{"id":206414,"date":"2017-10-20T08:03:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T06:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=206414"},"modified":"2017-10-20T15:46:05","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T13:46:05","slug":"you-can-now-expect-jail-time-for-smacking-your-child-in-south-africa-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/lifestyle\/206414\/you-can-now-expect-jail-time-for-smacking-your-child-in-south-africa-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Landmark judgment rules against smacking your child in South Africa: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following a landmark judgement, the High Court has ruled that parents who smack their children will no longer be able to plead special defence in court if criminally charged.<\/p>\n

According to a report by IOL<\/a><\/strong>, the court on\u00a0Thursday ruled that the defence of ‘reasonable chastisement’ is not in line with the constitution and no longer applies in law.<\/p>\n

The judgment did not create a new offence – as hitting a child has always been assault under the country\u2019s criminal law – however, it was previously possible for a parent who smacked a child to raise a special defence of reasonable chastisement to plead.<\/p>\n

Parents stood to be acquitted of assault if they could prove that the chastisement was moderate and reasonable.<\/p>\n

However, Judge Raylene Keightley found that this defence that allowed parents to physically discipline their children, was inconsistent with the constitution.<\/p>\n

The judge emphasised that the intention was not to charge parents with a crime, but to rather guide and support parents in finding more positive and effective ways of disciplining children.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany parents may believe they they are behaving reasonably,” said Keightley.<\/p>\n

“However, given the levels of child abuse and domestic violence in our country, it is likely that many a child is subjected to levels of physical punishment that, regardless of their parents\u2019 belief, they are unable to withstand.”<\/p>\n

She concluded that she could find no reasonable justification to permit parents to assault their children for disciplinary purposes.<\/p>\n

The judgment arose from an appeal by a father who had been convicted of assault for beating his 13-year-old son in a manner which exceeded the bounds of reasonable chastisement, reports IOL.<\/p>\n

After accusing the child of watching pornographic material on the family iPad the father gave him a severe hiding, resulting in his son suffering several bruises.<\/p>\n

The lower court earlier postponed the passing of sentence against the father for a period of five years.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0These are the most feared crimes in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following a landmark judgement, the High Court has ruled that parents who\u00a0hit their children have no special defence – even if the if the chastisement is “reasonable”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":86856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9876],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-206414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206414"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206639,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206414\/revisions\/206639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}