Home punishments (girls, 4)

"My name is Alejandra and I was born in an area in Antioquía, where I lived all my childhood. I had no father from very young. In my area, flogging children with leather straps, vergajos (pizzles) or rods is normal. The hidings are usual.

My mother raised me and my sisters based on the strap. The beatings were frequent at home. I remember getting it hard especially after I was 7 (at 5 I was already flogged, but not too hard) and until I was 16, when I ran away, fed up with the hidings. My sisters were also flogged, but we didn’t see the others punishments, we just heard them. I used to see her buttocks and them mine afterwards.

I was punished for everything, low grades, fighting with my sisters, not eating, anything.

The normal punishment was a good hiding with a strap, but I was actually afraid from the cable and the vergajo. She used them only when the fault was serious, as low grades or when my teacher sent me away from the classroom, she hit me hard when she knew about it. Wow! That was terrible. I have still nightmares

The ritual was almost always the same. She took me upstairs; she made me lower my pants, bared from the waist down. She tied me to a hook on the ceiling and she flogged me, especially with a large leather strap. She gave me about 20 to 30 lashes.

The hiding left my butt red, covered by marks. I should say that my mother hit me actually hard. She was a very strong and hard woman, used to get the strap.

I got hidings 3 or four times a week, sometimes two big hidings on a day. I don’t like to remember that, sometimes I cry not knowing why. But I also get aroused when I read about other people’s childhood hidings.

Alejandra"
 

Published 11/23/05

Argentina, small city, 40s

(gracias, Carlos)

"I have not been punished as a child, but I have the account of a little girl, about 9, my neighbor. She told me that in her house there was a willow (or quince, I’m not sure now) tree and that her parents used its branches for making rods for punishing her and her two little brothers.

The parents would put the rods in a bucket with water with vinegar, for keeping them flexible. When she and her brothers saw the bucket they were terrorized, because they knew what was coming for them. She told me also that the whistling or noise the rods made in the air when testing their flexibility was awful.

For getting the punishment they had to put themselves face down over a chair or bench, kneeling, and they got their lashes on the buttocks and on the thighs. Se told me that the buttocks stung very much after the beatings.

But what I especially remember is that they made her kneel on corn seeds, hands at the back, forehead against the wall in a corner that got closed when opening the door, forming a triangle. The mother would threat “I will send you to the triangle” (and she kept her word). She was left  there for fairly long, always after a lashing.

The girl used to tell me that deeply ashamed. I now believe that she enjoyed scaring me with the tale, which was real, because many times we could hear the punished shouts and cries from home. And, if because of childish shame, she never showed me the bruises or marks on her buttocks, she showed me the ones on her thighs. And I know the tree for the rods was there.

Carlos"

Published: 03/08/06