Fear of corporal punishment drives teen to suicide

photo courtesy stlucianewsonline.com

Tragedy struck a small community in the southern St Lucian town of Vieux-Fort on Thursday after a teenage girl, apparently scared of receiving a beating from her father for having slept out the previous night, took her own life.

So what led her to the tragedy?
According to media reports, the girl -15 year old Jasma Lubin - left home Wednesday night and failed to return. The following morning she told her understandably irate father that she had slept over at "Sharon" (relationship unclear). The father in-turn went over to Sharon's house as part of his investigations into the matter. Relatives say he had earlier threatened the teenager with a serious beating if her story turned out to be untrue. It was upon his return home from Sharon's that the father discovered the girl hanging from her bedroom ceiling.

This incident should shine a new spotlight on the use of corporal punishment which is still widely used in St Lucia, including in our schools, and is totally legal. Many parents hold a firm belief in the old cliche that you can't "spare the rod and spoil the child"  with some choosing to beat the daylights out of their children in the name of discipline. However, in light of this incident, we should all pause for a moment and ask ourselves: is corporal punishment the best way to discipline a child?

I am in no way blaming the father for his daughter's untimely death. As a single parent, he was probably raising her the best way he knew how, by using the same methods of discipline on her that he experienced as a child. I am sure that he wanted the best for his young daughter by having her focus on her education at the Vieux Fort Comprehensive Secondary School instead of spending the night out at God knows where. However, anyone who has received corporal punishment as a child, knows how scary the thought can be, especially when it's coming from your father.

The Global Initiative To End All Corporal Punishment Of Children, an organization set up in 2001 to campaign for the worldwide prohibition by law of all corporal punishment of children, says "Research into the harmful physical and psychological effects of corporal punishment, into the relative significance of links with other forms of violence, in childhood and later life, add further compelling arguments for condemning and ending the practice, suggesting that it is an essential strategy for reducing all forms of violence, in childhood and later life."

Perhaps if Mr. Lubin had not threatened his daughter with physical punishment as retribution for her offence, this whole tragedy could have been avoided. Or maybe a note purportedly left behind by the victim could provide more answers to the question of why she took her own life.