Gavin Foster
The fight by Christian Education South Africa (Cesa), a fundamentalist Christian schooling group, to reverse the ban on beating schoolchildren suffered a setback on Monday when a Durban school worker was convicted of common assault.
After convicting Valerie Ryan (48), magistrate SJ Mayeza discharged her with a caution, saying Ryan believed her actions were legal, and she probably wouldn’t do it again.
But the trial was not really about Ryan. It was about Cesa and what its members feel is an infringement of their constitutional right to freedom of religious belief. Cesa maintains that its members’ right to administer corporal punishment, which it calls ”biblical correction”, is clearly spelt out in the Bible. Proverbs 23 verses 13 to 14 instructs believers to ”withhold not correction from the child, for if thou shall beat him with the rod he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”
When corporal punishment was outlawed in schools on January 1 1997, Cesa, which represents 209 schools, applied to the Constitutional Court. Judge Pius Langa rejected the application. ”If they [teachers] choose to take the risk of beating children knowing full well that the provision’s constitutionality is under challenge then there should be no complaint if appropriate consequences follow their deliberate conduct,” he said.
Ryan’s conviction arose from an incident at Pinetown’s Highway Christian Academy in March when a 13-year-old grade eight girl was given two strokes on the buttocks.
After corporal punishment was outlawed, Cesa schools asked parents to sign a document authorising staff to administer corporal punishment whenever it was deemed necessary. The parents of the girl beaten by Ryan claimed that although they had signed the document, they had told the school principal, Chris Barnard, that if their daughter was to be beaten they should be advised in advance.
Barnard was away when the pupil was caned. Although Ryan has a standard seven education and is employed as a monitor (unqualified teaching assistant) it was felt her experience as a mother and grandmother qualified her to carry out the punishment.
The ”corporal correction report” that the child took home afterwards recorded that her response to correction had been ”screaming, shouting, trying to run from the room”. When the parents read the report and saw their child’s heavily bruised buttocks, they laid a charge of assault against Ryan.
The prosecution, after reviewing the circumstances surrounding the charges, declined to prosecute, believing that the indemnity signed by the parents made the beating legal. It was only when the Human Rights Commission intervened a few months later and pointed out that no person may sign away the rights of a child that the docket was reopened and justice took its course.
Cesa and Highway Christian Academy declined to comment on Ryan’s conviction. Ryan’s lawyer has been instructed to appeal.