Local J.P. Sued for offering spanking punishment.
A local justice of the peace is being sued for offering spanking as a punishment in his courtroom.
The parents of a 15-year-old Los Fresnos girl is suing the judge for allegedly acting outside his authority. Efren has more details in our Fox 2 news top story.
Good evening, a Cameron County judge is being sued for his unorthodox approach to dealing with truant students, we get to the bottom of it.
Cameron County Pct. 6 justice of the peace Gustavo Garza is currently being sued by several families who are seeking his removal along with unspecified damages. They claim he does not have the right, as a Texas justice of the peace, to make parents discipline their children with a paddle in lieu of paying a monetary fine.
“The family code says that it is the duty of the parent to reasonably discipline the child.”
However, this is not always easy. Garza explains that this all evolved out of Los Fresnos parent’s fear of disciplining their children.
“Discipline them, I can’t, ill get arrested.”
Judge Garza claims that this allows parents to reclaim the reins from their children, unfortunately his brand of castigation is not being warmly received by all.
“I’m surprised that parents complained, as you can see I’m here with const… ask them if anyone is forced.”
At no point is any parent forced to spank their child. they are given the option to pay the $500 fine for their child’s truancy ,also known as failure to attend school, or they can choose to spank their child. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday morning.
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This judge has some serious mental problems for having a girl be spanked with a paddle in front of guys and other people. At least no one should of seen this, when people think of spanking, they also associate it with sex, i am woundering about if this judge is perverted or just has some mental problems. Personally, i think any person who hits kids that arent theres, has a big problem, along with Judges, Police men, Teachers, Principals, people who propose laws to beat kids as a punishment and anyone else who likes to hit kids that arent theres is a discrace to our society and vigalantes should take action, or stop hitting kids.
“Spanking”, “beating” and “hitting” are totally different things and no one is doing either of the latter. This is about corporal punishment by parental figures, Truth; there’s no one “beating” kids who don’t belong to them in this story.
And frankly, the JP is right:
This is really unseemly and reckless. Judge Garza should be advised that there is a black market for images of minors (teenage girls especially) being spanked. If one of his courtroom paddlings ever gets recorded on a cell phone or something and the video gets out, the victim will have a cause of action that will make the current lawsuits look like a walk in the park.
Besides, this form of punishment is arguably unconstitutional because its impact is not gender-equal. Unlike boys, girls would have to reveal intimate personal information to avoid the chance of the beating being compounded by menstrual discomfort. Hardly seems fair, anyway.
As much as people cry foul over the use of “beating” in talking about this, Webster’s dictionary will back me up. (As for “hitting,” I think if a student whacked of one his classmates five times hard with a wooden plank, wouldn’t school rules against hitting apply?)
im an 8th grader at middle school in Atlanta Ga. I have been spanked 4 times by the vice principal. Spanking is better than detention because its over with, but i dont think the school should tell my parents .
This Judge has every right to give these parents A CHOICE. These parents are obviously working a lot or have better things to do than worry about their children’s lives and education. If working a lot is the cause of the obliviousness then they should have the money…if not they DO have another choice…they do not have to BEAT their children, a simple swat should do the trick…Had they been better parents and were involved in their child’s life they would one, know that their child is skipping school and could have done something about it, and two, would have been disciplining their children so this would not have happened.