This morning I was sitting in my World History Seminar class.  I hadn’t done the reading for the day and I was experiencing some rather uncomfortable lower abdominal pain of the female sort, so I was sort of half-listening, half-daydreaming, and trying not to crawl under the table and curl up in the fetal position.  We were talking about historical Chinese family structures and so forth, and someone said something about discipline and corporal punishment of the children by their parents.  This topic recently has had the effect of triggering a vivid flashback of an experience I had last semester when I was in Chile.

My parents were actually visiting me in Santiago, and I decided to take them up to Cerro San Cristobal, a big hill in the middle of the city.  There is a large statue of the Virgin Mary at the top of this hill.  Visitors can take a trolley or a cable car almost all of the way up, then climb a few stairs to get to the top where the statue is.  My parents and I had taken a cable car most of the way up, the went over to the stairs are to climb the rest of the way.  They decided to mosey around a bit at the bottom of the stairs, taking pictures and being touristy, so I decided to go up the stairs ahead of them.  On my way up, two young parents with their small child were coming down the stairs.  The boy, who was probably about three years old, was crying.  The mother looked uneasy, and the father looked angry and annoyed.  The boy wouldn’t stop crying, and all of a sudden the father reached over and hit the kid on the head.  This was not a cuff or a light slap, this was a hard blow.  I could hear it.  I can hear it still.  Of course, this had the effect of making the kid cry harder, so the father hit him again, just as hard.  The mother murmured something in Portuguese, the father angrily snapped at her, and the kid kept crying and at this point was clutching his head.  This all happened right in front of me, like they didn’t even know I was there.  I sort of just stood there flabbergasted, and by the time I could process what had just happened they had already passed.  I continued to the top of the hill, and my parents joined me a few minutes later, not realizing what I had witnessed.

What do you do in that situation?  Do you say something?  I was an American, the family was Brazilian, and we were in Chile.  I didn’t know if they spoke English or Spanish.  Maybe that sort of behavior is acceptable in Brazil.  I know in the U.S. I could have called the cops, but I’m not as sure the Chilean Carabineros would have been able to do anything about it.  Probably not.

I wish I had said something.  As soon as the family left I wished I had said something.  That night in bed I wished I had said something.  Today in class I wished I had said something.  Anything.  Even if it made no difference in the end.  Something like: “Hey, if I see you hit that kid again, I’m calling the cops you son-of-a-bitch.”  But I didn’t say that.  I averted my eyes and kept on walking.  Now I have to live with that decision.  I have to see that kid’s tears in my mind, and I have to hear the sound of the blow to his head over and over.  I have vowed to do something, anything, if I’m ever in that situation again.

Abuse is a very difficult situation to pull yourself out of.  I think generally it’s up to friends, family, loved ones, and even passers-by to recognize it and call attention to it.  If you see it, do something.  It may be so much easier to look the other way, but at least you’ll be able to sleep that night.

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