French woman receives six-month suspended sentence for smacking her child

Screenshot from Council of Europe video "Raise your hand against smacking"

"Yes I was smacked and it never did me any harm. In fact I deserved it," said one caller to Jean-Marc Morandini's 'phone-in programme on Europe 1 radio on Thursday.

"Smacking is not the same as child abuse, don't try to exaggerate," said another.

Both were responding to comments by Morandini's invited guest, paediatrician Edwige Antier, who was on the show to talk about spanking and the need for a law in France to ban it.

Antier was defending a ruling earlier this week in which a court in northern France gave a woman a six-month suspended sentence and ordered her to receive psychological counselling, after finding her guilty of wilful violence towards a minor for having slapped her nine-year-old daughter.

The incident that led to the woman being found guilty dates back to last December.

As reported in the French media, the woman, who had apparently been drinking, slapped her daughter during an argument at home.

The girl ran out of the house and into the street where she was intercepted by a passerby who happened to be a social worker.

Seeing the state the girl was in, the social worker took her to the nearest police station.

Her mother was then brought in for questioning and charged.

"The punishment is totally out of proportion," said the woman's lawyer, Alice Cohen-Sabban, after the suspended sentence was handed down.

"She has never needed social services to intervene for anything, she has never been convicted and although she had been drinking when the incident happened she is not an alcoholic," Cohen-Sabban told Agence France Presse.

But that's not quite how Antier sees it - or any other case of smacking come to that.

And when Morandini asked her whether she found the ruling "normal" the 68-year-old, who is also a member of parliament for the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) and tabled a bill in 2009 to make domestic corporal punishment unlawful in France, was quite clear about where she stands.

"Imagine you were faced with someone you knew who was much larger than you and had been drinking, and they turned round and hit you," she retorted.

"Would you find that normal?

"The law as it stands at the moment gives a mother the right to hit a child, and even a babysitter, if the motive is 'an educational one'," she continued.

"But the mother should be a 'protector' and what's needed in France is a law, as exists in 18 other European countries, abolishing the right parents have to hit a child."

Not many of the callers to the programme seemed to agree with her.

Nor did a lot of the comments left on French websites such as that of Le Point or Radio France Internationale in reaction to the suspended sentence handed down to the woman and the issue of smacking in general.

Ranging from " it doesn't do any harm," through "limits need to be set and children have to be disciplined" to "the sentencing in this case will just do more harm than good to the family and especially the girl involved," it certainly seems as though Antier's views put her in the minority.

And that's perhaps not surprising as a poll conducted among health professionals in France just last year showed that 88 per cent of them were against the introduction of a law banning smacking.

Domestic corporal punishment, of which smacking is one form, is against the law in many European countries, but not in France.

In 2008 the Council of Europe launched its "Raise your hand against smacking campaign" and called on all member states to pass laws prohibiting all forms of corporal punishment of children, including smacking.

Quick end to striptease during French political party's evening entertainment

It's clearly not an easy job holding public office and refraining from "putting your foot in it" occasionally with a throwaway comment especially in these days when every remark can be picked up so easily on a mobile 'phone and quickly find its way to a wider audience via the Net.

Surely that's why advisors, spokespeople and spin doctors are on hand to ensure damage limitation when necessary.

And without question, putting politicians in a potentially compromising position is something organisers of any event to which they're invited strive to avoid.

Well you would think so, wouldn't you?

Somehow though that simple reality seemed to have escaped organisers of a soirée for parliamentary members of the ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) last week.

The party's good and great from both the National Assembly and the Senate were gathered for two days in Le Touquet in northern France to talk about matters political; planned reforms, economic growth and a whole host of other issues.

As is the case with such meetings it wasn't a matter of "all work and no play" with an evening's entertainment in one of the town's hotels being organised to which parliamentarians along with their wives, staff and journalists were invited.

As the weekly satirical newspaper Le Canard enchaîné, reports precautions were taken to ensure that there wasn't a repeat episode of what had happened just a few weeks earlier at the party's summer conference in Seignosse in southwestern France.

That was when the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, was captured on camera making what many in France considered to be a racist comment.

A lesson learned apparently as those attending the soirée were requested to leave their mobile 'phones in the cloakroom.

A move that was probably just as well given the circumstances because, as the newspaper reports, part of the evening's entertainment included a performance by "two superb creatures very skimpily dressed."

Yes someone had apparently booked a couple of strippers for the audience's enjoyment!

Now what had exactly been running through the minds of those who had arranged for the two young ladies to appear in the first place must of course be open to question.

But the reaction of those present was less than enthusiastic, says the paper with many, such as the party's secretary general Xavier Bertrand and the junior minister for housing, Benoist Apparu, more than "keeping their distance".

After less than 10 minutes though (thankfully) someone had the presence of mind to usher the two women out of the room, and they never returned.

So a potentially embarrassing incident avoided and nothing harmful that could have made its way to the Net, although the two women didn't seem to understand why they hadn't been allowed to continue their performance if what they're quoted by the newspaper as saying is anything to go by.

"We came from Paris and we had been booked for the whole evening," they said.

"And we had brought with us four suitcases packed with different costumes."

Local French politician caught napping

Oh dear, we've all been there haven't we?

Attending some meeting perhaps where the subject was as dry as stale bread, or back in our student days battling the heavy-lid syndrome as the lecturer attempted to bring new meaning to the word "boring".

Whatever the cause might have been, a quick forty winks when inappropriate never really used to be that embarrassing or much of a problem as there was usually a helpful person sitting next to you able to give a discreet prod when necessary.

But those days it seems are long gone, and the ease with which anyone can now take a compromising photo' or video with a mobile 'phone or digital camera and then distribute it on the Net leaves us all vulnerable.

And such perhaps, is the case with a certain local politician here in France, who was quite literally caught napping caught on the job..

Jean-Marie Albouy-Guidicelli is the deputy mayor of the town of Montereau-Fault-Yonne in the département of Seine-et-Marne, south east of the French capital.

At just 38 years of age, the member of the governing centre-right party, Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) is a busy man with a packed schedule; take a look at his website for proof of that.

A website that's evidence that he's more than aware of how he can promote himself via the Net and backed up by the fact that he can also be found on Facebook.

In other words Albouy-Guidicelli belongs to a generation which is certainly more than au fait with modern technology, its uses and abuses and its potential pitfalls.

Posted on the video hosting service site Dailymotion on Tuesday, the 42-second clip shows Albouy-Guidicelli losing the battle to concentrate during a meeting in the town hall.

Grosse fatigue pour le 1er adjoint de Montereau-Fault-Yonne
par HAUTEKIET

All right, so he doesn't have the profile of the interior minister Brice Hortefeux, who was captured on camera (a mobile 'phone) making what many in France consider to be a racist comment at the UMP’s summer conference at Seignosse southwestern France last week.

But perhaps the polemic that surrounded that particular incident might have encouraged Albouy-Guidicelli to be a little more vigilant.

Hortefeux, you might remember, was filmed saying to a young activist of Algerian origin, Amine Benalia-Brouch, in an apparent reference to North Africans that, "He doesn't match the prototype. We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."

The video inevitably found its way on to the Net and hit the headlines with opposition calls for the minister's resignation.



For his part, Hortefeux has not apologised for the remarks he made but has said that he "regretted" the resulting controversial and "unnecessary" debate that followed.