Slapped By a Parent After Confronting a Bullying Child

[van]

My question involves criminal law for the state of: Florida

Well I have two folded question. My first question is what is a proper action/reaction that is within legal limit for a parent to take if they find their child (9 year) being beaten by another child (age 10-12) and locked in a head lock and shaken to the point where their child is in tears?
As a father my reaction was to separate both as the bully did not let go even when he saw me walking to them. As I separated them I told him never to touch my son again. I do have other witnesses as I did not notice the event and was brought to my attention in a public park and then I went running to them. All the adults and the kids were throwing and catching the football. But the parents of the bully were nowhere in sight.

Later the Mom approach me aggressively along with another gentlemen who I thought was the father and looked much more reasonable from his body language as they came close to me. As the gentlemen was asking me what happened the Mom without listening just yelled who the hell you think you are to hit my son and slept me. I am not a violent person and would never thus could not think of a way of reacting; which is a good thing because she was right in my face and I could have completely knocked her out. Upon the incident my friends and other in the park came in between and sent her away and held me down as I was pretty upset and angry by then as she walked away. Later I found that the gentleman was not her husband or anyone related.

I did investigate her name and have found her full name. This incident happened in the same state as both parties resides but different city, county and major metropolitan area. I want to know if I can file battery charges against her to put this on her record and if so where would this be filed.

[Mr. Knowitall]

You call it "tapp[ing] the bully on the back of his head", they call it "hitting". I would not be surprised if, should you report the slap to the police, they will report that you hit their child and that the police simply take reports of both incidents and forward the results of their investigation to the prosecutor for review. That is, both of you could end up facing charges.

[van]

Thus I ask what should have been the proper action when I saw the incident of my son being headlocked, crying and looking for rescue?

[free9man]

Separate them using no more force than is necessary to accomplish that end. Your OP made it sound like the "tap" was unnecessary occurred after you had them separated to convey a message that should have been verbal, not physical. That makes it completely out of line and criminal assault/battery. If you find it necessary to use a great deal of physical force in accomplishing your goal, it is best to report the fight to the authorities. That way witnesses can make statements as to the circumstances that might lessen the odds of you being criminally charged for physically assaulting a child or creating an affirmative defense if prosecution occurred.

As an aside, if you were made so angry by a woman slapping you that your friends had to physically restrain you....that might create the impression that your tap on the head might have been more than a tap on the head.

[viol8te]

Never touch someone else's child. If you had stated something to the effect of separating the two, that would have been one thing. But you "tapping" a kid in the back of the head leaves too much to the imagination.

[aardvarc]

Preferably a course of action that didn't involve what a prosecutor would believe constituted a "strike" - such as pulling the victim away, inserting yourself between the parties (we're talking 10 year olds), or even restraining the arms of the aggressor to stop the infliction of the attack and to allow the victim opportunity extracate themselves. Of course neither we nor the potential prosecutor were there at the time, and thus discussion along this line is speculative, but as a general rule, the use of force, to be seen as prudent and reasonable, needs to be that MINIMAL force needed to stop the immediate threat - if a reasonable person (reflected in the opinion of the prosecutor, and later by a jury) could have accomplished that stoppage without a strike, such as methods of separating the parties rather than a blow to one party, then a strike may be seen as excessive. On the other hand, I've had a pitbull attack my dog and multiple shovel strikes to the head weren't enough - so it's very situation specific - but brief restraint and self intervention between the two parties would probably be seen much more favorably than a strike - especially if one or both alternate tactics could be accomplished with little risk to the intervening party (again, different when talking about 10 year olds versus a couple of college football players where risk to self plays a much more important part in reasonably available options.)

[Mr. Knowitall]

The bully responded to me as he walked away as I am sorry uncle I would not do that again.

As you're clearly not the child's uncle it sounds like the child may be an immigrant, or the child of recent immigrants. Calling an unrelated adult "uncle" as a term of respect is common in parts of Africa and Asia, but not at all typical of kids raised in the west. Issues of language and culture may further complicate the scenario.

This happened in the context of a game of football between a group of children? Full-contact, tackle football?

[quirkyquark]

Uncle, where did my "tap" go? I don't see it anymore after your edit(s)!

[viol8te]

Uncle, where did my "tap" go? I don't see it anymore after your edit(s)!

Hmmm, a rather serious omission of a very important fact ain't it?