Before I even get started, I must warn you that the video included with this post is disturbing. In it, you'll see Anthony Sanchez beating his 10-year-old stepson Zach with a belt while they're playing a game of catch in their backyard. You'll also hear the person who got the whipping on camera, Oscar Lopez, who happens to be the neighbor from the house in the back.
After yelling for Sanchez to stop the beating, Lopez uploaded the video to YouTube. Sanchez, a California elected official, was eventually arrested on suspicion of felony child abuse and released from jail after posting $100,000 bond on Friday. He promptly resigned his position as water agency director.
Spanking is not against the law in California, even if you use something other than your hand to do it. So the question is, did Sanchez go too far?
Read more in ¿Qué más?: Should schools NOT be allowed to spank our children?
Honestly, I don't know. Before you go thinking I'm a child abuser myself, I must clarify that this incident brings up a lot of questions besides the actual spanking. The main one, at least for me, is whether Lopez had the right to be chismoseando what his neighbors were up to. Not to mention his decision to actually upload the video to YouTube for everyone to see.
I'm in no way condoning what Sanchez was doing to his stepson, but I am saying that how we decide to discipline our children is a very private matter. While I'll admit to spanking my children on more than one occasion, I've never ever used anything other than my hand and it's always been more for the shock value than to inflict any kind of pain. However, the way I discipline them is really nobody's business.
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Having said that, I will never stand for any type of child abuse. And yet, I can't imagine Lopez being privy to all that went on in his neighbor's backyard just by watching the spanking from the window of his house. While I wasn't there, I find it hard to believe that it was prompted by the boy dropping the ball during their game of catch.
Would you get involved if you saw a dad beating his son with a belt?
Image via NBC
