The Accomplice

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke

Have you seen the video of the family law judge from Texas beating his 16-year-old daughter with a belt? Now 23, she says this was not an isolated instance, and she is releasing the secretly taped video so her father "can get all the help he needs." He says, "In my mind, I didn't do anything wrong." She says; he says. I think there are a number of reasons corporal punishment is wrong, but the fact is, it is legal and a majority of Americans believe in it and practice it. But even if you are in the pro-spanking camp, I think you will be disturbed by the video, and it's not just the severity of what the father refers to as a "spanking." His rage, his profanity, his lack of control push it over the line into abuse. It is ironic that in his profession, he presides over child abuse cases.

But let's not demonize the father unless we are going to draw horns on the mother's head as well. She participates in the ordeal, at one point yelling at her daughter to "lay down and take it like a grown woman." Now divorced from the judge, the mother says she "did everything he did." That makes me think she also beat the girl.

For every abuser, there is an enabler. Perhaps not fully participating like Hallie Adams, but complicit in the act as well. She might go into another room, she might whistle Dixie so she can't hear it, she might look the other way, she might pretend she doesn't know, she might pretend it never happened. By not ending it, she perpetuates it. So who is worse? The abuser or the one who doesn't step in to stop it? There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference to me.

Susan