I was smacked as a kid – it’s a gateway to more severe abuse 

‘[My dad] then held [me] down on the floor and tried to hit him again with the rock. [Sibling] then came out and attempted to get [my dad] off [me]. [I] eventually managed to get up and he ran off down the road’

That’s an excerpt from a police report from 2015. I was being abused by my dad, and had been for years prior. 

I had a social worker, the school knew, the police knew, and there was suspected domestic violence noted on my medical record. Yet, nobody did anything.

After the incident in 2015, when I ran off down the road, I called on a neighbour to help me. I was hysterical, banging on their door mid anxiety attack, having thought a couple of minutes prior my life was about to end at age 13.

My neighbour’s response was something I’d heard countless times before. 

‘Have you been naughty?’ 

They called my mum. 

‘I think they’ve had an argument.’ 

I’d told them what had happened, but they knew my dad, and didn’t see him as some monster. 

He was a typical neighbour who’d do them casual favours, say hello in the morning and played the role of a happy family man to the outside world.

So they didn’t believe me, because according to him, he never did anything illegal. 

That’s why, when I read the details of the murder of Sara Sharif, my stomach churned. 

Her father, a man who tortured her for years, and brutally beat her – with her stepmother also found guilty of murder – admitted to slapping Sara, but denied beating her. 

When he called the police, after fleeing the country he said that he’d ‘legally punished’ Sara. He’d murdered her.

We like to think of child abusers as bogey men. The reality is much more sinister. They could be your neighbours, friends, co-workers, or family.

The law in England, in my view, facilitates these monsters in disguise. It’s legal to slap a child if it is a ‘reasonable punishment’.

There is no equivocation between the monstrous brutality that Sara faced, and a parent lightly slapping their child for misbehaving. That isn’t the point.

Throughout my years of abuse, it always boiled down to a classic ‘he said/she said’ scenario. My punishment wasn’t reasonable by any means, but who would you believe – a hysterical child, or a trusted neighbour, friend, or brother? 

I know that many of the people I tried to get help from would confidently say they’d believe the child. They didn’t believe me, and if they did, they didn’t do anything to help me. 

This is a well documented problem. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health describe the current laws on child smacking as ‘dangerously vague’. They say that the law creates a ‘grey area’, which adds ‘an extra layer of complexity when trying to identify cases of child abuse.’

Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, made a strong intervention at the beginning of the Sara Sharif murder trial. She said, ‘We have seen too many cases where children have been harmed and died at the hands of the people who should love and care for them most.

A ban on smacking is a necessary step to keep children safe and to stop lower-level violence from escalating.

This rings true for me. When I was younger, I was smacked for misbehaving. Both in public, and in private. Nobody batted an eyelid, because it was legal, and even normal.

As time progressed, things got worse. By my early teenage years,  the police had to be called on multiple occasions, usually as violence was escalating, and myself, my siblings, or my mum, feared for our lives. 

My dad would get arrested, leaving one of us battered and bruised. By the next morning, he’d be back at home like nothing had happened. He was never convicted, beyond one charge of criminal damage when he broke into the social housing we eventually escaped to.

This isn’t a rare case of abuse slipping through the net. 

Last month, the Office for National Statistics released findings that of the 1.4 million incidents of domestic abuse reported in England and Wales in the year to March 2024, there were only 39,000 criminal convictions. 

Like me, in the case of Sara Sharif, the police knew, her school knew, and social services knew. Bruises had been reported by her school, and neighbours recalled the ‘gut wrenching screams’ and ‘shockingly loud’ smacking they heard coming from the Batool household during the murder trial. 

She was left under the care of her killers, despite all of that.

The abuse I suffered is nothing compared to that of Sara Sharif. 

There is, however, one commonality. When children are abused, too often, there is no proper intervention. 

We have a culture where abusing children is normalised, and for me, that was because it is legal to slap children as ‘reasonable punishment’. 

The lack of clarity in the law meant my dad was always given the benefit of the doubt by family, friends, and neighbours. It meant that for years, I was locked in my bedroom and assaulted, consequently having anxiety attacks daily in school and turning to substances as a teenager to cope. 

Like Sara, those who were meant to protect me knew about my abuse. And like Sara, time and time again, nobody did anything. 

It’s not good enough for us to solemnly mourn yet another child, but take no action.

If you’re a parent who says you were hit as a kid, but turned out fine, I am relieved for you. 

Banning slapping isn’t calling into question your childhood and parents. Instead, it’s about safeguarding, and making it easier for schools, medical practitioners, and children’s social services to recognise and report incidents of child abuse.

According to the NSPCC, on average, 52 children were killed each year by assault or undetermined intent in the five years leading to March 2024. Child homicides are most commonly committed by parents or step parents. 

How many more are being seriously abused, yet falling through the cracks, is a mystery.

Any changes in the law and enforcement are too little too late for Sara and those 52 children. It would also be too little, too late to undo the damage that years of abuse inflicted on me. 

I’m certain, however, that if smacking was illegal and not so normalised, I could’ve been helped. I would’ve been more readily believed, and recognised earlier in my life that the abuse I faced was abnormal.

If we banned all forms of physical punishment, like the other 70 nations who have implemented the measure, and took allegations of child abuse more seriously, we could save countless children from a childhood of torment, and if they survive their abuser, a lifetime a trauma. 

In Sweden, where child smacking was banned, studies have revealed a ‘sharp decline in the more serious forms of physical punishment, such as punching or use of implements.’ 

We can achieve the same. It’s not too late to save other children from serious abuse. For other little children like Sara, we must act now, before it’s too late.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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