Claim:   Enraged father punishes 3-year-old by smashing his fingers, then commits suicide out of remorse.

Status:   False.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2003]

It is difficult to love a person, especially when you don't know how to express your feelings. Worse still, if you are unsure of the person's feelings, the uncertainty can really tear your heart... This is a true story that happened in the States. A man came out of his home to admire his new truck. To his puzzlement, his 3-year-old son was happily hammering dents into the shiny paint. The man ran to his son, knocked him away, and hammered the little boy's hands into a pulp as punishment. When the father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital. Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally had to amputate the fingers from both the boy's hands. When the boy woke up from the surgery and saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently asked, "Daddy, I'm sorry about your truck, but when are my fingers going to grow back?" The father went home and committed suicide. Think about the story the next time you see someone spill milk at a dinner table or hear a baby crying. Think first before you lose your patience with someone you love. Trucks can be repaired. Broken bones and hurt feelings often can't. Too often we fail to recognize the difference between the person and the performance. People make mistakes. We are allowed to make mistakes. But the actions we take while in a rage will haunt us forever.

Origins:   This tear-jerker of a cautionary tale has been circulating on the Internet since 1998, sometimes titled "Crime and Punishment." No, this incident did not play out in real life; the claim that "This is a true story that happened in the States" is fatuous. We searched a number of news archives and were unable to locate any news item that resembled this tale. There is little to base a thorough search on, however, as the account lists no names, dates, or places.

Certainly some parents have abused their children, and in some cases that abuse has been horrendous, but this particular tale of a father's pounding his son's hands into pulp, the amputation of the child's fingers, and the guilt-ridden parent's killing himself is made up. This is an instructional tale meant to impart the message that parents must resist the urge to act out their anger.

This sad tale, which completes with the news of the guilt-stricken parent's suicide, is an updating of an older piece of lore, one sent as an anonymous letter to the Salt Lake City, Utah, media in 1986:

Currently there is a six year old little girl in primary Children's Hospital with no hands.

She apparently took a hammer to the family car and to punish her her father took the same hammer to her hands. By the time they got her to the hospital she had lost two fingers (they fell off) and then her blood vessels, bone and nerves were so badly damaged that they had to amputate both hands.

The mother will not press charges because "he was in charge of discipline," and the hospital is being forced to return this child to these two crazy people.

For God's sake, can't the media do something.

Again, there was no such child. (The reporter the letter had been sent to investigated the story and found nothing to it.) According to noted folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand, the 1986 story contains two typical legend motifs: legal helplessness of a wronged innocent and alleged suppression of information by authorities. But of course any child so abused would have been quickly scooped up by Children's Services and removed from the family; she wouldn't have been returned to "these two crazy people."

Barbara "rage of angels" Mikkelson

Last updated:   2 September 2006

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  Sources:

    Brunvand, Jan Harold.   The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story.

    University of Illinois Press, 2000.   ISBN 0-252-02424-9   (pp. 162-163).