Project report

Yesterday was a good day to take accountability, but today is just as promising: a personal testimony of corporal punishment

Bess · 9 Dec 2025

Abstract

I keep returning to the same question: What part of my story will people finally believe? Which moments are striking enough to make others understand how bad it really was, how profoundly violence against children scars a person, or how invisible a suffering child can be? I have spent a long time looking for the “highlights” of my experience with violence in my childhood because I have learned that without shock, without proof, without a narrative that is tragic enough, people do not listen. That is what my advocacy has been like: trying to show the world what has happened to me and continues to happen to many others, hoping it might convince the right people to care and bring light to what violent realities children experience among us in our everyday lives. When I was beaten up regularly in my childhood, nobody saw me, felt bad for me or held the responsible adults accountable. I always knew the violence was wrong. I felt the injustice with a clarity beyond my age. But knowing the truth did not change the reality: I was still a child being hurt by the people who were supposed to protect me. I was six years old when it started, six years old when I first felt the suffocating combination of despair and betrayal. I had no understanding that helped me to cope with how the people I loved most in the world could hurt me again and again, without guilt, without hesitation, and without my pain meaning anything to them. I was confused, desperate, betrayed. And even though years have passed, my thoughts stayed the same for the majority of my life: when will it be like before? When will it turn back to normal? Why does and did nobody care? If you ask children’s rights organisations or politicians, they will insist that they care deeply, that they are horrified by what happens to children, that they are doing their best. But that simply isn’t true. Helping children is not celebrating world awareness days, running symbolic campaigns, painting children’s faces, or giving away small goods. Helping children means ensuring that laws actually reach them, that protection isn’t theoretical, and that resources aren’t secret knowledge you need to search for, but things every child automatically has access to. Children experiencing violence are already fighting for their lives, yet everyone responsible seems to believe that once a law is passed, every six-year-old will suddenly report their parents, walk into child protective services on their own, and mail a postcard thanking political parties or organisations for their “meaningful work.” I can say directly that no campaign eased my suffering. No ministry speech, no polished statement changed anything for me. That is not to say that everyone is inherently bad. It is to say that accountability is not taken by those who are responsible to protect children. Child protection is not about moving mountains; it is about doing what is necessary without bargaining the seriousness of children’s safety down to something convenient or symbolic. There is no “light version” of helping children. When I was six and despairing after being beaten up, I did not wonder about policy changes or legal frameworks, I wondered why nobody cared. No small symbolic campaign reached me, no ministry press release comforted me, and no children's rights organisation’s self-celebratory list of achievements meant anything. I don't believe it to be any different for the children facing corporal punishment today. Getting beaten up in your childhood does not feel like a collection of separate incidents. It feels like one long, never-ending period of despair and helplessness. I was not being hit 24/7, I had good moments in between. But when the violence came, it left marks and impressions deep enough that the peaceful moments didn't amount to anything. They simply gave me a chance to become hopeful again, only to be shattered the next day and being hit by reality in the truest sense. Your home becomes the most dangerous place, the place where comfort should be, but never is. The places outside feel more like comfort than the arms of your parents, even though being lovingly held by them is what you yearn for more than anything. Every adult who is supposed to protect you becomes a potential traitor, someone whose morality and backbone you cannot rely on. For many, violence in childhood is not a chapter; it is the beginning. The first stones upon which everything else is built. Childhood violence does not show you the bright side of the world. It does not let you feel the beauty of childhood, the safety of innocence, or the fragile joy that children are meant to experience. It breaks you directly from your most vulnerable point and teaches you that the world is dangerous, that safety is an illusion, and that trust is a risk you cannot afford. It shows you that your existence, your “original sin,” in a sense, is simply being born into the wrong place at the wrong time. While other children experience love, acceptance, and protection, you learn only that the world does not want you, that you must earn your worth, and that you are always one misstep away from punishment. I dislike the word “survivor.” I did not survive anything in a triumphant sense. My story is and never will be a success story. Nothing about having a crime committed against you is empowering. Turning childhood violence into some kind of character-building experience, something that “toughened” you, is cruel in its own form. The world keeps trying to empower those affected by violence, but often, the message sounds like: your suffering made you strong. That is simply not true and recognising this is an honest, yet bitter act to highlight violence's cruel nature and aftermath. An honesty necessary to address this issue. When I speak about the need to bring attention to violence against children, I often get asked what the final goal is. Many do not seem to understand that for me, awareness is the goal in itself. The affected need to know they are not alone. They need to know that someone cares. They need to hear conversations that prove the issue is not forgotten, not hidden behind closed doors, not something adults talk about only after tragedies occur, but something that's talked about in front of all doors and the public, the only place where accountability can take place. Back then, I needed visibility. I needed to see people talking about what was happening to children like me. I needed to know that somewhere, someone would help me without making my life harder. I am certain nothing has changed about that for the many who are in the same position now. This is also why I'm speaking up against corporal punishment. I want to make my six-year-old self be seen and everyone who is suffering or suffered like me visible in the world, so that suffering children who are close to giving up on themselves will catch a glimpse of the news and see someone who speaks loudly on our right to be seen, to be protected and to hold society accountable. Making people aware, however simple it may sound, is the only way to make abused children visible and close the gap between resources and laws and the children who depend on them. Child protection has to stop being a theoretical discussion on NGO panels building on inoperable laws and take the bull by its horns to finally address it as a verb, an action to which we need to put the issue right in front of the public's eye that avoiding societal responsibility and shame from inaction aren't an option. Children are born full of joy and dreams. The world crushes most of us eventually, but the least we could do is protect the short years of childhood, to allow children to be children. A time when they are innocent, when they are hopeful, when their happiness and laughs are still the highest good. The least we could do is make sure that violence never becomes the foundation of their entire lives, not like it has become mine and a billion others. And that is not a conversation for tomorrow, but for whenever we realise that while we can postpone it for another time, the abused children cannot. My name is Nehir Ayral, I’m 21 years old, and I speak out against corporal punishment, not as a personal tragedy, but as a failure of society affecting more than a billion of children worldwide. ... Other than that, I'm also a political science student based in Berlin, Germany. ... ... LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/nehir-ayral Mail: info@endcorporalpunishment.org The post Yesterday was a good day to take accountability, but today is just as promising: a personal testimony of corporal punishment first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.