Melissa Ruth Smith: Is Cop Guilty Of Child Abuse For ‘Discipline’ Beating? Here’s What A Court Said


Melissa Ruth Smith and her husband, Robert Smith, are both officers with the Allen, Texas, police department. But in 2010, they also became accused child abusers, after a doctor examined Melissa’s then-11-year-old son and decided that the welts and bruises on his face and body were caused by more than a “slap” or two.

Melissa Smith admitted that she slapped her son from time to time, but this time, the doctor said, was worse.

The case raised questions, in similar fashion to the nationally publicized case of NFL football star Adrian Peterson, of how much is too much when it comes to parental discipline. Peterson admitted to “whooping” his 4-year-old to the point where visible cuts and bruises lined the child’s legs and body.

The football player even admitted striking the child in the testicles on one occasion.

The Melissa and Robert Smith case began when the 11-year-old, as 11-year-olds commonly do, began “rolling his eyes and making sarcastic comments” toward his mother, and behaving in a way that the police officer considered “disrespectful,” according to police documents from her arrest in March of 2010.

Melissa Smith responded not by making sarcastic remarks of her own, or by sending the boy to his room and grounding him — but with physical force, using weapons.

According to the police records, her “discipline” of her son consisted of “striking him on the head with a metal spoon, striking him in the face with her hands and striking him on his buttocks with a belt, leaving severe marks and bruising.”

After that, Robert Smith — the boy’s stepfather — continued the discipline for the eye-rolling incident by pretending to arrest the boy, violently.

The stepfather, “handcuffed the (boy), threw him to the ground, strangled him, picked him up and placed him in a car and transported him to the Allen Police Department,” according to the police affidavit.

Texas law allows parents to use physical violence against their children as a form of discipline, but the line between ordinary parental discipline and child abuse under the law remains fuzzy, and can be decided differently by individual judges and juries.

In the case of Melissa Smith, a court just this month found her not guilty of child abuse under the statutes.

Robert Smith had been charged with misdemeanor “official oppression,” but a grand jury declined to issue an indictment against him.

When a Child Protective Service investigator asked Melissa Smith where, in her opinion, the line should be drawn between “discipline” and child abuse, she said that a beating with a baseball bat, or an assault on her child that leaves him with broken bones, would cross that line.

[Images: Allen Police Department]

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