Child Abuse

"(But) this offence was triggered by unexpected and subliminal forces... it is appropriate to suspend the sentence."

He kicked his 3 year old son and gave him a lacerated liver. He has been a victim of child abuse himself. he is allowed to live with the son if the Department of Corrections Abuse approves. There appears to be support there. He is receiving fatherhood and anger management counselling. The family needs his income to keep their house. We are all gob smacked. He has a 1000 dollar good behaviour bond and a 29 month suspended sentence. Is that enough? We didn't used to punish parents for being violent to their children and we didn't help them either. I shall never forget a friend of my brother's who used to come over to our house. He was a great kid. He turned up one day with his hands wrapped up and couldn't play guitar. My Dad, being my Dad, just started talking away and then we found out his Mum would burn his hands on the electric stove to punish him. We all felt sick. There was a silence. The mum turned up on our doorstep not too long after that and was trying to threaten by Dad to do with something to do with my brother and her son. He brought up about the hands. I could hear him saying if her boy ever turned up at our house again with any kind of injury, he would just go down to the police station. The boy was never hurt again. I found out years later he became a priest. I hope this man has enough boundaries to keep his son safe. It is a different way of going about it and  the whole situation would need a lot of monitoring.If he is usually a good Dad, there is some hope...but that kind of violence is insidious.