A Case Study included in a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch covered an “interview with Allison Guthrie (real name used with consent), Houston, Texas, February 18, 2008 (referring to events in a Dallas suburb)”:

Allison Guthrie, a recent high school graduate in the Dallas area, was paddled when she was 17. She was sent to detention three times in one week for being late, and was given the choice of in-school suspension or “swats”:

“The principal was male. I think he used to be the athletic director, he was maybe 300 pounds…. I had to get parental consent, my mom had to sign off on the swats. She actually came up to the school to sign off on that. She decided to leave it up to me, I guess she figured I could decide for myself….

“My mom left, and I went into the principal’s office and there was a female there, like a secretary, a female witness. He gave me a chair and said hold onto the chair. The paddle had holes in it. Then he just did three swats … I was hit on my buttocks…. There were holes in the paddle to make it go faster. There was a bit of a pause in between each swat. The whole thing was a minute. The principal didn’t say anything to me…. It hurt very much. There were definitely red marks and then swelling. I remember it being red on my buttocks. Almost welt-like markings. It didn’t last for more than a couple days….

“It was strange back then and it was even stranger when I got older. It was like, ‘Wow, you were a 17-year-old girl and got hit?’ But it was not out of the ordinary then because people got swats. It left me feeling very humiliated. I think there were several levels of emotion. Physical pain, mental humiliation. One, it felt a little unjustified-just for being late? And being a female at that age, it was like there was this older man hitting me on the butt. That’s weird.

Later in the report, she explains:

“It hurt very much. There were definitely red markings and then swelling. I remember it being red on my buttocks. Almost welt-like markings. It didn’t last for more than a couple days. It was painful to sit down immediately after.”

Other anecdotes from the same report include:

“One 19-year-old girl described why it was difficult to sit: “You know how when you bite your lip it swells up a little bit? Well, that’s how my butt felt.”" – Human Rights Watch interview with Brittany Y., who recently left high school, rural Mississippi, December 11, 2007.

“When a student is paddled, he or she is typically told to stand with his or her hands on a desk or a chair, so that the student is bent over, exposing the buttocks.” – Human Rights Watch interview with Nakia D., a twelfth-grade girl in rural Mississippi, December 4, 2007

“If students move during beatings they may receive additional blows and injuries. One eleventh-grade girl in Mississippi reported that in the course of a beating, her wrist was injured: “One time I got hit on my wrist with the paddle, and he told me, ‘I told you not to be sticking your hand back there.’ Well, I had my hands on the table and he was about to swing and hit me, and I reached back and he hit my arm with the paddle by mistake … it hurt!”" – Human Rights Watch interview with LaShell M., Mississippi Delta, December 4, 2007

“Another Mississippi girl told us, “[The principal] reared back and paddled me once and I stood up and he said, ‘No, bend over.’ And I said, ‘No, I can’t take no more-that really hurt.’… [H]e paddled me again.”" – Human Rights Watch interview with Brittany Y., who recently left high school, rural Mississippi, December 11, 2007

“One twelfth-grade Texas girl told us she had been paddled in eleventh grade for being tardy: “It seemed normal at the time, but now it seems weird that a man was hitting a teenage girl…. Well that’s just what I thought was supposed to happen. Weird to look back on it, though.”" – Human Rights Watch interview with Shannon Q., Midland, Texas, February 25, 2008

Another twelfth-grade girl echoed that sentiment: “Can you believe it, I got paddled by a male teacher? It was for little stuff, like talking out loud. – Human Rights Watch interview with Tammy K., Beaumont, Texas, February 19, 2008

The report also pictures a typical school paddle:

An item recalling her school days in Uganda by Lillian Ikulumet, by the local Observer newspaper on 15 November 2009:

Have you ever tried to remember some high school adventures? Some were so imprudent…

There was this Mathematics teacher at Ngora High School who was very tough. He made everyone coil in fear whenever he roared: “Go for prep!” Everyone trembled except my best friend, Nancy. Up to now I don’t know where she drew her courage from.

One evening after supper when it was…, oops, I just remembered I didn’t tell you his name! On second thought, let me keep it to myself. It’s a small world and you never know when I will need his help or service. Let’s just call him Amon in this story.

It was Amon’s week on duty. His weeks on duty were the worst ever because the school would be as silent as a grave. No one ever dared to speak because you never knew where he would come from to pin you down. Nancy came up with this idea of locking Amon in the dormitory and then teasing him to take his shirt off.

Like any brave leader, she called the shots and drafted the plan. All we had to do was follow her and we did like ants. The plan was to make as much noise as possible, which would draw Amon to the dormitory, then someone would lock the door from outside and the teasing would begin.

To be honest, I was scared to death. I had never been expelled but somehow something told me that I had to go down that road this time round. The plan worked flawlessly and the girls had a field day shouting all kinds of insults at the guy. But no one was showing their face. Did I mention that we first removed the bulbs? Yes, there was darkness everywhere.

When Nancy deemed it fit to stop, she ordered for the door to be opened. To my surprise, the outwardly tough Amon was a hollow shell deep down inside. He was speechless and the speed at which he went out, you would think he was Usain Bolt’s cousin!

But there is always a price to everything. Despite the fact that it was worth every fun, the one acre of potatoes that we had to weed, not to mention the canes we had to endure in front of the whole school, was too much a price to pay. As for Amon, he realised that one hundred mice could bring down a lion!

Every two years, the US Department of Education requires schools to submit details of the number of students receiving corporal punishment. The 2006 survey is the latest available online.

Corporal punishment is defined as “paddling, spanking, or other forms of physical punishment imposed on a student” and schools are instructed to “Count each student only once regardless of the number of times punished.”

The download page gives you access to Excel spreadsheets by State. One could play with them for hours, but a few interesting stats:

• 48,519 female pupils received corporal punishment nationwide in the 2005-6 school year

• assuming 175 days schooling a year and an even spread of punishments across the calendar, that’s at least 277 girls being punished per day (in reality probably more, as some will be punished several times per year but will only be reported once in the data)

• in Texas, one female student out of every 212 was paddled in the year – that’s 52 a day

If you download data for your State and have anything interesting to report, please email it to me via the Contact tab and I’ll add it to this post.

From a 2006 entry on the “Quit the City” blog, describing a vacation in Ethiopia:

Probably the most memorable occasion was our visit to the Hamer people, where we were lucky enough to see a ‘Bull Jumping’ ceremony. I was suspicious that the Hamer were putting on the ceremony for the benefit of tourists, but as soon as we arrived it was clear that was not the case. The ceremony is an initiation ceremony performed by men before they marry. The star of the occasion is the ‘jumper’ who… stark naked, attempts to run over several bulls lined up in a row, while the people of the village yell in support. The jumper is successful and is permitted to marry if he manages to run over the bulls four times without falling off…

Prior to the jumping, the other ‘event’ is the whipping of women. And I don’t mean a tongue lashing, I mean actual whipping with long, thin, flexible branches. Although the thorns are removed before the whipping takes place, by the end of the day backs are severely slashed…

The meaning of all this was explained to us as follows . . . The men doing the whipping are previous successful ‘jumpers’ who have, therefore, graduated to be to be ‘beaters’. The women being whipped are not randomly chosen, they are the female relatives of the jumper (sisters, nieces, cousins, aunts, mother). The more they are whipped, the more pain they suffer for him and the more he feels their pain. The jumper will never forget the whipping of his female relatives and so he will never forget them…

For the Hamer woman – the more she is whipped, the more she shows her love for the ‘jumper’. We saw women begging men to whip them and crying when the men refused or did not whip them hard enough… The whipping was brutal and not easy to watch.

Here’s a photo of a Hamer man with a whip used “for ritual flogging of women”, from Lonely Planet:

From Harper’s magazine, March 2004:

From interviews with Iranian brothel workers conducted by Roya Karimi-Majd forZanan, a women’s magazine published in Teheran…. Translated from the Farsi.

When I was in the fourth grade my mother died, and my father died when I was sixteen. My older brother took the other eight of us to Teheran to live with our half brother and his family in a couple of tiny rooms he rented in the Islamshahr district.

A couple of days after we arrived, I befriended a girl at the vegetable market. I went to her house, and she lent me a beautiful overcoat of hers to wear to the store. When we went out, everyone was staring at me—I had become pretty. That night my half brother, who worked in the same area, came home, ate dinner, and then beat me. He kept saying, “Two days you’ve been in Teheran and you’ve been corrupted! What were you wearing? You’ve ruined my reputation!”…

I was in so much pain that I couldn’t sleep. When the morning call to prayer sounded, I ran away. I said to myself, “I’ll go find my mother’s sister. I’ll go back to my hometown. I’ll find a husband and be free from all of them.” It was nighttime when I got to the southern bus terminal, and the tickets were sold out. I didn’t have much money, so I went into the bathroom, where a few other girls were sleeping.

I had just started to fall asleep when a loud sound awakened me. The religious police were conducting a raid, and they took us all to the police station. From there we were sent to court. I couldn’t understand a word of what the judge was saying. I was sleepy. I wanted to tell him what had happened, but I couldn’t. In the end he gave me a sentence: eighty lashes and a 30,000 toman fine [thirty-five dollars].

When they whipped me, it hurt… At first, I screamed out loud. Then I just bit down hard on the edge of my chador. I was an idiot. I was only sixteen years old. I was locked up for three months. I actually missed my half brother’s beatings.

A Gulf Times report from Qatar on 2 July 2006:

A 32-year-old Filipina housemaid was found guilty on Thursday of illicit relations and sentenced to 100 lashes and immediate deportation. While denying the charge of illicit relations, she admitted that she was the mother of a three-month-old baby.

According to her sponsor, he reported the matter to the police after he found a baby in her room last April. “She told me that the baby belonged to another Filipina maid who left Doha a few days earlier.”…

However, the maid told the police that she allowed her boyfriend into the house “many times”. She said the “father” of the child is now in the Philippines waiting for her to join him so that they can get married.