Only after the three-year-old Katarina Jovanovic died on July 17th, 2005 due to severe body injuries inflicted by sexual abuse and brutal beating has the domestic violence become serious topic in Serbia. Public has been less interested in previous cases of violence against children but their frequency urged for changes of the Penal Law in 2002. Practice has not changed.
Statistical data on domestic violence are invisible since they mostly do not end at courts. Before the penal laws change, in the course of three years out of 134 convictions for domestic violence only seven ended with prison punishment and the rest were suspended sentences. Upon returning to home, the bully would use his physical advantages over the rest of the family even harsher being certain he has been "betrayed".
Non-governmental organisations do not have any data on how many children are being punished by beating out of sheer fury or "short fuse" of their parents but all of them claim that in two thirds of domestic violence cases direct victims are - children. Children psychologist Vesna Brzev Curcic says the method of beating children in their upbringing is very common in Serbia.
"Parents resort to this upbringing measure often when they feel helpless and not capable of doing something else. Hand, belt and other means are often their choice instead of an effort to understand their children, establish facts, temper themselves, and undertake something more appropriate. In our children`s heads, parents` behaviour remains a role model for their own later behaviour. Therefore, if it is right to beat someone, just go for it", she says.
Brzev Curcic says that violence, even not excessive, in child`s personality provokes revolt, loss of confidence, need for revenge and violence over the others. While advising parents to discipline their children by means of measures appropriate to their age and misdemeanour the child has done, she does not encounter conscious parents` resistance.
"The child has to know in advance what was the mistake and he/she should not be punished for something he/she does not understand. Limits are being fixed from the very beginning of our lives. Awards and punishments dosing, and praises instead of insults. Love, support, and praises will never spoil your child but the lack of limits and inconsistency in upbringing will. Most parents say they hit their children just in case of need. On the practical level, spanking means beating and not slapping in the face, back or bottom. The last one is absolutely normal since `I have been slapped also and nothing`s wrong with me`. It is paradoxical that parents do not realise unwished reaction since they pay attention to a child only when he/she does something wrong and not when he/she behaves well", explains Brzev Curcic.
It would be as in a fairy tale to expect the people, strongly believing in "spare the rod and spoil the child paradise," to bring up their children without spanking them even once. Yet in 2005 changes have been made in the family law under the pressure of non-governmental sector, safe houses and often horrifying examples of violence over children. However, these changes do not explicitly forbid physical punishment of children. The Article 69 provides that parents be not allowed to subject their children to degrading actions and punishments that insult human dignity. Nevertheless, those actions are not described and it is not possible to exclude arbitrary interpretation of punishments. Does the child feel degraded by physical punishments even if he/she knows we love him/her? Beside bruises, who will be the one to decide on the limit between one, ten and fifty slaps?
Nevena Vuckovic Sahovic, of the Centre for Child`s Rights, believes this legal solution could be sufficient as far as the courts had professional capacity in applying it. She also adds that still of essential significance is the problem of the attitude of those people, working with children in any way, regarding emotional and corporeal integrity of a child.
"The goal of the legal ban should not be to allow children or others who take care of a child`s interests to take every case of corporeal punishment to courts. Such a ban should be the basis of the essential determination in changing mentality regarding the use of violence in human relations," explains Vuckovic Sahovic adding an explicit ban could be the perfect ground for real punishment of corporeal violence over children in social care institutions.
In a family, biological or foster one, such measures could be hardly implemented without disturbing the privacy limits. Nevertheless, this is not a mere fantasy. Sweden was the first country to standardise the physical punishment ban in long gone 1979. During the following decade, the same was done by Finland, Norway and Australia and in the course of the 90s the suit was followed by Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia and Croatia. In this millennium 11 more countries entered the ban on physical punishment of children in their legislations as well as severe penalties for such actions - Israel, Germany, Bulgaria, Island, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Greece, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and Portugal.
Most of the remaining countries, as well as Serbia, explicitly forbid physical punishment of a child in school. In spite of this, such things nevertheless happen since just a disciplinary procedure is an ultimate punishment for an educational worker using violent methods.
Sladjana Radulovic, of the Save the Children organisation, says the State obligation is to protect a child from physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect and any kind of exploitation. It also has to assure instruments for the child`s rights realisation in practice.
"This is the question of influence on traditional comprehension and cultural patterns that rationalise such behaviours and also the question of the change of awareness, attitudes, and behaviour towards children in general," says Radulovic adding that it is essential to promote positive, non-violent forms of upbringing.
Total abolition of the physical punishment in upbringing is still a challenge even in liberal Great Britain and therefore MPs have recently not adopted the ban on "spanking the bottom" of the English and Welsh children. Moreover, the department minister did not support this regulation explaining, "a mother spanking lightly her child`s hand for not wanting to return a candy taken on the way out from the supermarket could make her face the legal consequences".
Serbia, as a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has long had an obligation to protect dignity and rights of a child. For most citizens this, certainly, does not mean they have to talk to their children before they slap them since there is nothing binding them to do so. Busy parents are often not aware or they do not think over the fact that on physical and mental level violence shifts the tolerance of their children towards such form of communication.
Children have told the ombudsman that spanking hurts more their soul than their body. This because the possibility of having so much disappointed the one they love the most and forcing him/her to cause them pain is not only the blow they feel on their body but the one on their dignity, too. For the citizens of Serbia the death of Katarina Jovanovic will be the domestic violence paradigm for a long time. However, her death should constantly remind us of the pain her body and dignity have long endured and suffered before the fatal July 17th.
* Dragana Peric is a journalist with NIN weekly** Published: 2008/10/24
