This is bulls**t. That's not child abuse. When we were kids, we were often told that if we said something bad that Mom/Dad would wash our mouths with soap. I don't remember if they ever went ahead with it, but it's a form of discipline.

The bad judgment call was leaving the soap in the kid's mouth for 10 minutes. That was extreme, but I wouldn't call it child abuse.

Abuse! You may have noticed you don't hear about this much anymore.
Soap

Maybe 10min was a lil long.

Next time use liquid soap.

Yeah, deff a bit much.

I had to brush my teeth with Dawn dishwashing liquid once. It was bubbly and gross. Kept me from using the f word for a while though.

I don't think washing an eight year old girl's mouth with soap is discipline, it's just cruel. No matter what kind of language she used. I wouldn't want anyone to come shove a bar of soap down my mouth. In fact, I'm pretty sure that would be illegal. So how come it's legal to do that to a little child?

In most cases soap (liquid or solid) will just taste gross, it won't harm the child other than giving it a disgusting taste in its mouth.

Apart from any allergic reaction, the problem with soap is that it makes bubbles, those can be aspirated and give the child a chemical pneumonia. No parent can stop it before this happens, the only way to prevent it is to not act like a lunatic parent.

Therefor I'm labeling this as child abuse.

I suspect the adults didn't supervise the child, or there's more to the story. Simply holding a bar of soap in your mouth, even for 10 minutes, wouldn't work that much soap off to cause a problem. If the parents made the child suck on it or the kid was doing so on their own and the parent didn't intervene, then there's a problem.

Guess smacking the kid would have been better. /sarcasm

Yes, the article above understates what happened. I just found more info:

According to police, the mother's boyfriend Wilfredo Rivera made the girl chew on soap for 10 minutes. This all happened while the mother, Adriyanna Herdener watched.

Investigators in Orlando say the child was crying, vomiting, and foaming at the mouth. According to police, the boyfriend wouldn't let the girl rinse out her mouth until she cleaned up her mess.

Reports state the child's lips, throat, and tongue became swollen and was in pain. That's when the mom asked her boyfriend to take the 8 year old to the hospital. Herdener didn't go to the hospital because she didn't want to deal with DCF. But DCF was called and both mom and the boyfriend were arrested.
According to DCF, the couple has a lengthy history of complaints.




Definitely child abuse.

I got liquid soap as a child for saying b*tch and I had no clue what it even meant.

my dad made us bite the bar of soap and pull it out... what ever was on our teeth we had to deal with...

even if we though we got most of it off, we always got the taste in our mouth...

and that f-ing boyfriend... i know alot of guys like that... taking out their frustrations on step-children becuase they are not their biological children. they disprespect them, beat them, and just take them for granted.

i hope he gets a bar of soap shoved up his ass in jail... LIQUID SOAP on top of that...

Based on that...I change my opinion. This was child abuse.

That's not a swear word; it's in the dictionary! :D

Reminds me of an ex-boyfriend. He'd done time for beating up a previous girlfriend, and after we broke it off, he started dating a woman with 2 small kids.

If one of them was bad, he made them eat a mouthful of hot sauce.

OMG!

i had my mouth washed out with soap once for saying the N word. it's been 20 years or so, and i still can't really say that word...although it's mostly because now that i'm older, i understand what the word means (my older brother told me to say the word so i did). other than that word, though, i've got a dirty f**king pirate's mouth.

it was not a pleasant experience for me, and it only lasted maybe 3 minutes tops. i don't think that constituted as abuse, but this case here is most definitely abuse. i'm sure both mother and child were both being abused (you'd have to be either a cold, heartless b***h or a very frightened, beat-down woman in order to watch your kid suffer like that)...so i can't really make judgments against the poor mothering skills in this case.

Let us review the definition of Abuse:



SO HOW, IN ZEUSEUS BUTTHOLE, IS DISCIPLINING A CHILD CALLED ABUSE?

I hate this... I hate this country's overzealous population... I hate the alarmist attitude... I hate the over protectiveness... I hate the lack of tolerance... I hate the narrow mindedness...

Don't worry... I am working on moving out...

That'd be #5 : physical maltreatment

If she was sick, it's definitely physical maltreatment. Even if she wasn't sick it's still abuse in my opinion. I never had my mouth washed out, and I don't swear much. I don't recall how I was disciplined when it comes to swearing, because the method wasn't abusive, I don't remember it vividly. I do remember that my parents were just very diapproving of such language and usually made it clear how disappointed they were when I misbehaved like that. Together with praise when I behaved well I learnt what was right and what was wrong without my parents needing to resort to abuse.

@ Moogle - LOL the f-word is in my dictionary, so I don't think a word's presence or absence from a dictionary determines if it's a swear word.

Then you definition of physical maltreatment is quite different from mine...