Can you sue your parents for Physically Disciplining you?

Can you believe that 80% of Malaysian and Singapore children have been physically disciplined at one point in their life? Okay, while that statistic may not be entirely true, that number doesn’t surprise anyone. The vast majority of us have either been hit, slapped, caned, whipped or perhaps a painful combination of all of them at some point while growing up. While the relationship between a parent and child is a private one, under what authority is a parent allowed to physically discipline and even at times cause harm to their child in the name of “teaching” them.

WHY LIKE THIS?

We all know if you physically harm another person that it amounts to an offence, and the same is extended if you physically discipline another parent’s child. You would be penalised under Section 321 of the Malaysian Penal Code, so long as the harm was voluntarily done. That person could be sentenced to imprisonment for more than an entire year and / or up to a fine of more than RM2,000 as stated under Section 324 of the Malaysian Penal Code. However, if every parent who physically disciplined their child was penalised, we may need to build about 100 more prisons.

This is not to say that all parents are automatically immune from being punished, many parents even in Asian countries are arrested for physically abusing their children. Colloquially, the word ‘abuse’ tends to speak measures of the severity of the conduct; very few would consider a slap abuse, but the line may be blurred slightly if we were to talk about caning or whipping with a belt, both of which are common forms of disciplining in Asian households. The definition of abusing a child varies from country to country; in America it is a simple slap on the face amounts to child abuse where the child can call Child Protective Services (“CPS”) and have their parents arrested, something we Asian kids could only dream of doing. In Malaysia and Singapore, caning is an incredibly, dare I say, popular form of punishment where sometimes parents even throw in an element of psychological torture by letting the child pick their own item to be hit with. It is considered normal and a generally accepted parenting method.

THE BIG QUESTION

Now for the question we have all been wondering, can I threaten to get my parents arrested so that I won’t get smacked ever again (or would that result in an even greater ass-whooping)? This begs the question, where does physically disciplining a child stop and abuse begin? The key phrase that always follows this question is “reasonable and appropriate physical force.” So long as it was not objectively an excessive amount of force, then it would be considered strict parenting and not abuse. Honestly, this dichotomy is arbitrary in nature; as what amounts to reasonable to one person may not be to another, ultimately resulting being up to the officer or judge to decide whether or not it classifies as abuse.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

In Malaysia, the Child Protection Act 2001 is the authority that governs any form of physical harm to children. As the name suggests, the Act aims to protect children from being abused. The ambit of the statute is surprisingly wide, as Section 2 defines a child as anyone under the age of 18 years old! (`How I wish I had known about this sooner). Section 31 of the Act states that is any person having the care of a child (a parent) abuses or exposes the child in a manner likely to cause him PHYSICAL injury may be liable for a fine of RM20,000 and / or imprisonment for up 10 years. So to summarize, you could sue your parents for hitting you as they voluntarily intended to cause you harm and exposed you to physical injury. So the next time your parents threaten to hit you, send them this article and they may just let you off with a stern warning (shameless promotion).

While on paper this sounds great, in reality, it is unlikely that the courts or even the arresting officer would entertain a complaint of a simple slap for your misbehaving, as opposed to a substantial and long term case of abuse. The courts would be hesitant to open the (famous) floodgates of litigation and allow for parents to be criminally charged for physically disciplining their child, because let’s face it, almost everyone would go to prison. Now the next time your parents are about to physically discipline you, tell them about Section 31 and see what happens, you may end up not getting hit at all or getting hit twice as much, do so at your own risk.