MONTICELLO, Ga. -- A mother of two is accusing school administrators of abusing her five-year-old son after they used a paddle to discipline him on Wednesday.
Shana Marie Perez, posted video on her Facebook page of the principal and assistant principal of her son's school trying to paddle her child. As of Friday, the video has been viewed over two million times.
In the video, the boy, who attends Jasper County Primary School, struggles to avoid being spanked with a wooden paddle.
The 5-year-old repeatedly says "Mommy, no," in the video, which Perez filmed while sitting in the principal's office.
“I kept saying, 'no' to the paddling, because she [the principal] said he had to be paddled,” Perez said.
Perez told WXIA-TV that she has been in a long-running dispute with the principal over her son’s attendance and behavior this year. She said he’s been out sick 18 days this school year and that the school recently had her arrested for truancy.
According to Perez, the principal told her that if she tried to intervene, her son would be suspended. She said she feared that if her son missed another day of school her bond would be revoked and she would have to go back to jail, miss work, and be unable to care for her children.
Georgia is one of the several states that allows corporal punishment in schools. While Georgia law outlaws abuse, it does allow school systems to decide for themselves whether to administer corporal punishment, within specific guidelines and limitations, and with parental consent.
Officials from the Jasper County Schools said the district is aware of the video and school officials are investigating the incident.
"Unfortunately, the district is barred by State and Federal law from commenting about the specifics of this incident," the school said in a statement. "We can speak generally about the District's code of conduct, which allows corporal punishment as one of the consequences for behavior. That code of conduct is provided to all parents. When corporal punishment is used, it is with parental consent."
It was the way that administrators tried to position him to receive the spanking that Perez believes constituted abuse.
Perez says she has a meeting scheduled with administrators to talk about the incident. She maintains that she signed a form at the beginning of teh school year stating that she did not give the school permission to administer corporal punishment.
During the 2014-2015 school year 94 of the Georgia's 197 school districts and charter schools reported at least one incident of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment was administered a total of 11,178 times that year in those school districts.
