Letter to the Editor of the Ottawa Citizen, Re: Senate Passes Anti-Spanking Bill
by Elaine Njerve-Zack

"Why this bill SHOULD PASS IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND BECOME LAW!!"

Canada should ban corporal punishment of children because children are vulnerable and
deserve legal protection. There are twenty-three other countries that have banned
corporal punishment successfully. One of them is Norway and I'm Norwegian myself
and Norway has the highest standard of living. Here in the U.S.A., corporal
punishment is still legal and this is a country that is full of violence! NOBODY
deserves to be hit! ESPECIALLY a little child being hit by someone much bigger
than him or her. Think how scary that is! Think of someone twelve feet tall that's
hitting you as an adult? Spanking children will put fear in them along with
psycological problems as time goes on.

I can also speak for myself how corporal punishment during my childhood affected me in
many ways. It made me anti-social, it made me fear adults, I became severely
depressed which lead to a suicide attempt and affected intimacy in adulthood in my
marriage. The children I babysat for who were spanked where the most aggressive. The
children I babysat for that were NOT spanked was very easy to babysit for. Also,
spanked children can develop strange spanking fetishes.

If you care at all about children, you will make corporal punishment illegal in
Canada.

Thank you.