INDEPTH: SPANKING
Spanking in Canada: A timeline
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) News Online, January 28, 2004
April 18, 2003
Former nun Lucille Poulin is released from jail after serving eight
months for beating several children at a religious commune on P.E.I.
Some people on the Island say they're worried that she will violate
her parole conditions. She was also ordered not to live with or care
for anyone under 14 for three years after being released.
November 8, 2002
Lucille Poulin is sentenced to eight months in jail and three years
probation for assaulting five children who lived at a religious
commune in Hazel Grove, P.E.I. During the trial, Poulin said
sections of the Bible suggest using beatings to discipline children
and to dissuade them from evil.
October 25, 2002
78-year-old Lucille Poulin - a religious commune leader in Prince
Edward Island who disciplined children by beating them with a wooden
paddle - is found guilty of five counts of assault. Justice David
Jenkins says the use of "the rod" went beyond spanking, to beating
the children. He said he believed the testimony of five children,
who said the beatings left them with bruises and led them to pass
out. Poulin said she was just doing what God told her to do.
July 12, 2002
In a second spanking case related to the Aylmer, Ont., Church of
God, a family comes under investigation for its disciplinary
practices. The family is called to the offices of the local
Children's Aid Society for questioning. In a previous interview with
CBC TV, the mother said that a strap is used only as a last resort,
and that her children know the discipline is given with love.
January 26, 2002
Ontario Court of Appeal upholds Section 43 of the Criminal Code,
saying parents and teachers need the option to be able to use
physical force in disciplining children.
November 26, 2001
Five children taken into custody by the Children's Aid Society of
Windsor are returned to their parents. The children had been beaten
at their fundamentalist Christian school. The CAS says it will stay
involved with the children and the school and may offer counselling
on alternative forms of discipline.
November 23, 2001
The Children's Aid Society in Windsor, Ont., seizes five children
from a fundamentalist Christian school. The teenage daughter of the
school's supervisor said that students were being beaten with a rod.
July 6, 2001
A pastor from the Church of God in Aylmer, Ont., defends members of
his church who reportedly beat their children. Four boys and three
girls were removed from the family home by Ontario's Family and
Children's Services, which says the youngsters must be protected
from being regularly hit with belts, sticks, chains or other
objects.
September 10, 2001
Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and the Law goes to the
Ontario Court of Appeal to contest the July 2000 decision of an
Ontario Superior Court to uphold Section 43 of the Criminal Code of
Canada.
July 2000
Ontario Superior Court Justice David McCombs upholds Section 43 of
the Criminal Code and says parents and teachers need the option of
using some "limited" physical force in disciplining children.
2000
Israel outlaws the use of corporal punishment against children.
1998
A youth advocacy group files application in Ontario Court, General
Division, to have section 43 of the Criminal Code of Canada declared
unconstitutional. The Canadian Foundation for Children, Youth and
the Law argues that corporal punishment infringes on children's
rights to protection and security under sections 15 and 7 of the
Charter. The group says physical punishment is ineffective and
serves only to teach physical aggression to children.
1995
American tourist David Peterson is acquitted of spanking his
five-year-old daughter in a London, Ont., parking lot after she
closed the car door on her brother's hand.
1979
United Nations International Year of the Child
1969
Finland outlaws the use of corporal punishment against children.
1892
Corporal punishment introduced to Canada, modelled after British
law.
