Killing the Spanking Golden Goose?

The offer on the table was that your college tuition will be paid for , free accommodation and that you will receive a $300 weekly allowance. The catch? In return, you will abide by the Spencer Scholarship Plan, which meant that if you break certain rules such as failing to report in or have a drink, you would be spanked.

Okay, now that does not sound too difficult, and it is obviously what some young women thought when they enrolled in Henry Allen Fitzsimmons’s tuition plan. However, it all went spankingly wrong. The fifty-four year old restaurant owner are now accused of taking things to far, and a judge decided on 19 May 2011 that a grand jury should consider whether Henry should be indicted on charges of felony abduction and sexual penetration.

The women are complaining that he did not only spank them, but he also used leather straps or a horse riding crop, and that they allowed him to spank them on their bare bottoms because they feared him. A 21-year-old women testified that when she joined the program last year November, she was spanked and was given $300, an ocean front apartment to live in, and a weekly allowance thereafter of $200. She had to abide by rules including walking twenty blocks a day, keep a record of her meals and to refrain from using drugs. Non-compliance to these rules meant that she would be spanked. She complained that he sexually assaulted her with a curtain rod, hairbrush and a horse-riding crop.

I am the first to admit that abuse and violence against women make me see red, especially living in a country where it seems to be a widespread problem, however, where this story is concerned, I do have a couple of questions about the validity of the complaints.

The Spencer Plan is on the internet, including a website run by Henry, where the offer of tuition, accommodation and an allowance is made in an exchange agreement to rules versus consequences, which in a nutshell boils down to spanking. It seems that all the women, mostly single struggling mothers and former drug addicts, who took up the offer, knew what the agreement was about.

There was no problem until April, when one of the women was accused of stealing money from his restaurant, and was fired because of it. A week later, six women began filing charges against him, however, her complaint as well as two other women’s whose only complaints were that they had been spanked, were dropped on the 19th May. According to the attorney for Henry Fitzsimmons, two women asked to remain in the programme after Henry threatened to terminate the agreement.

So, to conclude, from November last year up and until April, at least six women had a place to live in and were given allowance money per week. They were taken out for extravagant nights out on the town, and one of the women was even the recipient of a car. It rather does seem strange that the disagreement only started after one of these women was fired for theft.

I am left wondering whether this is not merely the actions of women when realizing that not only was the golden goose not willing to compromise on his rules, he was not letting go of his eggs freely, they should rather attempt a kill? I am, very cynically, I might add, waiting for the civil suits to follow….