WISCONSIN
Wisconsin State Journal
Calling the abuse of their very young children on religious grounds “absurd” and “obviously dangerous,” a Dane County judge on Friday sentenced a Black Earth couple to a jointly recommended 18 months of probation, but made it clear to them that more severe punishment could have awaited them.
Dane County Circuit Judge Ellen Berz said that regardless of what their church taught them, Matthew Caminiti, 30, and his wife, Alina Caminiti, 27, should have known that striking their children, including infants, on their bare bottoms with wooden dowels was wrong and misguided.
“The troubling part is that this behavior is not simply illegal,” Berz said, “it is obviously wrong, just wrong, and you could not, with your intelligence and your love for your children, recognize that.”
The Caminitis were members of the Aleitheia Bible Church in Black Earth, which was led by Matthew Caminiti’s father, Philip Caminiti. The elder Caminiti preached that children were to be disciplined with rods, as instructed by the Bible, to cure them of selfish behavior.
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