He won't escape unscathed. The law will hopefully determine what happened and Adrian Peterson will be punished accordingly, but punished accordingly doesn't necessarily mean his life should be ruined.
I'm not even sure the kids mother, brothers, sisters, whatever, would want that, unless he truly is a monster, in which case I'm positive that they would.
I mean if my Father had one night where he went overboard, and the neighbors called the police, I wouldn't want him thrown in jail and his life ruined because he belted me ten times too many when I was being a little brat.
So what is the disconnect here?
That's disconnect number one, right there. Abused people frequently return to and side with their abusers. That doesn't make it okay. In fact, if anything it's a sign that you managed to abuse someone who was especially vulnerable and dependent on you.
I think it's that some people just think everything is child abuse, including a spank on the ass, so when they see `switch` marks left on the skin, that's Texas Chainsaw Massacre family to them, so Adrian Peterson should be publicly executed tonight with no trial. However, not everyone sees it like that.
You think that because you've decided that actually engaging anyone in a debate is hard, while freaking out over some imaginary straw man is so much easier. Lots of people on this thread have agreed that corporal punishment isn't necessarily bad, but that this clearly
wasn't corporal punishment. It was abuse, plain and simple. If you can look at those pictures and conclude that the 4 year old who had that inflicted on him wasn't abused, then that's the end of the discussion. Anyone who thinks that wasn't abuse is just not a good person and not someone that I wish to discuss this (or much of anything) with any further.
I don't want to defend Adrian Peterson's disciplinary action without all the facts, so I won't, but going back to physical discipline by itself, I actually kind of admire Fathers who still dish out a little ass whupping to their kids that are out of hand. Not with four year olds, but in general. I see in teenagers today the result of new-age American parenting and I see weak, soft, EFFEMINATE little boys that are one day going to make piss-poor examples of MEN, and these tender little things are probably going to be living in a far harder America than their parents were raised in.
And your dad felt the same exact way about you. And his dad felt the exact same way about him. Congratulations, you're participating in an exercise as old as civilization: guys thinking the next generation is too soft. They've pretty much always been wrong, just as you are now.
When I was growing up, there were three generations of men in my hours. My grandfather (who fought in WW2), my dad, and me. My grandfather thought my dad was soft, my dad thought I was soft, and they believed in corporal punishment so I received more than my share of it. Looking back, I don't agree with it: my kids will never fear me like I feared my dad. But I understand where my dad was coming from, and I don't begrudge him for being wrong in doing what he thought was best.
Like most posters in this thread, I don't think corporal punishment = evil = child abuse. When I first heard about the indictment, I assumed that it was some over-zealous prosecutor looking to make a name for himself by going ultra-PC on a celebrity. But the facts--and we have a lot of them--quickly revealed that initial assumption to be wrong. The kid was abused.
Personally, I'm glad that we've finally advanced to a place where it goes without saying that beating the **** out of your children is wrong and pointless.
There's actually "transgender reassignment" camps for boys under the age of ten in this country, where ultra open minded parents bring their 8 year old sons to dress up like girls and put on fashion shows. That never gets reported as child abuse, when in my mind it's as disturbing a case of child abuse as any outside the most extreme examples. If I had the choice, I'd much rather my Father gave me "the switch" than `transgender reassignment.
Citation needed. A google search for "transgender reassignment camp" yields exactly zero results.
Now let's pretend for the sake of the argument that you aren't talking out of your ass here. Even then: so what? Who cares? How does this affect you, and how is it even a little bit relevant to Adrian Peterson abusing his toddler son?
I think Adrian Peterson went overboard and it would be hard to reach any other conclusion, but I'm not ready to call him a "child abuser" just because he doesn't mean to raise one of those skinny jeans wearing miscreants I see lurking all over modern day suburbia.
He should and will suffer the penalty for a night of bad judgement. Should his entire life be taken from him? That remains to be seen.
So beating the **** out of a four year old is totally cool as long as it prevents him from wearing skinny jeans? You're a walking stereotype, and I really hope you don't have children.
On a side note, what facts are you waiting for? We saw exactly how badly the kid was beaten, and AP's acknowledged that he did it. We's given statements on exactly why he did it, and how he felt after the fact. Nobody's contesting what happened: the only point of contention coming from AP's people is whether or not his intentions justified it. Which has no impact at all on whether or not the kid was abused.
