Karate Instructor Kicks Student 200 Times

by jordan | November 30, 2007 at 07:55 am | 603 views | 1 comment

This sort of behavior is best left to Cobra Kai. Yeah, Karate is, by its very nature, a contact sport, but emphasis tends to be on the "sport" aspect, and not on the "contact", especially in youth classes. This sort of thing is inappropriate for eleven-year-olds, unless those eleven-year-olds live at the Shaolin Temple, but that's something entirely different (Wu Shu, not Karate).

Karate teaches self-control, discipline, and moderation. But Suffolk police say one lesson was too much for a young boy, when instructor Susan Bateman, of Jeff Bateman's School of Karate, kicked him in the ribs and stomach more than 200 times.

Police say Bateman was teaching her students toughness, challenging them to take as many kicks as possible.

"Some students may have taken ten kicks, and some students may have taken fifty kicks. And two actually took over 200 kicks," says Debbie George, of the Suffolk Police Department.

One student, an 11-year-old, was injured. George says "he did suffer some internal injuries and possibly a fractured rib."

Bateman turned herself in last Tuesday on a Felony charge of Child Endangerment. But a conversation with Susan Bateman's brother sheds a different light on the karate instructor.

"Sweep the leg, Johnny!"

Cue some very pissed-off parents...

And, yes, there's video (courtesy of AP, embedded in both sources above), but it doesn't show the actual kicking of a child.

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ciemnyaniol

at 16:44 on March 5th, 2008

I have trained with this woman , and she is a wonderful person and not the monster that the press is making her out to be. She cares for all her students as if they are her own children. And her son is a student at that school a 2nd degree blackbelt.so for those of you who would condemn her without even knowing her or any she has trained with i suggest you get more informed.