Torture of a Child: Two Views

This story (via Andrew Sullivan) hasn’t gotten much attention here in the US, none at all at the national level, and the way the episode was reported by the local paper may have allot to do with that.This is how the story was reported in the Tacoima News Tribune:

Anger over alphabet ends in arrest

A man is accused of holding his 4-year-old daughter’s head under the water in the kitchen sink at their Yelm home Sunday night because she would not recite the alphabet, according to police and court papers.

The Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office filed a charge of second-degree assault of a child against Joshua Ryan Tabor, 27, on Tuesday. His arraignment is scheduled for Feb. 16.

According to court records:

Yelm police responded to a disturbance Sunday night after Tabor’s girlfriend reported that Tabor, a Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier, “was irate, intoxicated and walking around the neighborhood with his Kevlar helmet threatening to break windows.”

Tabor’s girlfriend told Yelm police that Tabor beats his 4-year-old daughter and that the child’s back was covered in bruises. The girlfriend reported that the 4-year-old had locked herself in a closet because she was afraid of her father.

The girlfriend also reported that when the child wets herself, Tabor “makes her sit in the urine-soaked clothes” until he gives her permission to change.

The girl spoke to a Yelm officer, and he observed that she “had severe bruising on her entire back,” along with scratch marks and bruising on her neck, throat, chin, arms, legs and buttocks.

She “was asked how she got the bruises and she replied ‘Daddy did it.’”

Asked how or why it happened, the child would not reply, then said, “I don’t know why he did it.”

Tabor spoke to a Yelm police officer and said that he and his girlfriend had “held her down on the counter and submerged her head into the water three or four times until the water came around her forehead and jawline.” He said that she was face-up when her head was in the water. He added that they gave this punishment for the 4-year-old “refusing to say her letters.”

Tabor told police that his daughter is afraid of water “and was squirming around trying to get away from the water. Joshua did not act as though he felt there was anything wrong with this form of punishment.”

[emphasis mine]

As it happens, there is in fact a name for holding someone inverted and dunking their head under water – it’s called waterboarding.  Here is how the story was reported by the Daily Mail, a British newspaper.  Keep in mind that, while sensationalized, the story calls torture for what it is, and moreover this is the way the story is being broadcast outside our shores:

U.S. soldier ‘waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn’t recite alphabet’

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter ‘squirmed’ to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

The practice of waterboarding was used by the CIA to break Al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Detainees had water poured over their face until they feared they would drown. President Barack Obama has since outlawed the practice.

Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after being seen walking around his neighbourhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows.

Truly, truly only a fucked up human would do this to his own daughter, but I wonder where he learned how to waterboard someone?  I’m not saying he definitely learned it in the service, and the Mail notes that Tabor’s service records haven’t been released, but I think it’s interesting that he also used humiliation tactics as punishment too, making her “sit in the urine-soaked clothes” until he gives her permission to change.”  I also wonder very much if this story would be getting more attention if the reporting newspaper had been a bit more honest about the particular technique this soldier used to ‘punish’ his little girl.

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