Things weren't so different when I was growing up in the United States, frankly. In the 1960s and '70s, the idea that you should hit your kids was pervasive. Pastors in the mainstream Baptist churches I attended with my family would even preach from the pulpit that God wants you to hit your kids. Says so right in the Bible, eh?

My dad tried, but he just couldn't do it. So I'm very grateful for that.

I was, however, badly beaten several times at my private Christian school before I even turned 12. Pants down, alone in a room with a large man, beaten with a wooden paddle that had holes cut in it to make it more painful.

My parents knew and did nothing to stop it.

The thing is, I was a very good student and I was not a behavior problem. It's just that any minor infraction of any rule added up and eventually resulted in a beating. Because God says so. 🙄

Just another reason I have come to understand that Evangelical Christianity is a despicable religion. These monsters still preach from the pulpit but that it's necessary to beat your children.

And they often continue beating children in their own private schools.

I didn't even think about what happened to me as a small child as abuse. Until quite recently.

It never occurred to me that a small child should not be physically afraid of his teachers, afraid of being sent to that small room, forced to pull my pants down, and be savagely beaten.

In that sense, you were stronger than I was. I accepted my abuse for years, thinking that I was at fault, and that being beaten was the way things should be.

Thanks for sharing your story! More people need to understand.