Dear Mr Riak, I am very grateful to you for your website. If you wish, you may put the following letter on it, but please do NOT publish my surname or my e-mail address (just "Ann" is okay). Thank you. Ann

To all parents who spank or are considering spanking their children:

I had good, loving, Catholic parents, who believed in spanking as a form of discipline. I loved my parents, and did not consider them to be abusive. Spankings were given about once a year, between the ages of three and ten. They were always given with the hand, sometimes, but not always, on the bare bottom; they usually consisted of ten to twenty hard smacks. I was told that they were doing this because they loved me, and they wanted me to grow up to be a decent person. (I accepted this without question, although I hated and dreaded the spankings. However, I began to question the necessity of it when I was a teenager and met several nice, polite people who had never been spanked.)

Anyway, I'm in my thirties now. I did grow up to be a decent person. I'm a daughter that any parent would be proud of. I'm a virgin. I always got A's for conduct in school. I never smoked, drank, or took drugs. I'm very well educated. I was extremely successful at university, and have an excellent job now. I am well liked, and am considered to be reliable, kind, sensitive, and caring. I give to charities. I'm active in the Church. I do voluntary work. Obviously I turned out well. I must be a proof of the benefits of spanking.

The problem is - nobody can know the harm it did to me, because I shall never speak of it in public. It is my shameful, dark secret. My well-meaning, loving, Christian parents, sexually abused me, without ANY idea of what they were doing. They were good, innocent people, who wanted the best for their children. They would have known vaguely that there was such a thing as homosexuality, but would certainly not have heard of any deviation that was more unusual.

Are you all fools? Don't you realize that the buttocks are a sexual area, not just because of their closeness to the genitals, but also because of the nerve endings which lead directly to sexual nerve centres? What do you think it does to a child's psychological or sexual well-being to have his or her pants pulled down, to be placed across the parent's lap (which is a sexually-suggestive posture, even if the parent does not perceive it as such), and to have her or her private sexual area violated, and then to be told that this happened because the child is "loved"?

At a young age, as a result of these "non-abusive" spankings, I began to have an unhealthy fascination with the subject. After the spankings, I fantasized about them. How could I have known that I shouldn't? I felt vaguely troubled and embarrassed when the subject of spanking was brought up in public, but in private, I loved fantasizing about it. I would read autobiographies and novels that had chapters about children getting spanked. I did not know that this interest was sexual. I was not well informed about the facts of life, and had no idea that the parts of my body where I felt stirring sensations were connected with anything other than going to the toilet and being spanked. I deliberately sought this exciting feeling for years. I would go into bookshops and look for books on Christian parenting (especially Dr Dobson's books), and I would read extracts and reach a state of arousal. I never spoke about it to anyone: although I did not know that it was sexual, I did know that it was weird.

I was nineteen when I read in some book that some people are sexually stimulated by the thought of corporal punishment. I was horrified, ashamed, and embarrassed. I had always thought I was chaste, because I didn't fornicate. Now I was addicted to this sexual arousal, which I had innocently become accustomed to. It took eight years before I found the courage to tell a priest in confession. He was terribly kind and sensitive, and treated me with the utmost delicacy. Since then, I have managed, with occasional lapses, to stay pure in mind. It was difficult at first, but it IS possible.

If you think that spanking isn't sexual, just type the word into some internet search engine, and see the proportion of pornographic sites to parenting sites. Please don't think that just because YOU'RE not aroused, that it doesn't matter. You don't know what you might be doing to your child. How could my parents have known that their intelligent, well-disciplined, much-loved daughter would end up a sexual pervert? I can forgive them, especially because they didn't know, but your children may not be able to forgive you. I won't have children, because with my sexual deviation I cannot marry. But if I did have children, I would much, much rather have them grow up to be sexually normal and pure, than have them instantly obedient to my parental authority. I did not choose to have this kink. It's weird and perverted; it's embarrassing and humiliating. And it does NOT require abusive parents to bring about this condition. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was spanked twice by his governess, and was tormented by erotic feelings about the subject for the rest of his life. I have learned of many, many other cases of seemingly normal, nice, successful people, who received an occasional spanking from loving parents, and who developed this deviation. Some of them, like me, try to stay pure in mind; some spend their time indulging in spanking fantasies, with the aid of pornographic videos and websites. None say that they are glad they have this tendency. Even if they enjoy and deliberately seek these strange "pleasures" - excitement would be a better word, since it's not really pleasant - they will never enjoy the TRUE pleasure of a loving, chaste, fulfilling, normal sexual relationship. I'm very, very grateful - to that kind priest as well as to God - that I have been set free from the addiction, if not from the tendency.

Please, please don't spank your child.

Ann