Corporal Punishment Controversy
In 1984, RCA assistant principal (and current school administrator) Dwight Ausley was found guilty of child abuse, after he paddled a ten-year-old student who failed to complete a homework assignment. School officials stated the paddling was due to the child's defiant behavior when confronted by the teacher and not due to the missed homework assignment. When the child's mother complained to then RCA principal Richard Tippett about the punishment of her child which left bruises for three weeks, Tippett responded by giving her a taped sermon by Pastor Randy Cox (then pastor of the church associated with Raleigh Christian Academy). In the sermon, Pastor Cox paraphrased a passage from the Bible by stating, "Better a son dead than disobedient." This account has been disputed by the school. During the trial, District Attorney Deborah Shandles stated that "the child lost his breath and lost his balance and he (Ausley) was so engrossed in the beating he did not notice.... He chose to beat a 10-year-old child to teach him a lesson he would not forget for a long time, all for a homework assignment. That is not an accident, that is malice."
On appeal, Ausley was found not guilty by an 11-1 vote. During the appeal, it was discovered that the noted bruising was in fact caused by corporal punishment administered post-incident at home by the child's own father. The superior court judge subsequently dismissed the case. The state appealed the dismissal which brought the case to the court of appeals. The appeals court upheld the superior court’s decision to dismiss all charges.
The school no longer uses employee-administered corporal punishment.
Read more about this topic: Raleigh Christian Academy
Famous quotes containing the words corporal, punishment and/or controversy:
“The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)