She’ll get nothing from me. I understand that I am running afoul of many domestic violence experts who maintain that a battered woman can be rendered powerless over years of brainwashing and abuse to where her own violence or failure to protect her children cannot be attributed to her in terms of blame. I am sympathetic to the dynamics that exist, and attribute the lion’s share of the blame to William Adams, where it belongs. But I draw the line on anyone who fails to protect their own children, regardless of what they are facing in another relationship. Hallie Adams’ explanation on Today was, to me, less than impressive. She calmly deflected blame by claiming victimhood herself and assigning an addiction to William. I’m sure this is accurate, but it doesn’t give her a pass where I’m concerned. She’s clearly not the primary abuser in the nightmare world Hillary navigated for so long. But she made choices that I cannot abide, and one of them was graphically showcased on this video with its own dose of profanity.

A five-year statute of limitations will likely protect both from criminal prosecution. Adams’ judicial career might be over, which would perhaps be the most just event he’s been witness to since that career began. There are many other ways to look at this case, Hillary’s courage and healing, and also the response to the video as Hillary is launched into a temporary but bright public spotlight. I wish nothing more than for her to live a full and happy life unencumbered by the evil visited upon her.

For me, though, the deepest value of what Hillary did by placing a running camera on her dresser and a scarf over the tell-tale blinking red light, was to allow a robotic, impassive eye to simply witness what far too many believe to be impossible. My friend and colleague Anne Munch once told me the story of a police chief in a small, idyllic Colorado town who was asked a typical ‘softball’ question by a reporter: “So, is this town a safe place to live?”

Rather than giving the pat and expected answer, the wise chief apparently looked at the reporter evenly and said what I believe might be the most plainly accurate thing that can be said about literally any locality on the globe.

“It depends on who you live with.”

A widely known child protection and anti-violence against women advocate, legal expert, author and public speaker, Roger Canaff has devoted his legal career to the eradication of violence against women and children.  Visit Roger's website:  www.rogercanaff.com