Stop Defending Abuse Because You Endured It And Turned Out ‘Okay’
I’m trying to imagine a situation where I could calmly tell my child to go outside and find me a large stick, take that stick, strip it to prep it, and beat my 4-year-old until he bleeds. I can’t because I’m not psychotic. I’m beyond sick of people defending the barbaric treatment of children because they were abused themselves and think they turned out “okay.” You didn’t turn out “okay.” You turned into an adult who doesn’t flinch when they see a 4-year-old beaten bloody. There is nothing okay about that.
The Adrian Peterson case is wrong on so many levels, yet people are still defending him. Let’s go over his situation for a moment: he has already lost a child to severe abuse, not at his own hands. His two-year-old son died in 2013, after sustaining critical injuries from his mother’s boyfriend. Another man killed his son. You think this might turn someone against the practice of corporal punishment. Not Peterson.
The mother of another 4-year-old son of Peterson’s claims he beat the boy and left a facial scar. Then of course, we have his current case. He has been indicted on charges of reckless or negligent injury to a child for allegedly whipping his 4-year-old son with a switch until he bled:
How anyone can look at these images and make excuses for why it’s “okay” is beyond me. But they are:
When you see the most helpless, innocent members of society being beaten until bloody and you are not on their side – something is seriously wrong with you. This is not discipline – this is criminal. Peterson will have his day in court, and if the evidence proves that he did, in fact, do this to his child – he will hopefully be convicted. Maybe this will convince him to finally keep his hands off of his children. Who knows?
There are plenty of things that have changed for the better about society. We now know how dangerous smoking is, we know that seat belts save lives, and we know that abusing your child leaves more than surface scars behind. Just because you endured it – doesn’t make it okay. For me, evolving as a human means I want the next generation to have it better than I did – period. I don’t want to hold up my hardships as some test that all future generations should be able to pass. This archaic thinking has got to go.
We need to protect our children better. All children. We need to stop condoning abuse.
(photo: Twitter)
