Out of context

It's very odd when a judge excuses physical violence towards a child on the grounds that "cultural context" should be considered and many newcomers to Britain punish their children by hitting them.

There seems to be a growing trend for certain groups to insist that the law should adapt to their particular beliefs or practices, rather than the law being applied to everyone on the same basis.

There are demands for sharia law, or religious strictures about homosexuality, or FGM, or even honour killings, to be legally acceptable on the grounds of personal conscience or social tradition or whatever, as if people are entitled to modify the law to suit their own purposes.

High Court Judge Mrs Justice Pauffley (pictured), ruling on a case where a boy had been repeatedly hit by his Indian father, said allowance must be made for the family coming from another culture.

Many communities newly arrived in Britain slapped and hit their children for misbehaviour, and the "cultural context" should be considered, she said.

Needless to say, child protection experts were astonished by her remarks, saying that culture is irrelevant to child abuse and every child has the right to be safe and protected from violence.

Of course they're absolutely correct. If certain groups are allowed to be exempt from the laws the rest of us have to follow, solely on the grounds of their deeply-held beliefs, the law would soon lose all credibility and respect. It would become just something to be fiddled or finessed. And once again the lawyers would have a field day.

Damaged soul

We all have a few grievances about the way our parents brought us up. But a 32 year old County Durham man* has a grievance so strong he's suing his mother - for not protecting him from his father's beatings.

He claims that between the ages of five and nineteen his father hit him several times a day with various implements or tried to throttle him.

He says his mother had a duty as a parent to take reasonable steps to protect her children from the violence, but instead she aided and abetted his father.

She should have got an injunction against him or divorced him. She shouldn't have let him remain in the house.

The son is seeking over £50,000 damages for pain and suffering, the cost of therapy, and his subsequent inability to complete his education, form relationships or hold down a job.

His mother denies liability for the assaults and says her son is exaggerating what happened to him.

It's shocking he feels so traumatised that he has to seek closure by resorting to the high drama of a court case, with all the emotion and stress and hostility that can involve.

Most of us, even if we had endured severe brutality or neglect from our parents, would try to resolve it in a less spectacular way, confining ourself to therapy or some other method of putting it behind us and getting on with our lives.

The law can be a very blunt and heavy-handed way of dealing with a problem, often making it worse or leaving a sense of injustice still festering.

I can't see how a financial settlement, however large, can be any substitute for the emotional catharsis that is surely what he really needs.

The courts can do a lot of things, but fixing damaged souls isn't one of them.

* He can't be identified for legal reasons

Look before you leap

Over-zealous, interfering busybodies who get the wrong end of the stick can cause so much trouble for their unfortunate victims. Especially if it's the red-hot issue of child abuse.

A couple sitting on the beach at Fortaleza in north west Brazil decided that a middle-aged Italian tourist was acting inappropriately by being "over-affectionate" to a young girl.

Mindful of the strict new anti-paedophilia laws, they promptly reported him to the police. He was arrested, kept in custody and now faces 15 years in jail for child molestation.

Except that the situation wasn't quite as it seemed to the vigilante couple. The girl was actually the man's eight year old daughter and he was giving her an affectionate kiss, as he has doubtless done hundreds of times before.

His daughter and his Brazilian wife both insisted vigorously that he'd done nothing wrong and that the arrest was ridiculous, but the police were unmoved. His wife said the allegations could destroy her family.

The story doesn't tell us if the over-reacting couple were informed of what was actually happening, and if so whether they were apologetic. But they certainly turned someone's pleasant holiday into a sudden nightmare.

And ironically, the child they were trying to protect must have been distressed and worried by her father's disappearance.

It's all too easy to jump into a situation with the best of motives but completely misunderstanding what's going on. Especially when the global hysteria about child abuse is making people absurdly over-sensitive to quite normal behaviour.

Look before you leap is a very wise old saying.

PS: According to the BBC, a fresh attempt to release the man failed at the weekend and a new attempt will be made on Tuesday. Apparently child sex abuse is a big problem in Brazil, particularly in the north east, which may be why the Brazilian couple were so quick to report the incident. Another report said the little girl told the police that parents often kiss their children on the lips in Italy.

According to the Guardian on Tuesday, the man has now been rushed to hospital with high blood pressure and is under police guard. The initial police inquiry should be completed by Thursday.