A Georgia man was arrested after he was accused of slapping a 2-year-old boy repeatedly. Wayne Germond, 18, was watching his girlfriend’s 2-year-old while she was in the shower. According to WGCL, the girlfriend heard her son yelling and immediately ran from the bathroom to find Germond hitting the toddler.
She told authorities that she could see visible bruise marks on both sides of the child’s face as well as his neck. Germond told police that he was hitting the child to “toughen him up.” Germond shares a home with his girlfriend and her son. He was arrested on charges of second-degree cruelty to children.
This isn’t the first time a man has been arrested for trying to “toughen up” a young boy. On March 11 in Texas, a 29-year-old man assaulted a 4-year-old.
The Dallas Morning News reports that Bradley Santana Monrail was watching a 4-year-old family member ride a bicycle when he knocked the child off of the bike and began hitting him.
“[Monrail] felt like he has the right to rough him up to try to make him tougher when he pushed him off the bicycle,” said Sgt. Kory Martin said. “He said he was trying to toughen him up to help him from being bullied, so he basically bullied the 4-year-old from being bullied.”
During the assault, a 39-year-old man with mental disabilities attempted to intervene but Monrail attacked him, as well. Both victims suffered minor injuries. Monrail was arrested on a third-degree felony charge of injury to a child and a third-degree felony charge of injury to a disabled person.
Yet another case occurred in September 2015, when a Pennsylvania man assaulted his son and told the child to “toughen up.”
A 5-year-old boy said that his father repeatedly punched him in the stomach and threw him across the floor while he was at his father’s house for the weekend. The Times Leader reports that the boy’s parents are divorced.
His mother told police that her son told her: “Mommy, daddy beat me up, too, this weekend. He punched me in the face, then kneed me in the head. He was mad at me for no reason, Mommy, and was just hitting me. I was crying very hard and I don’t know why Daddy hates me.”
When the mother confronted her ex-husband, John Deyo, he said that he was “just playing” and that the boy needs to “toughen up.” He was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault.
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