Woman Who Beat 7 Year Old With Coat Hanger Is Using Mike Pence’s ‘Religious Freedom’ Law as Defense

Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act Allows Mother to Leave 36 Welts on Son’s Back, Her Attorney Says

30-year old Kin Park Thaing is a good Christian woman who feared for her son’s salvation when the 7-year old allegedly engaged in what she says was dangerous behavior that would have harmed his 3-year old sister. So she beat him with a plastic coat hanger to save his soul and teach him how Jesus wants him to behave. She is fully within her right to do so, based on her deeply held religious beliefs, under Indian Governor Mike Pence’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), her attorney is arguing in Marion Superior Court before Judge Kurt Eisgruber.

“I was worried for my son’s salvation with God after he dies,” Thaing, a Burmese refugee here under political asylum, says in court documents, according to the Indianapolis Star. “I decided to punish my son to prevent him from hurting my daughter and to help him learn how to behave as God would want him to.”

The Star, which published a court photo of the child’s welts, adds that “Thaing, documents say, hit both children with a plastic coat hanger before telling them to pray for forgiveness.”

The alleged act of abuse occurred February 3. On February 5 a teacher became aware of the boy’s welts. Police and child welfare officials were contacted, and the 7-year old was taken to the hospital.

A physician “found 36 bruises across the boy’s back, thigh and left arm. Three photographs submitted to the court show deep purple lines striping the boy’s back and several welts on his arm. The boy has one curved bruise on his cheek in the shape of a hook on a coat hanger.”

Thaing was arrested.

Her attorney, Greg Bowes, “argued that RFRA gives Thaing the right to discipline her children in accordance with her beliefs, and that the state should not interfere with her fundamental right to raise her children as she deems appropriate.” He is also citing cultural differences in his defense of his client, along with a 2008 Indiana Supreme Court decision that allows parents to use tools like a belt or electric cord to beat a child.

The trial is next month.

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license