The digital universe is full of viral videos of adults beating children. I view them warily, alert for triggers that catapult me back into the days of being viciously beaten by my adoptive mother, the wife of a Pentecostal preacher with a penchant for sadistic violence in the name of “discipline.”
This latest video of a father, Greg Horn, beating his daughters with a cable cord for sneaking out of the house and for “twerking”—performing a popular sexually suggestive dance—zaps me to my childhood like a time machine. Watching the father heap unthinkable abuse on his own children, young girls in need of dialogue, firm and gentle guidance from a nurturing adult, renders me speechless.
This is how my adoptive mother used to whip me. Sometimes I was naked. “I’m not whipping no clothes,” she’d say. I can still see myself, like the two girls in this video, backed into a corner, small and quaking at the hatred she spewed with her hands and her mouth.
When I watched this horrible video, my fingers found their way to my right cheek, where the scars my adoptive mother inflicted feel like fleshy Braille, conveying coded messages of abuse that I see in the mirror on my face, legs, arms, and back. So many whippings. So many whippings I can’t even count. So many scars. Some of them have faded. Others I’ll die with.
As a young girl, I was not allowed to dance in my adoptive mother’s home–that would have been a reason for a beating. In the Pentecostal religion, dancing and listening to rap and other kinds of music was forbidden, viewed as “worldly” and ungodly.
But beating me with an extension cord until welts formed, until my skin was broken was somehow seen as okay in my home and in the larger black community I belonged to.
For all the people who think that it’s okay to beat a child with a cord, take a look at my scars. Look at them. Look at them real good.
Today I am 35 years old, and these scars have been with me since age 7, when my adoptive mother flailed away at me with a cord, much like the father did in that video. The night she scarred my face is a night that I’ll never forget: the screaming, the pleading, the stinging, the smell of my own flesh burning, the electricity ripping through my body. The sound of that cord cutting the air. Me kicking up my legs to try to block the blows. Me saying, “Stop mommy! I’m sorry mommy! I won’t do it again mommy!” Her grunting, yelling, breathing hard, spitting from her mouth, her voice sounding like a demon.
Every time I got whipped with an extension cord, the one thought that went through my mind was: I cannot survive this.
Why do we do this to our children? Beat them and scar them like slaves? And why do we call this good parenting? Why do we say things like “we need more fathers like Greg Horn?”
Every morning, when I look at my scars, I never say, “I’m glad my mamma whipped me,” or “I’m grateful that she beat me like that,” or “those whoopings kept me out of jail,” or “they made me the good person that I am today.” I don’t look at these scars and think, “This was love. This was discipline. Those beatings kept be from being beaten by the police or killed by some white person,” as I hear so many black folks say as a way to justify such cruelty against their children.
Getting whipped with a cord didn’t make me respect my adoptive mother. They were the ultimate breach of trust. The beatings put distance between us. They made me fear her. Hate her. Want to kill her. They didn’t teach me right from wrong. They taught me not to get caught doing wrong and they taught me early on that violence was the way to solve conflict instead of using critical thinking skills and proper communication. The beatings almost taught me to expect violence and to normalize it.
Ultimately, those beatings drove me to run away from my adoptive parents’ home and into the foster care system like legions of other abused black children who enter care. And far too many are becoming “crossover youth,” foster kids who end up in the juvenile justice and then the adult prison system. So if you think beating a child with a cord is good parenting, then don’t be surprised if your child ends up in one of these systems.
I watch this latest video and wonder what these girls are thinking, what they’re feeling toward their father. I wonder whether he is reacting to the unsettling sight and thought of his young daughters flaunting their budding sexuality, over-reacting horribly to what might be considered a normal source of discomfort. Or is he, like my adoptive mother was, an evil monster who can’t control his own responses, emotions, fears or frustrations?
I don’t know what the girls’ mother is like, but reportedly she saw the video online and called the police on her ex, the father. He has been indicted on charges of corporal punishment, as he should be. I applaud this mother’s actions even as she is being castigated by many people who think that she was wrong for calling the police on yet another black man who will likely do time.
As someone who miraculously managed to survive this kind of torture, I cannot for the life of me understand how anybody can rationalize this kind of behavior. These videos are often trailed by long comments on social media and Facebook threads where many people blame and insult the children. In the case of this “twerking” video, there were so many folk commenting that they were “little whores” and “bitches” that my stomach turned.
I drew from the well of my memories to put myself in those girls’ place. I knew their pain. Understood their jumbled emotions. Tasted their fear. Fingertips dancing over the legacy of hateful abuse that destroyed my childhood and marred my appearance.
No child deserves that kind of torture, regardless of what the parent (or abuser) might say to justify their choices, their lost control, anger management issues, and the unresolved pain and traumas they’re now inflicting on another generation. Children need guidance, not violence. Love, not lashings. Every child needs and deserves to feel safe in their homes. Safe, not scarred like me and Greg Horn’s daughters.
Dear One,
I am so sorry for your past suffering and the scars you carry as a reminder of your tortured history. No child should have to live through such madness and violence at the hands of adults.
Thank you for your courage to share your story and I pray for the many blessings God has for you.
All the best,
L. Fortune
Thank you for writing this.
Peace beloved,
I too was whippes by my mom, not with cords, but with leather belts. And I have always stated that beating your child in order to get them to do what you want them to do is a slave mentality. Thanks for sharing…
Peace be with you…
Thank you for having the courage to speak out! While I don’t have similar physical scars I do have emotional and sexual scars, and it was just forced execution style ritual nudity, and sexual exposure to an opposite gender parent, and a hand!
thank you for speaking out. many of us carry the scars and the memories.
thank you for writing this.
Just HORENDOUS that individuals believe that beating a teen with a cord is somehow okay. One has to wonder what is going on in their house with their children. Your story touched my heart and I just wanted to say how much it meant to read it and for you to share. It is a powerful message because it is the truth beating or spankings only teaches violence and hate, when children need is guidance and motivation to do the right thing.
Oh this is so sad.
Even the comments make me sad.
I had good and loving parents. I wish everyone did.
I picked up your book from the library, thinking it would give me some insight on my adoptive grandchild. It touched my heart and made me think of my own abusive childhood. Yes, now as an adult, my sisters and I once thought that the physical, verbal and emotional abuse heaped upon us by our single parent mother made us better people. We failed to get the counseling needed to deal with our past and sadly, used some of those same abusive techniques on our own children. Not to the same degree, but still enough to make me ashamed as I listen to my daughter speak of her past and hear her pain. Today, counseling helps us deal with our past and vow that that beautiful little girl, adopted into our lives, will never, ever experience the past that we had.
Thank you for your story.
Hi Dawn,
Thanks so much for your note and for visiting Spare The Kids. I’m glad to hear that my book gave you some insight into raising up your precious grandchild and that you were able to find wisdom and healing in the pages! I’m even more happy that you and your daughter found the courage to face the past and to move beyond old hurts and wounds. Because you did the hard work, you will pass on to your granddaughter, not scars and pain and more trauma, but a healthy sense of herself and what truly loving relationships should be. She will move through childhood to adulthood with her soul intact. The world thanks you for that!
Come back and visit the site often.
Much love!
S. Patton
How sad 🙁 Hopefully your story, articles and website will raise awareness and get more people to rethink their belief systems about beating children… come up with some other way to punish them than beating them like a runaway slave.
By the way, both the father (when arrested), and the girls said the beating was NOT for “twerking” as reposted all over the web, but instead for leaving the house without permission. I did a bit of investigation into Greg Horn and found out some pretty disgusting things about this guy.
It is my opinion that this man should never have been given unsupervised visitation with the girls since he’d already been arrested for child abuse and was on probation from that charge when this incident occurred. Here is a link to the story I did. Dad Who Beats Daughters for Twerkin Arrested for Child Abuse
I am late coming into this discussion. Having just viewed the video when a friend sent it to me a week ago. I was disheartened to find out how many black folks condoned this man’s action. Just to clarify 2 months after this happened. These girls were NOT twerking, their father beat them for sneaking out of the house. The mother saw the bloodied open wounds on the thighs of her daughter after they came back home and she called the police.
It is sad that black folks continue to beat their kids and call that discipline. The word discipline means to ‘teach’. Punitive means to punish.. Black folks need to learn the difference. When they are beating their kids, they aren’t ‘teaching’ them anything, they are punishing them.
It’s sad that for black folks, the first go-to method for raising kids, is violence. Whether it is yelling, or hitting, black folks as a rule tend to behave violently towards their kids. They think kids are supposed to be little robots who don’t ever put a foot in the wrong. They expect kids to be perfect little angels, when they themselves aren’t perfect angelic adults.
I can’t tell you how many times, I’ll see black parents yelling, pinching, hitting a little toddler for running in the store, just being a baby. Maybe the toddler is tired, agitated, hungry. But they don’t understand that.
Black people in my opinion as a whole make the worse parents because yes, they BEAT the crap out of their kids as a way to deal with them. They think talking to kids is being wimpy.
All of this is based on religious beliefs and since religion was used to condone and explain slavery it is the culprit of it all. Religion condones beating kids. Religion was used to justify slavery and how slaves were treated and punished. Religion is the culprit behind this mindset.
Black folks need to break free of this mindset and stop beating the crap out of their kids.
It doesn’t teach them anything productive. It doesn’t guarantee to prevent them from engaging in any negative behavior.
Stop with the, “I was beat down’ but I turned out OK’. That doesn’t negate the fact that beating a kid to get them to do what you want is poor parenting. That’s like saying I smoked cigarettes but I didn’t get lung cancer’. So what, you’re an exception and that doesn’t negate the fact that there is a direct correlation between lung cancer and smoking.
Same with corporal punishment. Extensive studies have already proven that there is a direct correlation between beating and abusing a kid and the negative effects it can have on that kid. And they are many, ranging from outright violence, to low self esteem, fearful, and many other emotional, psychological physical negative effects that can plague a child to adulthood to the grave for life.
But black folks as a whole still insists on beating the crap out of their kids for every little infraction. Black folks are desensitized to abuse. They’ve normalized it and have a Stockholm syndrome like mentality when they glorify the parents that beat the crap out of them, instead of realizing that their parents had issues and were sadistic.
It is NOT ok to beat the crap out of your kids…. Pick up a parenting book, learn some skills on how to be an effective parent. Just because you can ‘breed a kid’ into the world, doesn’t automatically make you a good parent. That is a learned behavior. Stop blindly doing what your parents did before you and grandparents did. Break the abusive slave mentality cycle.
In fact, just ask any prison inmate or runaway, or girl dancing on the pole, you’d probably get over 50% who say they were whipped at home. And what good did it do them.
Wake up black folks… Wake the hell up!
All of this. So much this. Thank you.
Any parent that abuses a child is void of skills. In my opinion, that parent is also suffering from residuals of some type of past trauma experience. Unfortunately people are not given psychological exams prior to becoming parents, and they ignorantly continue the sick cycle that they became familiar with as children. Websites like this is great to educate, but I wonder if the ones who truly need the help will ever see this site. Much work is needed if we are to save the children! To save the children requires saving the parents too! A lot has been said about black children and abuse, and I realize that this site is specifically tailored for black parents and children, but many children of many colors are at rist. Blacks are not the only parents who abuse their children.
I am proud of the work that you are doing, it is truly needed!