Video footage shows a Florida girl being made to stand at a busy intersection holding a sign that says: “I lied. I humiliated my mother and myself.”
Passing drivers noticed the sign while some adults on foot stood nearby to see what was going on.
“One of the parents, a mother or female parent, was with her in the intersection on the median while she was holding her sign for everybody to read,” Ashley Atty, who was driving by, told CBS Miami.
Atty said the girl was standing there for multiple hours.
“I’m sure that girl will never lie again because that was embarrassing,” said Atty.
The girl’s stepfather told CBS 17 that the girl, who is 17, lied to her mother several times. She could have chosen to be grounded for the entire as summer but instead opted for the second option her parents gave her, which was standing with the sign.
“She understands, and I think she’s a better person for it because she chose to do what she needed to do to get out of the problems she had caused us,” the stepfather said.
While Atty and some others supported the punishment, others said it was not right.
“How many times have we heard already in the last couple months that kids are getting hit and killed, even an adult?” said the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous. “You would’ve lost your kid for something—trying to prove a point when, in my opinion, there’s much better ways to do so.”
According to WBBH, someone called the police and the Cape Coral Police Department responded.
Officers found nothing wrong and said the girl was provided water on the hot day.
#DigitalExclusive: A 17-year-old girl held a sign that read, “I lied. I humiliated my mother and myself” after she didn’t tell her parents where she was. Is this good parenting? https://t.co/0Zla80YLT8
— WTRF 7News (@WTRF7News) June 4, 2019
Father Accused of Using ‘Waterboard-Like Technique’
A man in Washington state was arrested on May 12 for alleged child abuse after police said he used a “waterboard-like technique” to punish his daughter.
The man, who was not named, was reported to police by the man’s girlfriend. She told officers that her boyfriend had “waterboarded” his 7-year-old daughter, according to probable cause documents obtained by KIRO.
Enraged by his daughter allegedly lying and talking back to him, the man used his belt to “violently spank” the girl about a dozen times, officers wrote in the documents.
The man’s girlfriend tried to stop him, telling him he was going “way overboard.” The man then forced his daughter into a bathroom and used the torture technique on the girl as she yelled: “I can’t breathe.”
The woman left the apartment and called 911. When interviewed, the girl confirmed the girlfriend’s account.
When the man was arrested he said he did use “water” but when asked how he used it he said “just water.”
He later told officers that he poured water on her for 2 to 3 seconds but stopped when his daughter said: “I don’t want to die,” reported the Tacoma News-Tribune. He said that thinking about what he’d done, he went too far.
Officers found the items said to be used in the waterboarding. Waterboarding is a torture technique in which water is forced into a detainee’s mouth and nose so as to induce the sensation of drowning.
The man was arrested and booked into the Pierce County Jail on charges including assault of a child. It wasn’t clear why his name was not released.
