Swats

Spanking or paddling for disciplinary purposes. Sometimes used in conjunction with demerits ("six demerits, six swats").

"Swats" were usually administered by an adult male weilding a wooden paddle. In some countries it became popular to fashion the paddles with holes in order to reduce wind resistance and enable a more powerfull blow.

The severity of the corporal punishment administered in The Family differed from case to case and rhetoric used by David Berg is sometimes construed as encouraging more brutal beatings, as his writings sometimes rambled about beating out demons or using a "2 by 4" to administer punishment. He described the ferocity of beatings he administered in a boastful manner, bragging of lifting the subjects of his beatings off the floor.

Please see corporal punishment.

Note to contributors: please provide passages in Family publications that speak of or condone severe corporal punishment.