London, May 26 (IANS) A 32-year-old Briton has sued his mother for failing to protect him from his father’s beating.
The man, who filed the case in the high court, claimed that his mother hit him and aided the punishment meted out by his father by reporting his failings.
Justin Levinson, the man’s counsel, told Justice Thirlwall in London that the mother had a duty as a parent to take reasonable steps to protect her son.
‘She should not have allowed her volatile husband to remain in the same house and beat his children – she should have obtained an injunction or divorced him,’ Daily Mail quoted Levinson as saying.
The man claims he was hit up to four times a day between the ages of five and 19 by the father. He was assaulted with stick, belt, electrical lead or wooden brush till he turned 16 and then he was struck with an open hand and throttled or choked as he got older.
His mother maintains that her son is exaggerating. Though she admitted that she slapped him occasionally, she says it was ‘reasonable chastisement’.
The man said: ‘I wouldn’t say my mother had done her best to protect me. I always felt she could have done more.’
‘I took many many more beatings from my father. She wasn’t a tormentor like my father was, continually looking for excuses to assault me. For the best part of it she was herself fairly harmless,’ he was quoted as saying.
He is now seeking damages for pain and suffering as well as 7,800 pounds for the cost of therapy.
rounak