Feather duster assault: Dad sentenced after hitting 2-year-old 23 times with feather duster
In what was described as “abhorrent” behaviour, a northern beaches’ dad struck his two-year-old daughter 23 times with the handle of a feather duster because she would not eat her dinner.
Manly
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A dad with “anger management issues” who belted his two-year-old daughter 23 times with the handle of a feather duster because she refused to eat her dinner was sentenced in Manly Local Court today.
The angry father narrowly avoided going to jail for what the magistrate described as behaviour “abhorrent to the community as a whole”.
He had argued that he used physical punishment on the small child because it was part of his own Asian cultural upbringing in Hong Kong.
As part of the mealtime punishment in their home, the man also made the little girl stand in the corner of the dining room.
But after she soiled her pyjamas 20 minutes later, her dad smacked her bottom 20 times. Both acts of violence were captured by an in-home security camera and shown to the court.
The man pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and two counts of common assault.
The father, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, admitted to slapping his wife once on the face as she tried to protect their daughter from his assaults.
His lawyer Timothy Kent described the incidents on May 28 as an “aberration” and told the court the punishment was part of his client’s cultural upbringing and that the dad had been disciplined the same way as a child.
Mr Kent said the father exercised a level of control during the beating.
“The nature of the strikes were a flick of the wrist,” Mr Kent said. “They certainly weren’t full-blooded strikes.
“The blows were not aimed at the head or face.”
But the child was left with a series of angry red welts on her upper left arm from being struck repeatedly with the wooden feather duster handle as she sat at the family’s dining room table
The court was told that the man had been suffering with stress, anxiety and depression due to a drop in his income after the COVID-19 pandemic affected his business.
Police prosecutor Nicole Peacock said while a pre-sentence report said he had anger management issues and that physical discipline was part of the accused’s upbringing, “it isn’t the Australian culture”.
Magistrate Michelle Goodwin said the offences were committed against a “vulnerable” child in her own home where she was “entitled to feel safe and protected.”
“To say these offences are abhorrent to the community as a whole would be an understatement in my view,” Ms Goodwin said.
The father was sentenced to 12 months in jail, to be served in the community under an Intensive Corrections Order. He was also sentenced to an 18-month Community Corrections Order.