Deborah Coddington: Anti-smack campaign fails to pack a punch

First, a disclaimer. I have a submission before the Justice and Electoral Select Committee in favour of Sue Bradford's Crimes (Abolition of Force as a Justification for Child Discipline) Amendment Bill.

Removing Section 59 from the Crimes Act, which allows the defence of reasonable force, is controversial, but I believe that when an assault case comes to court, a child is entitled to the same legal regime as an adult.

But if I learned one thing as an MP, it was the value of listening to others' arguments.

Thus, with great interest, I anticipated the visit to New Zealand of Swedish lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson, brought out by a lobby group, Section 59 Coalition, to oppose Bradford's Bill.

This group includes Bob McCroskie's Family First Lobby, Craig Smith's Family Integrity, Act deputy leader Dr Muriel Newman's Centre for Political Debate, Panic, Garth McVicar's Sensible Sentencing Trust, Society for the Promotion of Community Standards and Christine Rankin's For the Sake of Our Children Trust. Harrold-Claesson was billed as "the most qualified person ever to speak on the effect of Sweden's smacking ban on that country's social fabric".

And she seemed a heavy-weight: founding chair of the Nordic Committee for Human Rights, with direct experience of Sweden's anti-smacking legislation "savagely chewing up many children and families, leaving a trail of permanent damage". Harrold-Claesson claims that Swedish parents are "terrified of their children", and since smacking was banned (she says in 1979), parents have been arrested and charged for "minor" technical assaults. She has written that authorities use anti-smacking laws to remove children from mothers because Sweden no longer has compulsory sterilisation.

But hurrah for National MP Katherine Rich, who did what too many of us in the media failed to do - she checked out Harrold-Claesson's credentials. They are not great, as demonstrated by email after email to Rich from Swedish academics, lawyers, and researchers. I quote samples.

Law Professor Christian Diesen of Stockholm University: "She is not a member of the Swedish Bar Association and not qualified to appear as an appointed defence lawyer in criminal cases. Approximately 7000 cases [of beating children] are reported each year, but only 10 per cent lead to prosecution... It is fair to say that the police show discretion (in fact, too much discretion in my opinion), and it is only in cases when the parent admits the crime that he or she will be fined if dealing with a one-off light smack. Only denied cases with injuries that require medical treatment are brought to court."

Dr Stina Holmberg, criminologist and head of the National Board for Crime Prevention: "I had never heard of Ruby Harrold-Claesson, even though I have been working somewhat in this field. I googled him [sic] and he seems to be some kind of weird doctrinarian... Overall violence against children is not severely punished in Sweden. Charlotta Lindell at the University of Linkoping studied 145 police reports about violence against children from 1986 to 1996 [and] 29 of them led to prosecution. In four cases the perpetrator got a prison sentence... Almost all the families in the study had social problems and were reported for violence more than once."

Sociologist Professor Gunvor Andersson, Lund University: "I have never heard about Ruby Harrold-Claesson. It is not true the removal of smacking rights has led to many good Swedish parents facing criminal charges in court. Parents are not prosecuted for smacking - there is some criticism it is a law without sanctions - but parents can be prosecuted for assault and battery."

In truth, Sweden abolished its equivalent of our Section 59 defence in 1957. But in 1979, after a father was prosecuted for brutally beating his small son, a "Parents Code" was introduced. This code has no sanctions - you cannot be prosecuted under it, it is merely educative. Yet Harrold-Claesson has claimed that under this "law", children have been removed from good parents.

Nonetheless, I interviewed Harrold-Claesson because I was curious why she would travel all this way to warn us. I wanted evidence that removing Section 59 would open the floodgates to family anarchy. Forty-nine years is ample time for conclusive evidence.

She had no longitudinal studies, published papers or empirical research. The only evidence she could give was of overhearing children tell their parents they can't be touched. That teachers spend half a lesson calming unruly teenagers before class begins. This already happens here, I said, and we haven't even changed the law.

At best, Harrold-Claesson could produce just a handful of dubious case studies. Even if she's right that the parents she's helped were unjustifiably prosecuted, if this is the strongest "expert" Sue Bradford's opposition can produce, then those who support an end to violence against children have nothing to fear from the Section 59 Coalition.