Discussion

Case History: Tough Love or Child Psychological Maltreatment?

By most outward appearances, the Machnicks were a typical all-American family. Grady Machnick was a sergeant with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and Deborah Machnick was an elementary school principal. They were raising three children, one of whom was a 14-year-old boy, Grady Machnick’s biological son and Deborah Machnick’s stepson. The Machnicks lived in a two-story home in a well-kept Southern California neighborhood. By all accounts they were a “normal” upper-class family, hardly fitting the stereotype of an abusive family. And indeed, there was no indication that the Machnicks ever physically or sexually abused their son. But they were in fact arrested for child abuse, in a case that can be most accurately described as child psychological maltreatment (CPM). At the time the charges were filed, Grady Machnick denied any inappropriate mistreatment of his son, and Machnick’s attorney stated that “any actions that were taken were appropriate to the circumstances of disciplining a teenager.” The allegations included the following:

· The parents required the teenage boy to spend nights outside, sleeping on a dog mat, as punishment for not completing his homework.

· The parents did not allow the teen to use the bathroom located in the home, instead requiring him to use a public restroom at a nearby park.

· The parents poured water on the teen to wake him from sleep.

· The parents sent the teen to school with dog feces in his backpack as punishment for not cleaning up after the family dog.

· The parents forced the teen to strip and be photographed naked as a form of punishment.

· The parents forced the teen out of the house at 3:30 a.m. when the parents needed to go out because, they said, he could not be trusted in the home alone.

· The parents confiscated the teen’s belongings (e.g., clean clothing) and required that he earn the items back through good behavior.

· The parents withheld the teen’s lunch money.

At trial, Grady and Deborah Machnick testified that they employed the parenting practices they did because they were attempting to discipline their defiant son. The teen reportedly earned poor grades in school, refused to help with chores at home, and was often caught lying and stealing. Grady Machnick summed up his son’s behavior by testifying that his son “reminded him of inmates.” Throughout their trial, the Machnicks insisted that their efforts at discipline were designed to keep their son from continuing to engage in questionable behavior.

The Machnicks were ultimately acquitted on felony charges of conspiring to abuse their teenage son. The jurors agreed that the parents’ discipline was inappropriate and inconsistent with their own parenting practices, but they were reluctant to condemn the Machnicks’ behavior as criminal or to judge the couple based on their own value systems. Although the jurors agreed that the Machnicks’ behavior did not rise to the level of a felony, they could not agree on whether to convict the Machnicks of the lesser charge of misdemeanor child abuse. One juror who voted to convict both parents stated in an interview, “Breaking someone down mentally, that’s what they tried to do. There were no bruises, but the whole behavior of Grady and Deborah was to break him down mentally.”

In his closing argument, one of the Machnicks’ attorneys described the couple’s parenting behavior as follows: “It’s not a great parenting technique. If you are grading, A, B, C, D, or F, maybe it’s an F. But it is not a crime” (“Judge OKs retrial in alleged abuse case,” 2003; see also Leonard, 2001; Pfeifer, 2002; Pfeifer & Anton, 2002).