Adrian Peterson

[Gumbo4x4]

How come no one ever says that when it is an animal that got the abuse? No one ever says the person just needs a little counseling. But beat a 4 year old bloody....eh, he just got a little upset. No big deal!


I will never understand that as long as I live. A 4 year old is certainly as innocent and undeserving of a beating or mistreatment as a dog. And the abuse of a human should be more horrifying that animal abuse. But it isn't.

I can tell you flat out I place the life of a child WAY above any animal that has ever walked, swam, or flown.

 

[thebutlerdidit]

I think AP definitely went over the line from discipline to abuse. At least the Vikings pulled him from tomorrow's game. Ah Mr. Goodell how can this action not be a violation of the morality clause. Again inaction. Get rid of him!

 

[FlightlessDuck]

What is the NFL doing about this one? Switching a 4yo bloody in several places is just as bad as cold cocking one's girlfriend.

Rice wasn't disciplined until after the justice system was done with him. Same will happen to Ray McDonald. Greg Hardy was convicted of domestic abuse but is appealing. I'm assuming the NFL is waiting for the appeal to be finished, although that's kind of questionable.

By now, we know the Vikings deactivated Peterson for this week. He's not suspended, but I would expect that by the time the justice system finishes their investigation, the NFL will lay down their punishment. I wouldn't be surprised if Peterson is deactivated until then.

 

[Stitchfans]

Go look for an article that contains the text messages Peterson sent to this child's mother. He freely admits to all of it. Look at the pictures. There's no
reasonable doubt. There's nothing to debate.

If someone grabbed an adult, restrained them, and then beat them on their bare backside, legs and privates until they were bloody, they'd be charged with assault, and thrown in prison for at least a decade. There'd be experts all over cable news talking about sadism. Not one single person would argue that what they did was acceptable.

In fact, what I just described was featured in a torture scene in a recent movie.

If someone kidnapped a child and did this to them, Nancy Grace would get a week's worth of shows out of it. The outrage would blow up the internet. Never mind defending the perpetrator, people would be demanding the death penalty.

A popular athlete does this to his own child.......and it's a spanking that got out of hand. It's discipline. He's just being a strict father.

I really, really wish someone would explain the difference to me. Because this story and people's reactions to it makes me want to become a hermit, live in a cave, and take a vacation from the human race for awhile.

This isn't spanking. It's torture. It's vile and disgusting.

I agree 100%

 

[okeydokey]

I dont know how I feel about this, especially since he wasnt trying to harm him. It seems as if it was discipline that went to far and after it happened he did express that to the mother.

Of course he was trying to harm him. He used a switch on him that left welts and lacerations. When you purposely strike someone with a switch, you are meaning to harm them. You may be doing it in the name of discipline, but you are intending to cause physical harm and pain or you wouldn't be doing it.

 

[Teresa Pitman]

I think "spanking" a child is wrong. It's wrong for one person to hit another person, period.

And there is a ton of research out there to show it's not effective as discipline and risks all kinds of other problems.

But this - is truly terrible. No question that it is child abuse. My heart breaks for this poor little kid.

To people who say that this is discipline that got carried away: that's what practically every abuser says. There was a father in a community near where I live who repeatedly hit his little daughter until she died of internal bleeding. His defense was that he was just trying to discipline her, he loved her and had no intention of harming her. They all blame it on discipline that "accidentally" caused injury.

Peterson claims he will keep on "whooping" his children because he knows how much good it did for him. Well, it also harmed him in at least one way - it made him believe that seriously injuring a four-year-old was acceptable.

TP

 

[dimimi]

Of course he was trying to harm him. He used a switch on him that left welts and lacerations. When you purposely strike someone with a switch, you are meaning to harm them. You may be doing it in the name of discipline, but you are intending to cause physical harm and pain or you wouldn't be doing it.

Exactly. I don't agree with spanking either, however, "if" he felt this type of discipline was necessary, a simple smack with a hand should have been sufficient. To use a switch mean he was trying to make of an impact. I am concerned about a lot of things, but the little boy was 4. Wouldn't a logical punishment have been to take away the game he was pushing to get?

 

[suzanna1066@comcast.]

I am not condoning what he did nor do I hit my own child.

That said, my grandmother used to make us pick the switch off the tree that we were getting whipped with. Sounds horrible but there is no doubt in my mind that woman loved me more than anything in this world and the thought of her being called abusive is laughable.

My mother was more of a behind swatter but she was incredibly abusive and the scars she left me are far worse than the welts from my grandmother's "switchings".

Again, not condoning what he did but the "abused now abusing" argument needs to be taken into context.

 

[Fortune Cookie]

I am not condoning what he did nor do I hit my own child.

That said, my grandmother used to make us pick the switch off the tree that we were getting whipped with. Sounds horrible but there is no doubt in my mind that woman loved me more than anything in this world and the thought of her being called abusive is laughable.

My mother was more of a behind swatter but she was incredibly abusive and the scars she left me are far worse than the welts from my grandmother's "switchings".

Again, not condoning what he did but the "abused now abusing" argument needs to be taken into context.

If your grandmother left welts on your body, that was abuse.

 

[okeydokey]

If your grandmother left welts on your body, that was abuse.

Yep. She intentionally set out to cause a child physical pain. I know that more was acceptable back then, but it is physical assault.

 

[Mickeyluver37]

The more I read about this the more disgusted I get- his complacency and his smiling mug shot, and now a second child, and the smug texts that went along with that beating as well. This child has injuries on his head and AP says he should have stayed still and just taken the beating?!? But worst of all is the supporters. I truly don't understand how anyone can see those pictures and say it wasn't abuse. I don't care if "that's how it's done in East Texas." Hopefully the court will do the right thing and make an example of him and maybe this kind of barbaric parenting can be curbed.

And the Vikings have reinstated him?!?!

 

[JanaDee]

Peterson will be playing Sunday, as of right now. Vikings reinstated him yesterday.

How many kids does he have and with how many mothers?

It's rumored to be 7, though he won't say (probably because he doesn't know the exact number), and no one seems to know how many mothers there are...

 

[disney junky]

Peterson will be playing Sunday, as of right now. Vikings reinstated him yesterday.

How many kids does he have and with how many mothers?

It's rumored to be 7, though he won't say (probably because he doesn't know the exact number), and no one seems to know how many mothers there are...

Where's the outrage over this?

 

[Oreo Cookie]

The more I read about this the more disgusted I get- his complacency and his smiling mug shot, and now a second child, and the smug texts that went along with that beating as well. This child has injuries on his head and AP says he should have stayed still and just taken the beating?!? But worst of all is the supporters. I truly don't understand how anyone can see those pictures and say it wasn't abuse. I don't care if "that's how it's done in East Texas." Hopefully the court will do the right thing and make an example of him and maybe this kind of barbaric parenting can be curbed.

And the Vikings have reinstated him?!?!

I agree.

I think the public needs to put pressure on the sponsors of the NFL. The NFL needs to take a major financial hit and then maybe they will act.

I've been a life long football fan, but I am so disgusted by the violence off the the field. The league needs to have a zero tolerance policy.

As for Peterson, his excuses make me want to vomit. He's an abusive parent. What he did was child abuse.

I found this commentary on Forbes to be interesting;

One of the things that came out of this Adrian Peterson story over the last few days is that most people outside the South don’t know what it means to get whipped with a switch.

No matter what Charles Barkley says, it’s not just a black thing. I’m white, and 50, and grew up in Georgia, and just about every kid I knew took a whipping now and then. Your mama or daddy (or whoever enforced the rules in your family) would find a green branch on a tree, or maybe some piece of shrub pulled out of the ground, a foot or two long and flexible. (In the house, sometimes a flyswatter did the job.) If you had been really bad, you’d have to cut your own switch. The walk to get the switch was worse than the whipping itself. If you didn’t get one big enough, the grownup would go get one, and you didn’t want that. Richard Pryor had a great and painful bit about hearing the switch cut through the wind as you walked back, already bawling in dread of what was about to happen. The actual whipping was (in my experience) more of a sting. The point was the dread. I didn’t get whipped much, and the last time was at least 40 years ago, but the memory is still sharp and clear.

But I never got whipped, and no one I knew ever got whipped, the way Adrian Peterson brutalized his little boy.

The Vikings’ star running back, 6-1 and 217 pounds, beat his 4-year-old to the point where the marks were still on his legs days later when his mother took him to the doctor. (The boy lives in Minnesota with his mother and was visiting Peterson in Texas during the offseason.) He beat his child with such fury that he accidentally hit him in the scrotum. He beat his boy with such a clear conscience that he described it matter-of-factly to the police officers who came to speak to him about it. He gave that whipping to a child who is four years old. A grand jury in Texas indicted Peterson on a count of injury to a child with reckless or criminal negligence. He was deactivated for the Vikings’ game on Sunday against New England. The Patriots crushed the Vikings 30-7. As of Monday, Peterson was back on the roster in good standing.

Here is a question without a knowable answer: Would Adrian Peterson have become a star in the NFL if he hadn’t been whipped as a child? According to the statement he put out Monday, he clearly believes that he wouldn’t have made it. “I have always believed that the way my parents disciplined me has a great deal to do with the success I have enjoyed as a man,” he said. He has had to deal with terrible things his whole life. His older brother was killed by a drunk driver when Peterson was 7. His father was sent to prison for money laundering when Peterson was 13. His half-brother was murdered the day before Peterson had to run drills at the NFL combine in 2007. He blew out his knee near the end of the 2011 season, but rehabbed so hard and so fast that he was the NFL’s most valuable player in 2012.

Something in his life gave him the emotional strength to come back from those losses. He believes it was the whippings he took as a child. So in his mind, he is passing on an important family tradition.

Let me tell you what I believe.

I believe that whipping a child builds up one of two things in that child: fear or anger. No doubt a whipping — or hard spanking, or beating with a belt — will stop a child from doing something bad in the moment. But I believe it causes way more harm than good. The only thing I wanted to do after I got whipped was to whip something else. It was good we didn’t have a dog.

I suspect the tragedies in Adrian Peterson’s life led him to fight and succeed more than any whipping ever did. But I don’t know that, and he probably doesn’t either, and we all tend to forget that phrase from science, “correlation does not imply causation.” Just because Peterson was whipped as a child, and then succeeded as a man, it doesn’t mean he succeeded as man because he was whipped. It might be that he succeeded in spite of it.

My own fear and anger rises up when I see what happened to Peterson’s little boy, or see that elevator video of Ray Rice punching the woman who is now his wife, or read the police report of what Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy is accused of doing to his then-girlfriend. The whole drama of football is the tension between hitting and not getting hit. Controlled violence is the heart of the sport. But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell clearly doesn’t know how to handle violence when the league’s players leave the field. He gave Rice just a two-game suspension until TMZ posted the elevator video. He is letting the Vikings and Panthers deal with Peterson and Hardy on their own. In the meantime, some fans say the players shouldn’t be punished at all until due process has run its full course. I guess a player could argue a case to the Supreme Court and retire before it fully plays out.

I’m not sure what Adrian Peterson’s child got qualifies as due process.


There is one detail of this story I’m never going to forget. When Peterson talked to police, he said he had one regret. He didn’t realize how much damage he had done. Because his boy took the whipping and never cried.

Four years old, and he never cried.

That whipping is still inside him. You just wonder what it’s going to look like when it comes out.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tommytomlinson/2014/09/15/adrian-peterson-the-nfl-and-whippings/

 

[Uncle Remus]

Radisson Hotels has announced it is ending its limited sponsorship deal with the Minnesota Vikings after star running back Adrian Peterson was charged with reckless or negligent injury to a child in Houston last week. It is the first sponsor the Vikings have lost since the Peterson allegations have become public.

http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/9/16/6165245/vikings-lose-sponsor-radisson-hotels-adrian-peterson

 

[Oreo Cookie]

http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/9/16/6165245/vikings-lose-sponsor-radisson-hotels-adrian-peterson

Good! We need more sponsors to follow suit. Can't depend on Goodall to do the right thing.

 

[disney junky]

How can he even be considered a parent?

 

[kidshop]

I agree.

I think the public needs to put pressure on the sponsors of the NFL. The NFL needs to take a major financial hit and then maybe they will act.

I've been a life long football fan, but I am so disgusted by the violence off the the field. The league needs to have a zero tolerance policy.

As for Peterson, his excuses make me want to vomit. He's an abusive parent. What he did was child abuse.

I found this commentary on Forbes to be interesting;



http://www.forbes.com/sites/tommytomlinson/2014/09/15/adrian-peterson-the-nfl-and-whippings/

Wow. You know what I got from all that? He thinks he is a success as a man!? We have very different ideas of success then.

 

[luvsJack]

I am not condoning what he did nor do I hit my own child.

That said, my grandmother used to make us pick the switch off the tree that we were getting whipped with. Sounds horrible but there is no doubt in my mind that woman loved me more than anything in this world and the thought of her being called abusive is laughable.

My mother was more of a behind swatter but she was incredibly abusive and the scars she left me are far worse than the welts from my grandmother's "switchings".

Again, not condoning what he did but the "abused now abusing" argument needs to be taken into context.

If your grandmother left welts on your body, that was abuse.

Yep. She intentionally set out to cause a child physical pain. I know that more was acceptable back then, but it is physical assault.

Dh's mother used switches and fly swats on her 6 boys. Once she even used a piece of a garden hose and many times used a belt. NONE of them felt abused nor do any of them abuse their children. They couldn't have a closer, more loving family. Could she have handled it better? Maybe. But she had 7 kids, worked full time running a store and owned a farm--she didn't have time for time outs and such. And it worked.


When a child is punished by spanking its silly to say "did you mean to cause pain". Well, yeah. Why else would you spank? What other purpose does it serve?

My own kids were swatted when they were 4--would never have used a switch on a 4 year old-- and I am sure spanked a few times when they were older, especially the two boys. Switches and belts and such were not used by our choice; but I did use a ruler type thing a few times when they were much older than 4. But was that swat supposed to hurt at least for a moment? Yes, it was.

I don't have an issue with a child being spanked at all. I know that sometimes it is the best way to get through to a kid. And some of you can tell me different from now on and it won't change my mind. I have seen it first hand.

I do have an issue with the marks that were left on this child. I do think maybe this player needs some parenting classes and anger management if its deemed necessary. You have to understand that spanking a child like that may not come from anger but from thinking its the only way to punish this child which means he needs to learn how to parent in other ways (along with spanking if he feels that spanking is ok) I don't think he needs to be banned from the NFL or even necessarily suspended.



Edited to Add: Please stop putting all the players under one label. I am so tired of hearing "the NFL players are sooo violent". They don't all switch their kids or hit their wives or fight dogs. For many its more of a product of where and how they grew up than it is playing football. All players do not do these things.

 

[DisReno]

This.

Of course, I come at from the perspective of a parent who has NEVER raised a hand or otherwise physically disciplined my children (belts, spoons, switches, whatever!). I don't believe it is necessary to the raising of children.

The pictures are sickening. The child is 4. There is NO way a child should be left bleeding after being "disciplined."

The NFL needs a new culture. It seems like violence is second nature to these guys.

Can we do away forever with the word 'This'. It's just so meaningless. Post your own opinion, but I cannot stand the use of the word 'this'.

I have to disagree a little-there were times when a swift smack on my son's butt straightened him out faster than any timeouts, but that is a debate for another day.