Children's Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison
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By Clinton McGregor
Children's Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison has welcomed the plan to ban the beating of children by their parents and relatives.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced last week that the government intends to introduce legislation to ban all forms of corporal punishment.
He was reacting to a video in which a mother is seen stomping on the head and neck of her daughter.
Mr Holness said abuse of children by their parents is being disguised as corporal punishment and that legislation to criminalise these acts are coming.
The Children's Advocate, speaking on Sunday with Radio Jamaica News today, voiced support for this approach, "beause we agree, from the Office of the Children's Advocate, that corporal punishment is is abuse and it's violence."
She noted that "extreme acts of corporal punishment," as reflected in the video in question, "when you have a parent breaking a child's arm, in the name of discipline... when we have a child who is the victim of extreme stomping on the neck," must be deplored and outlawed.
She neverless sounded a note of caution, urging that any the enactment of any such legal prohibition must be preceded by a public education programme, "that will really guide parents in a very practical way."
Mrs Gordon Harrison that the authorities must introduce alternatives to corporal punishment so as not to criminalise parents seeking to discipline their children.
These measures, she said, must be "workable and meaningful alternatives to corporal punishment."
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