I found this place doing a google search to see if anybody else online had the same experiences as me as a boy. I'm not sure but I thought I'd tell my story anyway.

Back in 1960, when I was 8, my 6 year old little brother and me were walking to school and it started raining really heavily. We ducked into the verandah of a church we were going past and we found out the door was open so we went inside and had a look around.

There was a little kitchen and my little brother wanted a drink so he turned the tap on to get one. We didn't know that the plug was in the sink and I didn't know he didn't turn the tap off. When it stopped raining so hard we left and went to school.

The next morning we had an assembly at school and the Headmaster stood up the front and said that the boys who had gone into the Church the morning before should stand up. I did. My little brother didn't. He'd probably forgotten. The Headmaster asked me who else had been with me and I told him my brother had and we were both told to go and wait outside his office. This scared me but I didn't really know what I'd done.

When we were let into the office by the Headmaster there was a policewoman sitting there. The Headmaster told us that we were in a lot of trouble and the policewoman wanted to speak to us. He asked if we wanted our mother called. I said no. If I got in trouble at school I got in trouble at home. The policewoman told us that we'd been seen going into the church the morning before and that somebody had flooded the whole church by putting the plug in the sink and leaving a tap on and it had caused lots and lots of damage. She wanted to know if we'd done it.

I said that I hadn't and my little brother said the same thing. But she kept questioning us and she asked if we'd been in the kitchen and we said we had and she asked if we'd used the tap and I said my little brother had had a drink and she asked him if he'd turned the tap off and he said he couldn't remember. And she asked me and I said I hadn't noticed. And she wrote all of this down in a notebook. Then she left. The Headmaster gave me the strap. Two hard whacks on each hand. I wasn't really sure why because we hadn't said we'd done anything wrong and we weren't sure. My little brother didn't get the strap, but he got sent back to his class with a note for his teacher telling her to punish him and I know he got a smack.

At the end of the day we went home and I didn't tell my mother what had happened and I told my brother not to either, because we'd get in more trouble at home. But just after we got home the policewoman turned up and asked to speak to us again and told my mother about the church. She asked us the same types of questions I think, but I can't remember this bit as well. When she'd gone though, my mother pulled my little brothers pants down and smacked him about five or six times and then did the same thing to me. Then we were told to have a bath and go to bed. When my dad got home he came up to our room and made us get out of bed. Then he gave us a belting with his belt.

So in one day I'd got strapped smacked and belted for the same thing and I wasn't even sure if I'd done anything wrong. I knew I hadn't meant to.

I thought it was all over but weeks later I got home from school and found out that I'd been summoned to go to the juvenile court. My little brother was too young to be summoned luckily for him. My parents spoke to a lawyer who told me to plead guilty and my parents told me to as well. I don't know exactly why, but they all thought it was the best thing.

They told me to be polite to the Magistrate and plead guilty and agree with everything he said. If I was lucky, I'd get off with a warning. I remember his name was Scales. I was told over and over again to make sure I called him Sir or Mr Scales because he liked that. I was terrified I was going to be locked up and the lawyer told me that that was why I was pleading guilty because they needed to convince the magistrate I was a polite and honest boy and better off with my parents.

We got to court and when it was my turn I stood up and I was told I'd been charged with willful damage worth one hundred and eighty pounds which was an incredible amount of money. Apparently the flooding had caused damage all over the church. Mr Scales was a pretty fightening man and I was told to plead guilty or not guilty and I said I was guilty and he told me he was glad to see I was willing to face up to what I'd done.

The policewoman was called up and she gave their version of what had happened which was that my brother and I had gone into the church and we'd deliberately put the plugs in the sink and turned the taps on and left it running all day and she read out a list of things that had been damaged starting with the organ and going through prayer books and hymn books and how much they were all worth.

Then I was asked if I had anything to say and I said I hadn't done it deliberately and my little brother had been the one who turned the taps on, and Mr Scales told me that I'd plead guilty so I couldn't really argue with what the police had said and that he was not impressed that I was trying to blame my little brother.

He asked my lawyer to read out a report from my school which basically said I wasn't a really bad kid and then he asked to speak to my father. Dad stood up and he asked dad what I was like and dad said I was a pretty good boy most of the time, but like all boys I was sometimes naughty. The magistrate said there was a good old fashioned remedy for naughtiness and announced that he intended to adjourn the case so that I could receive three cuts of the cane. He asked a police detective who was in the court to supervise this, saying that he didn't want to ask a policewoman to do it and he agreed.

I was taken to an office somewhere in the court building with my father and the detective went and came back with a cane. He handed it to my father and told him that he could do it but if he wouldn't the detective would. Dad said that he'd already belted me for this and didn't think it was right for him to do it again. The detective agreed and told me to pull my shorts and underpants down and bend over a chair. My father held me down and the policeman caned me. It was the worst pain I'd felt worse than my dads belt by a long way.

I pulled my pants up and I was taken back to wait and after a while was back in court. Mr Scales asked me I was hurting and I said yes and he told me that I hoped I'd remember how much I was hurting next time I thought about doing anything wrong. He asked me if I'd learned my lesson and when I said I had he said he was going to dismiss the case against me. I was being given another chance. I think I was supposed to be grateful.

I was punished four times for one thing that I don't even think I deserved to be punished for once.

It's frightening to think we share our planet with a person weird enough to write such such a story and dim enough to think someone might actually believe it.

I might be weird but I am not dim and the story I have told is true. What is your problem?

Terry,

Your piece is beautifully written. Could you tell us which country had churches, magistrates and judicial caning for eight-year-old children in 1960?

Australia

Thank you.

Mr. Scales is mentioned on the encyclopaedic site.

http://www.corpun.com/auju5605.htm#7254

A good story and God only knows if it's true or not ... God and Terry ... Oh, and of couse, Lotta!

I read with interest Terry's story and there seems no reason for disbelief. Law officers in remote areas of large countries have often very sweeping powers to deal summarily with juveniles - it's called "rough justice". The only question is why should Lotta Nonsense make her observations?
Terry's post was entirely in line with the general thrust of this forum and Lotta's riposte suggests that she is either silly, and ignorant or, once again, provocatively seeking to hijack any discourse and to discourage real offerings from real people, in which case she is contemptible.
Which of these adjectives do you prefer, Lotta?

This thread is probably the funniest I've ever read and the fact that some of our resident dimwits are actually dim enough to believe this - the most obviously fake story on this entire forum - is simply staggering.

If I can manage to stop laughing, I'll write some more.

[many minutes and much laughing later]

Phew! I think I'm alright now.

Well, of course Mr Scales is mentioned on the corpun site. Don't this forum's gullible fools yet realise that part of the art of fantasy and fakery is to lace a story with snippets of verifiable information? If people check out a few of the apparently incidental details and find them accurate, that tends to lend credibility to the rest of the story.

With the greatest respect for our new friend Terry (who, being an Aussie fantasist, is almost certainly related to Dean), I have to say the story is absolutely and utterly absurd.

On a purely practical point, however, perhaps someone can explain how leaving a tap running in a church sink with the plug in can damage anything that isn't lying flat on the floor? Assuming the church's ground floor wasn't airtight, how could the water have risen to a height of more than a few millimetres?

How on Earth were the books and the organ damaged ???????????

I had never seen the corpun site in my life until just now when I went to it because of the link here. It does sound like the same Mr Scales because the court I went to was the Adelaide Juvenile Court and he was a stipe but I hadn't looked him up on the internet whatever you might think.

How did the organ get damaged? I don't know. It didn't make much sense to me then and it really doesn't make any sense to me now but that is what the police said in court. The organ got damaged and books got damaged. Looking back as an adult I wonder if it was an insurance fiddle or something because I don't know how the damage happened. But that is what they said in court and I didn't get to argue.

I don't know how I can prove any of this but I know what happened and I've told the truth.

Don't worry about Lotta, Terry, it has never believed anyone yet and it isn't going to start now.

Given what I know about the use of the cane with boys in some venues in Australia in 2006 and what I know about the widespread use of the cane with children in 1960, I find this story quite believable.

That's not very nice, Terry - especially after my defending you in an argument the other night.

A group of people were saying you weren't fit to live with pigs - but I said you were.

Oops!

The previous message should, of course, be addressed to Danny, not Terry.

I find Terry's story totally believable too, and regardless of the accuracy of the story, what it illustrates is the widespread belief that cp was a legitimate and effective component of "education".

Lotta, completely lacking common sense, knowledge and self control as usual, swallowed the "bait" whole and has attempted once again to turn a serious discussion into chaos.

Not only did Lotta experience nothing of the world it (good word) denies and calls fake, (he/she/whatever) tries to overlay a fantasy world of half baked logic, thus twice removing the resulting rhetoric from reality! It's like putting two layers of thick dark cloth over a light bulb. With our attention dragged off stage somewhere, we are then faced with the frustrating task of redrawing the scene and trying to re-align with reality. Go away and grow up you little twerp.

In lots of places, particularly rural, attitudes were exactly as described. Justice was second to an opportunity, often an outright excuse, to apply cp in the belief that "a lesson would be learned", and that more awareness and respect would be the outcome. Overall it worked, but not without side effects. It toughened most and it also created the kind of frightened whimperers we see occasionally on the forum. They are probably the origin of the modern outlook that labels everything cruel and abusive, no matter how well meaning. And when the toughened ones fell through the cracks they were likely to become Teddy Boys (or whatever was the current fashion) - angry non conformists who because of the toughening could be quite dangerous and destructive in society.

If any of the adults involved in Terry's encounter had been asked about the unfairness of what he experienced, I suspect they would have replied it did him good and left it at that.

I lived in similar circumstances for a few early years, in a small village in rural England. My grandparents owned the general store and a bundle of perhaps two dozen canes sat high on one of the display cases. They were used at the school and in lots of homes, the ample quantity reflecting the ample demand.

Leaving a tap running for many hours at a few gallons a minute in an old stone building with wood and heavy cloth draped to the floor would indeed create the degree of damage described. I witnessed that too.

So shut up and learn, Lotta Nonsense.

You are interfering with things you know nothing about.

OINK! OINK!

Stop it, Jim!

My sides are splitting!

I'm very pleased to see that many people believe Terry's story on the grounds that if something happened to a few people at a certain period in history, it must therefore have happened to anyone who claims it happened to them.

I think Terry got off very lightly.

In my own case, I shot my boyfriend (who was called David) in the street outside a pub in the mid-1950's, an off-duty copper arrested me at the scene and they flippin' well hung me for it!

And don't let that Lotta go tellin' you I'm makin this up - cos we all know loads of people was hung in the 1950's.

I too am very pleased to see that many people believe Terry's story on the grounds that if something happened to a few people at a certain period in history, it must therefore have happened to anyone who claims it happened to them.

I think Terry and Ruth got off very lightly.

In my own case, I got on the wrong side of the Romans and also upset a few important Jews - so they crucified me!

I'm not joking and don't let that Lotta tell you I'm a fantasist cos we all know a great many people were crucfied by the Romans.

A man called Pontius could have saved me but he didn't.

Check it out!

Ruth, have you considered chess?

With a logical brain like that you may be missing your vocation!

I'm also very pleased to see that many people believe Terry's story on the grounds that if something happened to a few people at a certain period in history, it must therefore have happened to anyone who claims it happened to them.

I think Terry and Ruth and the Big Fisherman got off very lightly.

I'm a mega-wealthy pop star and I had a brilliant wife but she died and then I married an absolute WITCH!!!

Don't let that scally Lotta tell you I'm making this up cos we all know plenty of people made fortunes from the music industry and there's loads about me on the Internet and in The Sun.

Our manager was called Mr Epstein if you want to check the truthfulness of my story.

Lotta's been waiting for the second coming!!! She never believed the first one, for some mysterious reason.
Hallllllllleluohhhhh!!!!

It seems Jims "frightened whimperers" are getting a little skittish. Dont worry theyll calm down soon.

I think Terry's' story sounds plausible. If you weren't alive in the '60s then you really don't know what it was like. This sounds like exactly the sort of thing that could have happened.

And it's also still happening today-plaigarism,that is!

Trawl through Corpun archive pages and you'll find a very similar beaten 4-times for the same thing story,except it involves 2 little girls in the USA.

Any inventive fantasist would have had the policewoman doing the spanking, especially as she'd uncovered the perpetrators of this original sin.

Any self-respecting Australian would also have punched the judge and the detective sargeant anyway-one thing ALL Aussies cannot stand is injustice, perceived or actual!


Steve M

Message edited to remove asterisks.

Terry's story is quite obviously written with one hand by a CP-obsessed fantasist and is equally obviously a pack of lies from start to finish.

The manner in which the story is told just screams 'fantasy' and nobody has yet come up with an explanation as to how books and an organ were damaged by a few millimetres of water on the floor.

A reader with half a brain or more will know the very fact Terry says "I think his name was Mr Scales" makes it 100% certain it's a fantasy.

If any reader even suspects the story might have a grain of truth in it, I feel deeply deeply sorry for him.

You all seem to be nuts.

I haven't said I was hanged. I haven't said I was a Beatle. I haven't said I was the messiah - I wasn't even a very naughty boy!

The beltings I got at home and school were normal. Nearly all kids where I grew up had them. Not many kids got caned because of going to court but not many kids had to go to court. Some of us did. I did. And what I said happened happened.

The only other kids I know who went to court when I was a kid didn't get caned, but I did. I remember.

This story is not a fake. It's real. Not that it matters than much it just surprises me that something that happened to me is so amazing. It didn't seem that amazing to me at the time.

LOTTA

The only organ getting damaged here might just belong to a one-handed typist in 2006.

Though, as you rightly point out, don't see how the water gets into it & not the keyboard!


Steve M

I don't know how the organ got damaged or the books. I didn't get to see what happened. I didn't even know they were saying they'd been damaged till I went to court. When the policewoman talked to me she didn't talk about any damage like that. She said we'd flooded the church but she didn't talk about anything except water on the ground.

I can't explain how the damage they said in court happened if it happened. How could I? I was eight years old and I didn't get to see the damage. But I know what they said in court.

I never said "I think his name was Mr Scales". I said I remember his name with Mr Scales. I don't think it was I know it was. I was so frightened sitting with the lawyer and being told I should be scared of Mr Scales and so I had to remember to call him by his name or Sir. I had that name carved into my brain. I thought they were going to send me to Mcgill. You can't have any idea how scared I was of the man who could send me there. I remember his name perfectly. Should I have left it out to make the true story more believeable. That seems a bit stupid. It sounds to me you'd want to have it both ways.

Looking at that corpun website all the cases that are anything like mine had teenagers in them and happened in 1956 or 1957. If I was trying to do a fake story I wouldn't have made myself 8 and said it happened in 1960. It's not like it would have made any difference to say I was 13 and say it was 1956 so it matched all the information on the web. But what I told is what really happened.

I also would have broken windows or smashed a car or something that didn't have damage in it that I can't explain and I don't know it's explained.

I know it happened. I can't prove it but I know it happened. What evidence could I give though? It's easy to call someone a liar about what happened to them because you know they're not going to have a way of proving it. They didn't film it happening.

I feel really sorry for you.

The story might have been better if the policewoman had caned me. I wish she had. She wasn't as big as the man who did cane me.

And if you think everyone went around punching cops because of injustices in 1960, you're dreaming. There's no way I would have punched a copper. I was only 8. And my dad was really like me most worried about me being sent to Mcgill. As long as I didn't get locked up I don't think he cared what else happened to me.

You can see on that corpun website if you want to that people did put up with this. And even if my dad had hit the detective it wouldn't have stopped me being caned. It just would have got him locked up and that would have really been good for me in the long run wouldn't it? It probably would have been more likely to get me locked up. To stop that happening dad had to seem like he was a proper influence on me.

Fact is I think dad thought I deserved what I got anyway but even if he hadn't punching people would have just made things a lot worse.

I don't get where you get this detective sergeant thing from either. I'm pretty sure the detective who caned me wasn't a sergeant.

Terry, you're a very sick man.

Please get therapy.

Hi Terry,

If you are for real - and frankly I am sceptical but am willing to be open minded to the possibility you are for real - and you're willing to, please contact me via e-mail at kostkalad@fastmail.fm

I'm an historian who has a specialised interest in the area of educational and children's history in Australia, and a special sub-interest in the history of corporal punishment in Australia.

I post under a pseudonym here, but if you contact me, I will certainly be willing to give you my credentials so you can check out who I am and where I come from.

If you are telling the truth, you're a pretty valuable historical resource, because Section 12 punishments were pretty rare.

Judicial corporal punishment of juveniles seems to have been legal in South Australia up until 1971, but for some reason has never got as much publicity as it has in some other places.

The cane was most commonly used, but the birch was apparently an option as well, although one that was used very rarely and was normally accompanied by a short prison term, unlike canings which seem to have been used as an alternative to incarceration.

William Arthur Scales, SM, was chief magistrate of the Adelaide Juvenile Court and had a reputation for severity, but also appears to have had very real concerns for the welfare of the children who appeared before him, and helped found a number of charities on their behalf. His son, Philip Scales is a prominent lawyer, very active in the human rights field.

Hello Terry, Would you rather have had your dad cane you instead of the police detective? Email me if you want, interested in asking you more about your brush with the law!

What is your problem? Why do you think I'm a fake?

I can't really see why anyone would make this stuff up but looking around here I can see a lot of signs that some people do. That doesn't mean I have. You think I'm a fake. How about you try and prove it.

You think the fact I know the name of the stipe who sentenced me is some sort of proof I'm a fake. I think it would be really strange if I didn't know his name. So it looks a bit like me damned if I do and damned if I don't. You'd use the fact that I didn't know it as proof and the fact I did know it as proof which means your proof means nothing at all.

I've read lots of your messages. If people don't tell details like the name of the school they went to you call them a fake. If they do tell details you call them a fake as well.

Steve how about you give people a link to this story you say I've plagiarised. I expect a real Aussie like you would stump up your evidence.

What I say happened to me happened to me. If there is a similar story out there I'd like to see it but more importantly if you think I've copied something show everybody what you think I've copied.

I hadn't even seen the corpun page before I posted here and I didn't copy anything from it.

Never a word of a lie.

Terry, your story was well received and it appears to have been believed by people who are often sceptical.

Unfortunately the forum is


Don't be too discouraged. Its post like yours that keep the forum alive and make it worthwhile.

This message has been edited because it is boring.

Dear Lotta
would you please refer me to one account that has been sent in to this forum that you have believed. Every single 'real' account is immediately

Whoops - pushed the wrong button!

I go on:

... every single account is immediately poo pooed and dismissed as not being proved. I am sick of it and I should think anyone who lived in those times would be just as sick of you as I am.
Your nonsense about how did the organ get damaged etc shows you have no idea of how the system worked. In every case of criminal damage the 'damage' was always exaggerated and made to look as black as possible against the defendant. It still goes on now even with all the technology they have but 40 years ago it was common for the prosecution to do that.
Terry may be a fraud but that isn't the point here, I just would like to know what this 'proof' you are always asking for would or could consist of. Names? we have them here. Dates? yes. A youtube video of the event? Knowing you you'd even say that was a fake too! You are pathetic and so are the 'owners' of this site allowing your nonsense to be repeated every week without a word of condemnation!

When Danny (3rd November, 3:12 pm) called Lotta "it" he hit the nail on the head. It's clear that Lotta fails the Turing test, which I devised to tell whether a remote correspondent was a human or a computer. For instance, say to Lotta "Prove that ... (some outrageous claim)" and Lotta will immediately respond "Prove that you want me to prove it".

In fact, I suspect that Lotta's software is written in Visual Basic. This would explain the occasional illogicalities in the responses, and also why there are sometimes periods without any communication, when Lotta has been taken off-line to be re-booted.

I'm very pleased to see that many people believe Terry's story on the grounds that if something happened to a few people at a certain period in history, it must therefore have happened to anyone who claims it happened to them.

I think Terry got off very lightly.

In my own case, I shot my boyfriend (who was called David) in the street outside a pub in the mid-1950's, an off-duty copper arrested me at the scene and they flippin' well hung me for it!

And don't let that Lotta go tellin' you I'm makin this up - cos we all know loads of people was hung in the 1950's.
---------------------------------------------------------

Ruth,

What an odd and truly irrelevant response.

Clearly and historically there is much evidence that CP was used with boys in Australia in the 1960's. Perhaps Terry's story is true. Perhaps it is a fignment of his imagination. Fact remains that there is nothing in his story that is inconsistent with the practices of the day in that particular place. You can believe whomever you wish who posts here...or not. All readers here make a judgment regarding the veracity of posts based on reason and logic. The difference between your example and Terry's example is a good examples of how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If Danny wishes me to identify a posting I have believed, I can do much better than that by furnishing him with directions to many postings I'd deem credible - including many of the postings of our most illustrious fantasists, George and Fran.

Many of George's postings are entirely credible when taken individually. It is only when when one views them as a whole and gives serious thought to the matter that the enormity of his deception becomes apparent.

Likewise, many of Fran's postings are quite credible - even though reading the complete works makes it clear we're dealing with a male fantasist rather than a once-green-knickered schoolgirl.

And, of course, we have our friend Dean who has published many a credible account on this forum.

There have been countless other credible postings by countless other posters whose names have vanished from my memory with the passage of time.

Terry's story, however, remains the most absurd fantasy I have ever read.

Exactly, not a single one!

Danny is obviously very much dimmer than any of us suspected.

The only three you've named are Fran, George and Dean ... are you now telling us you believe their stories? Miracles do happen then!

Come on Lotta Nonsense. Great name for you too.

What type of proof do you think I'd be able to give that what I'm saying is true?

Or are you too afraid to say what type of proof you'd expect because it would just show how unreasonable you are?

You just keep saying over and over again that I'm lying. But you won't say why you think i'm lying. And you won't say how I could be expected to show I'm not.

I know I'm not lying. I know what happened to me.

Why is what I've said any different from what is on that corpun site? Or do you think that's all lies as well?

Would you believe what I've said if if matched what was on the corpun site? I'm sure you wouldn't. You'd just say I copied it. But isn't that just making a situation in which you can't lose.

If there's no evidence that everyone can see you'll say its all made up. If there is evidence that people can see you'll say its a copy.

I think you just like being the centre of attention.

Hi Steve, being an Australian as you well know, and being the same age yourself and Terry as you also know, I find your comments right on the mark. You are correct in saying that no Aussie would put up with any injustice. You only need to read the papers to see where our troops are at the moment to realise that.

Personally, I find the story a bit hard to swallow. However, one thing worth noting is that Terry is from Adelaide which has a large ex-pat Brit society. Now we all know what the English are like when it comes to canes, and stories about them!

Lotta, Brian Cadd is a well known musican/songwriter here who started his career in the 1960's, and is one of our fathers of Pop music in Australia.

He had a band called Axiom. When the band broke up, some of the members formed a band called Little River Band which I'm sure you will have heard of-very big in the US during the late 70's early eighties. But I digress.

Caddy has a trademark song called "A Little Ray of Sunshine". The start of the song goes: "Father said, she had to have a name not the same as her mom, but a name just the same....A little Ray of Sunshine, came into the world....A little Ray of Sunshine in the shape of a Girl".

And that's how I see you. A little ray of sunshine who keeps this forum on its toes.

Can someone explain to me where they see this injustice they keep talking about?

I don't think kids should be hit but it was a fact of life back then that kids were belted and hit in all sorts of other ways. It might have been wrong but if you did what you got it for I can't see why it would be called injustice by most people.

Except for the fact that I can't see how we caused the damage they said we caused and it makes me wonder if it was some sort of fiddle I don't think it was unfair really. If they made up things about what we did of course that would be unfair but I don't know if they did that. I believe we probably did flood the church and so any damage we caused was our fault. So if what we did really did damage all that stuff then we deserved to be punished. I don't see that as being unjust. And we might have done. I just don't know how we would have done that much damage but I can't be totally sure we didn't.

It wasn't deliberate but I think the cops thought it was. And I think the stipe did too. I know my dad thought it was but he blamed my little brother more than me. I was mostly in trouble for not keeping a good eye on him. My brother didn't go to court because he was too young. You had to be eight to go to court and he was only six and so he was lucky.

As for Adelaide being pretty English back then it really was. But so were we. Ten pound Poms. So even if the Aussie attidue wouldn't have allowed it mum and dad were still very British.

Hi Steve, being an Australian as you well know, and being the same age yourself and Terry as you also know, I find your comments right on the mark. You are correct in saying that no Aussie would put up with any injustice. You only need to read the papers to see where our troops are at the moment to realise that.

Personally, I find the story a bit hard to swallow. However, one thing worth noting is that Terry is from Adelaide which has a large ex-pat Brit society. Now we all know what the English are like when it comes to canes, and stories about them!

Lotta, Brian Cadd is a well known musican/songwriter here who started his career in the 1960's, and is one of our fathers of Pop music in Australia.

He had a band called Axiom. When the band broke up, some of the members formed a band called Little River Band which I'm sure you will have heard of-very big in the US during the late 70's early eighties. But I digress.

Caddy has a trademark song called "A Little Ray of Sunshine". The start of the song goes: "Father said, she had to have a name not the same as her mom, but a name just the same....A little Ray of Sunshine, came into the world....A little Ray of Sunshine in the shape of a Girl".

And that's how I see you. A little ray of sunshine who keeps this forum on its toes.

The story sounds very true to me, afterall, in the mid-eighties myself and a friend were punished by a policeman as an alternative to be prosecuted and our parents consented. We both received a sound caning.

Our brighter members will readily accept there is no way anyone posting on this forum could ever prove that anything happened to them. Unfortunately, it's just not possible. Even if the event had been televised across the globe and had hit the headlines in every newspaper on Earth there is still no way the person posting the story could prove he is the person shown in the film or referred to in the newspaper headlines.

Our dimmer members are, of course, not blessed with the capacity to understand the above paragraph so let me say that if a posting appeared under the name of 'Neil Armstrong' in which the author claimed to have been an astronaut, there is no way to prove that the person posting the story is in fact the real Neil Armstrong.

So, if we're going to make progress, let's have no more talk of 'proving' the truth of a story about a personal experience. It can't be done.

I have read many allegedly true stories in my time and Terry's story is by a very, very, very long way the most absurd I have ever encountered.

He should arrange an appointment with a psychiatrist without delay.

Ben,

How did you type that message while wearing a strait-jacket?

After reading Lotta's latest rubbish this morning on the 'Over and over' thread, I for one will never reply to its nonsense again. If the 'management' can't stop it then I suggest we all ignore it, it has gone on far too long.

Lotta,

Would you please tell us what aspects of Terry's story you feel are so absurd?

I am sceptical myself about Terry's claims (and he hasn't e-mailed me so I can start trying to check them out - if I can get some facts about what he has said - name of the church, school, more detailed dates, etc, I might be able to check these things) to have been one of the relatively small number of boys subjected to judicial corporal punishment in South Australian history. It is statistically possible that such a person could turn up here, but it doesn't seem very likely to me.

But your statement: Terry's story is by a very, very, very long way the most absurd I have ever encountered seems to me to suggest you think there's a lot more about this story to doubt than just the fact that Terry says it happened to him.

Are there aspects of the story he tells that you object to, not on the basis that you don't believe it happened to him - but that you object to on the basis that you don't believe they happened at all to anyone?

You've already pointed out the issue that you can't believe an organ could have been damaged in the way he described, but surely, given the strength of your scepticism, this can't possibly be the only thing you find absurd.

When I began to read the story, I soon became convinced it was a deliberately humorous posting intending to parody the fantasy postings with which we're all so familiar. As the story progressed and Terry found himself on the receiving end of increasingly serious repercussions, I became increasingly impressed by Terry's talent as a comedy writer.

It certainly came as shock to find out that he was not writing comedy (at least not intentionally) but intended the posting to be taken seriously.

Even if we ignore the content of the posting and look only at its style, the whole thing has the unmistakable air of an absurd CP-fantasy concocted by an absurd CP-obsessed fantasist. That alone is sufficient reason to express grave doubts re its genuineness.

If one reads the content, however, its non-genuineness becomes more apparent with every paragraph.

I claim no expertise in the construction and use of Australian churches but I think we might all agree that they are essentially no different from those to be found in Britain.

Accordingly, it's likely that the sink had an 'overflow opening' that would have saved the day because it's a certainty that the tap was not turned on anywhere near fully as it would have been impossible, if it had, either to fill a glass or to drink directly from the flow.

Even if there were no overflow opening, we have at worst a tap flowing quite moderately into the sink and, in such circumstances, the excess water would have drained away either though a wooden floor or, if the floor were stone, through a doorway to the outside world. There seems no possibility in any event that the water level could have risen sufficiently to damage anything that was not lying flat upon the floor.

I claim no expertise either in Australian law or in the workings of Australia's judicial system but I think we might all agree that Australia is, for all its peculiarities, essentially similar to Britain in its way of doing things. Accordingly, I find it almost impossible to believe the police would have charged the 8-year-old with wilful damage when another party had already confessed to causing the damage non-wilfully.

I find it similarly difficult to believe that any lawyer in the civilised world would have advised the the 8-year-old to plead guilty to wilful damage when another party had already confessed to causing the damage non-wilfully. Had the 6-year-old intended to cause damage, his 8-year-old accomplice might have been deemed to be equally guilty but there is no suggestion that there was any intent.

I was surprised to learn that that Australian courts were caning 8-year-olds in 1960 but I'll be guided upon that matter by legally or historically competent Australians. In any event, I'm reluctant to believe that any magistrate in the civilised world of 1960 would have sentenced the the 8-year-old to be caned for such a relatively trivial offence.

The whole story is a joke.

Once again posting from an historian's perspective.

I claim no expertise in the construction and use of Australian churches but I think we might all agree that they are essentially no different from those to be found in Britain.

Having seen a lot of British churches and a lot of Australian churches, I can confirm they are pretty close to indistinguishable if they are of a similar age. Australian architects have generally followed British traditions in designing churches, and in Adelaide, which is often referred to in Australia as the City of Churches, this tradition has been even stronger than in most of the country. So, yes, it can be safely assumed that virtually any Adelaide church would not look out of place in Britain, and any British church under 150 years of age would not look out of place in Adelaide, and correspondingly any assessment based on church architecture is likely to be just as accurate here as in the UK.

I claim no expertise either in Australian law or in the workings of Australia's judicial system but I think we might all agree that Australia is, for all its peculiarities, essentially similar to Britain in its way of doing things. Accordingly, I find it almost impossible to believe the police would have charged the 8-year-old with wilful damage when another party had already confessed to causing the damage non-wilfully.

Generally speaking Australia does do things in a reasonably similar way to the UK, and this would have been even more true in 1960 than it is today, particularly true of Adelaide over a lot of other places, and very true indeed when it came to matters of law - Australia's legal system and practices in its fundamentals is still very close to that of the United Kingdom.

Not claiming any expertise in law, I can't comment on the specifics of what police would and would not have done.

I was surprised to learn that that Australian courts were caning 8-year-olds in 1960 but I'll be guided upon that matter by legally or historically competent Australians. In any event, I'm reluctant to believe that any magistrate in the civilised world of 1960 would have sentenced the the 8-year-old to be caned for such a relatively trivial offence.

I have to say - and I do have a passing acquaintance with this - I can't recally having heard of any case where anyone as young as eight was sentenced to a caning under South Australia's Juvenile Courts Act. It does appear to have been legally possible - the age of criminal responsibility was eight years old and the law seems to have been applicable to anyone between that age and eighteen years of age but every case I can call to mind involved boys of at least thirteen years of age.

This doesn't mean this categorically isn't true. I won't go that far but I think it would be in Terry's interests, if he is telling the truth, to provide us with more particulars. If he isn't telling the truth, it would be in his interest not to.

DANNY

I'm afraid Lotts might just be right.

If Terry had been in the same state as Mike ie Victoria, the age of criminal responsibility was 8, and then, who knows?

Unfortunately, in the land of CrowEaters(South Australia), the age was 10, and that is written into their legislation.


Steve

Steve
I'm referring to the uncalled for comment on Ben. That needs an apology!

There are three Australians here at the moment. Terry, the originator of the post, Dean, a victorian and myself.

As Dean is younger he is out of the calculation for the moment. Terry and I are the same vintage. Terry writes that this is atrue account. I don't belive so as it would have had to be documented by the courts and information about this incident easily accessed under the Freedom Of Information Legislation (FOIL) if one really wanted to pursue it.

Courts also have reporters hanging around on a daily so why wasn't this incident reported in the news? A story of this nature in its day, or any other time would have attracted media attention.

I did not see any reference to this account in my book; Cronicles of the 20th Century. Obviously there must have been a cover up to keep the story from leaking out.

Terry says the account is true, I say it is very unlikely so we cancel each other out. Dean wasn't born then so he has to rely on history. I don't have to rely on history becuse I was part of it.

It's about time we put this thread to bed. I can't take anymore. My sides are so sore from laughing.

There is one proven thing though, and that is that even in Australia we