A three-year-old girl has been smacked on the bottom by a frustrated female pharmacist in the UK.
The little girl had knocked some items off a shelf in the chemist Boots when the worker aged in her 50s smacked Lora once on the bottom in front of her horrified mother.
“Nobody has the right to punish my own daughter – just me and her dad but we would not do it like that,” the mother told UK tabloid The Daily Mail. “It was hard enough to shunt her forward into the display. I knew it wasn’t right.”
When Angela Cropley demanded an official apology the manager said, “It was only a tap. "She eventually received a letter of apology from the pharmacy after she went to the police.
This incident has sparked debate in the UK – is it every okay to slap someone else’s child? Australians have been debating this since the release of Christos Tsiolka’s novel The Slap in 2008. The book was turned into an eight-part drama series that aired on ABC TV in 2011.
British legal expert Siobhan Freegard told The Daily Mail smacking someone else's child was unlawful and likely to be considered assault.
The apology letter said the staff member's action was "a gesture of empathy" but founder of parenting website Netmums.com said the incident was "shocking".
"Shop staff wouldn't slap an adult who knocked over a display so why hit a child," Freegard said.
