In our congregation, we had two rooms up in front connected to the stage. One of these rooms was for storage and the other was used in demonstrations for door to door stuff.
Once, during the Public talk, one of the Witness families in attendence was having problems with their kids. They believed in corporal punishment in a big way in my congregation and during the talk, both the mother and father of this large family took three or four of their kids back into the bathroom to beat them. After the parents and the kids came back out and sat down, the kids were crying and acting up in a few minutes and again they started hauling the kids back to the bathroom. These kids ranged in age from about 6 years old to about 14, anyway one of the kids broke free and ran up to the stage and went inside the storage closet!
The brother on the stage was from out of town and didn't know what to do and just stopped his talk. The mother ran up to the stage when she realized one had gotten away but the kid had locked himself in, and she was pounding on the door for him to open it up. Finally, he did open it and she went inside and whipped him good.
Nobody in that damn congregation said a word as she continued to beat him until her anger was exhausted, and that seemed several minutes later. Eventually the brother started his talk again but he was clearly shaken up by the experience.
I was embarrased for him and the humilation everyone felt from the whole thing. Soon afterwards, our congregation voted to build a "crying room" for parents to take their kids and punish them so not to disturb people in the audience.
You can call it what you want but I call it sanctioned child abuse.
Skipper
All great deeds and all great thoughts have ridiculous beginnings--Albert Camus