Riding crop mother has her day in court, again

this from big news

Dave writes: "As some people are expecting me to write about the riding crop mum of Timaru (and I wish people would stick to the facts and desist from calling it a horse whip), who was back in court on assault charges, I may as well.

As readers will know, I was a aware of the charges, in fact I blogged about them in July last year. That's how long it has taken to come to court. Public Address blogger Russell Brown criticises my earlier post:

the account of the third-party witness, who has no reason to lie, directly contradicts the account relayed by Dave Crampton on some key points. Hopefully he'll now stop depicting these people as victims of their terrible children and think a bit harder about the violence in this family.

Actually, the account of the witness doesn't contradict my key points. Thats because the witness didn't witness the woman assaulting the boy.Neither did he witness the boy punching his mother in the face and breaking her nose at the start of this whole sorry episode. He witnessed the father assaulting the boy, and that father pleaded guilty to assault, as he should.

What Russell Brown hasn't mentioned is the following, much is (apparently) in the summary of facts but not in the media report he relies on: The teenager (aged 16 or 17) was on an access visit. He punched his mother in the face and broke her nose prior to all this happening, resulting in his mother getting ACC. He was was charged with assault but Police decided not to pursue it and let him off with a formal warning, reasons of which are suppressed. Charges were laid against the mother but police withdrew the charges when they found out what her son had done, but the crown relaid them after what was most probably political and CYF pressures after the boy got his warning.

Furthermore, the man who witnessed the stepfather's assault on the boy has said that the woman didn't exactly do anything to stop the assault - but would you if your nose had just been broken? Russell has criticised the woman, alleging that she is a bad parent for not doing anything to stop the beating, even questioning why she did not call out for her partner to stop.[This has since been refuted in comments by the woman herself].

Russell has criticised the actions of both parents, but not the teenager. Why? I don`t condone the actions of the stepfather either, but if Russell's son was in the care of a former partner or CYFs and came home on an access visit, broke his nose, spat blood in his face, assaulted his partner, kicked him and swore at him, what would he do - give him a hug and play this on his stereo?"