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For two centuries, Japan had forbidden travel but permitted trade with the Dutch, and acquired many books on European science and technology. That’s how they learned about stuff like the alphabet:In Europe they do not use characters such as we have in China or Japan. They have only twenty-five letters, and these have eight forms that differ from one another in much the same way as the formal, running-hand, and cursive scripts do. These twenty-five letters suffice for writing anything. In Japan there is a particular character used for every single thing, in imitation of Chinese usage, which means that there is an inconveniently large number of characters. For example, 10 in Japanese is written with one character, while in Dutch it is hemel, four letters. Chi in Japanese is another character, while aard has four letters. It might seem simpler to use one character than four letters, but if a man were to attempt to memorize the tens of thousands of Chinese characters, he might not succeed even if he devoted his life's energies to it. This would certainly be a great waste of time. (source: Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830)They also learned about the existence of various countries in the world, and recent European developments and military strength. So there was not so much surprise when the first mission to Europe arrived in 1860. The records of Fukuzawa Yukichi, who participated in this mission, tell us a bit about what he was learning:This country is divided into fifty-two localities. Men of esteem and outstanding talent in the localities are put forward from among the people and made spokesmen for their locality. Such spokesmen are sent from each locality to the “House of Commons.” When problems arise concerning institutions and customs, these are put forward for discussion in the “House of Commons” by any of the spokesmen, in order that a judgment may be reached for or against.The section on Britain is divided into forty subsections, on government and society, diplomatic structure, naval and military matters, social structure, regulations on visiting ships and citizens, hospitals, schools, technologies, finance, smuggling, exports, commodities, and taxes. (source: Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe)Fukuzawa also investigated the form of the British Empire:India is a colony of Britain, and its people are like slaves of the British government. At present, the enterprise of Indians is to grow opium that poisons the Chinese. British merchants alone reap the profits from this trade in death. The government of Turkey is nominally independent, yet British and French merchants monopolize its commercial rights. Because of free trade, its production diminishes day by day … It’s heroic warriors, constrained by poverty, become useless.“As critical as he was of the imperial powers, Fukuzawa also found fault with India and Turkey. Countries are responsible for their own plight; India and Turkey, overly satisfied with conditions for their countries, had become complacent… The lesson for Japan was clear.” (source: Civilization and Enlightenment: The Early Thought of Fukuzawa Yukichi)

In November 1978, I had six months earlier been honorably discharged from a three year stint in the Navy and was sentenced to 20 years hard labor in the Commonwealth of Virginia for Armed Robbery. Convicted in Newport News, about three weeks later, I was transferred “behind the walls” to Richmond, otherwise known as 500 Spring Street . “The walls” were aptly named as the prison was inside the city and the walls around the prison were easily a good thirty-forty feet high. You could not see out and you could not see in. It was a cold, miserable place. At the time there was no shrubbery or trees or any living plant life inside the living area. Everything else was red dirt, concrete, iron and brick. Years later grass was planted in some areas of the buildings and tufts of grass peppered the athletic field in erratic patterns and lent a little color to the palette. Your only sense of the outside world was to look up at the blue sky and see the white clouds as they scurried by.This is James P. Mitchell who was Warden of 500 Spring Street the day I arrived. He was a no foolin’ round kind of guy. This video gives you an excellent inside look at the prison after it was condemned and shut down. I see my old cell in Building Three on the top tier. Just seeing it again brought a sinking feeling and a spirit quenching moment.I was assigned to Cell Block 3 (Segregation), West side, third tier. I spent the first day checking in, getting my clothing, bedding and hygiene products. Meeting counselors and doing paperwork. At the time, this prison was the most secure, maximum security prison in Virginia and I had been sent there because I had an administrative hold (warrant) on me from the State of South Carolina for another Armed Robbery. In the history of the walls Black men were electrocuted for TOUCHING a White woman. A decidedly racist environment. Anyone with an admin hold was deemed high risk for escape and was treated with extreme caution, which meant leg irons and waist chains everywhere you went outside your cell. It was a soul crushing, physically debilitating experience. You couldn’t run, skip or dance a jig; but, shuffled around with your leg irons cutting into your Achilles tendon and rubbing your ankle bones raw. If you were a problem or had a smart attitude they had a tactic to put you in your place. A guard would walk up behind you as you passed by and kick one foot behind the other, causing you to trip. With no way to break your fall (with your hands shackled to your waist) an unexpected trip would result in a face plant and many black eyes and chipped or broken teeth. It was almost inevitably accompanied by an “Oops, watch your step” and laughter from the guard. There was no mercy for the convicted. Not all COs were pricks; but, enough of them to make your life miserable if they wanted to. You felt absolutely helpless. There are no witnesses to anything in prison. Shady CO’s perform their deeds in private. Lots of blind corners, empty rooms and hallways in a prison. I think in hiring the guards they had put an ad in the paper, “Sadists wanted.” You just had to bow your head, make yourself as invisible as possible and tough it out.Because I was awaiting transfer to SC for additional charges I was not placed in Gen Pop (general population); but, kept in the Ad Seg (Administrative Segregation) Unit on lock down. Lock down is staying in your cell 23 hours a day with one hour for a shower and exercise three times a week. Your world was a five by nine by eight feet concrete and steel box in a cavernous tomb like building built a hundred years ago. Everything was rusty and mildewed with black and green mold. The smell of urine and the mildew was stifling and within days you developed a hacking cough that produced a yellow slime from your lungs. During the Summer months the humidity and heat brought another stench, the smell of human funk. In the winter months we huddled under thread bare, scratchy wool blankets, our breath creating vapor trails as everyone wheezed with the flu which raged rampant in those close quarters. The lights never went out. The rats ran over the pipes and down the halls with impunity and cockroaches swarmed the cells, running over your face and body as you slept. It wasn’t unusual to wake up and find a cockroach perched at the corner of your mouth or eye looking for moisture. It was a 24 hour a day cacophony of doors clanging shut, locking levers and mechanisms being thrown in and out of battery, buzzers going off, loudspeaker announcements, whistles, COs barking orders, and shouting and screaming by other prisoners and guards. The crescendo of sound dropped to a dull roar between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Every four hours a siren wailed and it was count time. You were required during standing counts to be at the door of your cell to be counted (three standing counts and three in-place counts every day). You were housed with another inmate you hoped and prayed was a decent sensible person. I was lucky, my cellie was a guy named Mitch from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Like me, he was a young, early twenties fellow that was soft spoken, genuine and didn’t belong in this God awful place. We were both thankful for someone to lean on in this hellhole.The only saving grace of this situation is you were not put out in the general population with all the crazies with multiple life sentences and thousand year convicts who cared about nothing and no one. Violence erupted at the slightest provocation or pretext of “disrespect”. You minded your own business, did not speak to anyone you absolutely didn’t have to and avoided protracted eye contact unless you wanted a confrontation. As a new arrival most confrontations were a test to see if you could be “punked”. Any sign of weakness resulted in the predators converging on you to see what havoc they could wreak. With little else to do, the predatory sickos were obsessed with the weak and toyed with and tested them mercilessly, day after day. If you ever backed down or showed any sign of reluctance to fight back, your life was hell from then on out. To get your “cred” back, you had to at some point seriously hurt someone (shank or club someone) to get the crazies to back off. Daily life was something to be tolerated and ended each day with a prayer, thankful that you were one day closer to your release.A year later I was transferred to stand trial for my crimes in my home State of South Carolina. I was sent to the notorious CCI in Columbia. A crumbling, turn of the century dungeon that housed South Carolina’s death row and execution chamber. The conditions of this prison were horrendous, thus it’s name the “Prison from Hell.”https://www.thestate.com/news/local/article183488606.html Click on “Listen to this article” beneath the video.Thankfully once again, I was not placed in Gen Pop. Four more months of lockdown. By now I had been on lock down for over a year and a half [almost 13,140 hours 788,400 minutes]. It took about 120 days for my case to come to trial. I received an additional twenty years sentence to run concurrent (at the same time) as my Virginia sentence. When I returned to Virginia I was assigned to Powhatan Correctional Center (the State Farm) and was so thankful for being moved to Gen Pop and off lock down. Powhatan was another maximum security facility located on a sprawling farm next to the James River.Inmate labor worked the farm and provided food for the facility as well as many of the other correctional units nearby. Because of my concurrent sentence from South Carolina I received a detainer on my custody status and remained at the highest security classification my entire term of detention. About four years in, my appeal was successful and a determination was made that I had not used a gun in the commission of this crime as the victim had contended. The victim had falsely and maliciously claimed I had a gun when I did not. This was pre video surveillance and a camera smartphone in everybody’s hands. Seven witnesses and no one else had seen a gun. My charge was changed from Armed Robbery to Strong Arm Robbery and my sentence was reduced from twenty years to eleven. Elation and tears of joy swept my body, I felt like I had won the lottery. Routine set in. I worked at various jobs in the prison complex. I did piece work as a seamster making prison uniforms. After taking a welding course I worked in repairs and construction for the surrounding facilities. My most distasteful job was working on the “kill floor” at the prison abattoir. Just prior to slaughter, animals are walked up a raceway into the abattoir where they enter the stunning box. ... As soon as the animal is stunned, it is shackled by a hind leg and then the large blood vessels are severed to induce bleeding (a process known as 'sticking'). That was my job, the stunning and the sticking. I believe I was assigned that job out of spite by prison authorities, as my love of animals was well known. It was no secret I had a pet mouse and a pet cat in the institution. It was devastating to me and a mind numbing experience to be the taker of life on that scale. We processed tens of thousands of pigs and cows. All of whom were dispatched by my hands. Crazies kept their distance from me. After all, I was the only convict on the yard with a gun and a razor sharp ten inch knife that took a hundred lives every day. Every evening I would lay on my bunk, stare off into the distance and muse in disbelief about the enormity of it. Three days a week I tutored illiterate inmates, coaxing them towards their GED.Unless you were independently wealthy before being committed or have well to do people on the outside, most inmates have to find a hustle to pay for the little extras that make life bearable in a prison environment. I was amazed at the ingenuity displayed by some who were sixth grade educated. You must understand from the onset that things of this nature were an “us against them” exercise. Hustles were generally victimless, except maybe the State. It was survivalism and ingenuity at it’s finest. I judged no one for their hustle. I pointedly didn’t have anything to do with their hustles, because if they flop or more importantly get caught you don’t want to be blamed as somebody in the know. Inmates who worked the kitchen plied the food trade. A fat, hot, grilled, real eggs and real cheese sandwich could be had from 4a.m. to 8 pm 7 days a week. For the right money (three First Class stamps or 5 stamps for two sandwiches). They were also the source for someone wanting to make “mash or pruno” (alcohol) as they could get the necessary sugar and yeast. Some of the kitchen workers ran delis. You could arrive each day to a selected table in the dining room and have waiting fresh vegetables and fruits and high end protein foods. Things stolen from the guards kitchen or just not available to the rest of population. It all came at a cost or trade. Inmates who worked the laundry hustled dry cleaning and wash & iron services for the better heeled. Then there were the stores. You could borrow food stuffs and cosmetics usually one for two back on payday (some items like Ramen noodle soups were two for three back). Then you had the guys who ran the gambling and drugs. Some of the better educated and savvy ran legal services and institutional infraction advisories. Some who worked outside the fence specialized in bringing contraband into the institution. Then you had your armorers you could buy weapons from. If you could cut hair or do braiding or any other kind of specialty with hair, you were always in demand.My running partner and best friend was an Italian kid from Brooklyn, of course his name was Anthony and he went by Tony. We had a very specialized hustle. We could bring back through the visitation shakedown process (which involved stripping naked, raising your nut sack and spreading your buttocks and opening your mouth rolling your tongue around fingers through the hair) the contraband brought in through the visiting room. Most contraband brought to an institution was brought on visiting days by visitors. Visitors went through very strict pat down and some strip search routines if they were suspect of anything illicit; but, the right to visit, if you had done nothing wrong, was kind of a sacred right as people sometimes came great distances to visit. So however people were able to smuggle items into the visiting room was up to them. It was then the package was handed off to us and we made it disappear from the visiting room and reappear on the prison yard, for either a cut or a fee. We used this dodge at least a thousand times for the seven and a half years of my incarceration in Virginia and were never caught. Tony left first and when I left I sold the method for $2500. My personal hustle stemmed from that ability to bring in contraband. My visitors would bring me cigarettes. I would tell you how we did it; but, out of respect for whomever is still there, someone may still be using this hustle, so I cannot divulge our method. With the advent of tobacco being restricted from prisons, a cigarette was worth what dope was. During those years, with the price of a pack of cigarettes being what they were (1978 $0.36 1979 $0.40 1980 $0.45 1981 $0.49 1982 $0.60 1983 $0.63 1984 $0.72 1985 $0.78 1986 $0.85 1987 $0.94) you could get as much as a dollar (or equivalent) a cigarette. With a cost of two to five cents each and selling for a dollar, it was more profitable than cocaine or heroin. In addition it was a whole lot easier for a visitor to explain a pack of cigarettes on them than an ounce of dope and with tobacco not being per se illegal the worst they could do to me were institutional charges (not outside criminal court). With good time, work credits and education credits I maxed out that 11 year sentence in 7½ years and was returned to South Carolina.In South Carolina, with 7½ years under my belt and no detainer I quickly moved into “trustee” status and was housed at a minimum security housing unit, which meant dormitory style housing with more freedom but less privacy. Now I was close to home and had people who knew people, which definitely helped. The prison warden, “Ms. Rick”, was a member of a church my father had preached at when I was a boy. She was my guardian angel. It was good to be home. I was assigned a plum job as a driver to transport inmates from prison to prison and from remote camp units to prison hospitals and court appearances. My van was assigned a single guard who accompanied me everywhere I went. My assigned guard was a five foot, chubby Black woman I called “Mrs. G”. She was the best. Many times when we were on our way to or from an assignment she would tell me to pull into a McDonalds and she would treat me to a Big Mac, fries and a shake. She had a strict policy of foregoing fries to watch her hips; but, she ate TWO Big Macs. That little woman could put down some groceries. After eight years of incarceration, this was manna from heaven for me. Mrs. G mothered me and after a year of working together she even trusted me to go into malls unaccompanied and walk around and just look at everything. After so many years of institutionalization any exposure to public things was mesmerizing. She would give me a dollar, or two if it was payday, to buy a soda and a ice cream cone. As I said, she was the bomb.Many people have asked what a “day in the life” of being a prisoner is. I have to tell you it is different for every single person in that prison. Other than shared communal activities and meals, everyone and everything is a wild card. Everyone has their path to making this journey. That being said, a day in my life as an inmate had many variations. During the time I was in Ad-Seg was one set of circumstances. Then during the time I was in Gen Pop doing distasteful work another. Or when I was a trustee with considerable freedoms? They were all very different “days in the life” of a man behind bars.Reading was my escape. After all, books can take you anywhere, keep you floating on a cloud of imagination and be that one thing you look forward to with an otherwise fairly forlorn agenda. I read at least one every three days, so I would say I read about a thousand books over a 9 year period. I had a friend who signed me up and paid for 3–4 book clubs. I loaned out the newest novels for canteen. You may be surprised to know the most loaned out books had to do with the OJ Simpson crime, trial and after life. They were worth their weight in gold for earning value.I guess the most painful “day in the life” was while I was on Ad-Seg lockdown and not any given day, just the whole lockdown experience. Making a home out of a coffin-sized living space brought back memories of my Navy bunk on a guided-missile cruiser; but, without the camaraderie that makes it worthwhile. Your personal space gets real small. The monotony of nothing to do was ever present. I read a lot of books and found reading to be the escape I needed to breach those walls. Unless you were an early riser, a day started with the 7 am distribution of breakfast. A cup of coffee stretched with chicory flavoring. A biscuit with some yellow stuff in it (supposedly eggs - probably artificial - they were poured from a carton) and some fatback to chew on (extra biscuit one First Class letter stamp). 8 am was the first standing count of the day. After breakfast and count, we started a cleaning routine that involved scrubbing the entire cell down with toothbrushes and lye soap. Done daily it was probably overkill; but, it took up about two hours of every morning and made sense to us being in a constant state of lockdown and close living conditions. After cleanup, it was exercise time. Pushups, situps, resistance curls, squats, and jogging in place. We were pretty creative when it came to outfitting our personal gyms. Breaking a sweat was our objective and it took a good hour to achieve. Two thirty minute sessions because there was only enough floorspace for one person at a time. One exercised while the other provided the count. We had no watches or clock. After a good sweat and a brief birdbath, it was time for the 12 noon count and then lunch. Lunch was an orange, apple, or banana with a bologna and cheese sandwich and a carton of milk. Mustard packs were quite the commodity as the only thing that brought the bologna sandwich to life. Getting an extra sandwich cost one stamp (another stamp for an extra slice of bologna, one slice of cheese and two mustard packs – another stamp for extra fruit). From 8 am - 4 pm we were not allowed to be in or on our bunks. So we sat on the floor, leaned up in one corner or another, as we spent some quality time reading or snoozing. The afternoon was sprinkled with medical appointments and counseling sessions. After the 4 pm count, we could lay on our bunks again and 6 pm brought supper. A thin gruel of some kind of soup (saw a lot of onion, cubed carrots and kernel corn) and a fist-sized chunk of cornbread/or brown bread washed down with one eight-ounce cup of sweetened tea (extra cornbread/brown bread and tea – 1 stamp). 7-9 pm brought showers and one hour of exercise three times a week in a caged in twenty-five by twenty-five feet enclosure, open to an inky night sky above. This rec area was shared with the death row inmates. After returning to our cells, some letter writing and making entries into my personal journal kept things real and in perspective. More reading until I fell asleep. Wake up in the morning and do it all again. I spent 788,400 minutes on lockdown in Ad-Seg. Possibly some of the longest minutes of my life.A day in Gen Pop worked around the same counts as the rest of the institution. After 8 am count, work crews formed at the gates and inside workers got on their brooms and cleaning duties, or whatever their assigned tasks were. Your daily job was scheduled from 8-4 with a ten-minute break each hour. Bag lunches were distributed at noon and after another count eaten on the fly during breaks. The same fruit and sandwich (workers got two cartons of milk); but, for variety added SPAM and other cold cuts to the offerings. Just that little variety probably kept us from going nutso. You eat a baloney and cheese sandwich every day for five years and see if it doesn’t make YOU a little twitchy. From 4 pm count to 8 pm count was free time. You could go to the yard, run around the track, play cards in the common areas, watch TV, eat supper in the dining hall, workout at the weight pile, get a haircut, hang out at the [law] library, engage in any religious or educational objectives, take a shower, wash clothes, clean up and arrange your “house” or just sit in the sun, catch some rays and top off your Vitamin D. After an 8 pm standing count we could come out of our cells, into a common area, play cards, mix foods and talk until 10pm, after which we were locked in our cells for the night. Reading, drawing, writing, playing chess/checkers or cards whiled away the time until you fell asleep. At midnight and 4 am we were counted while we slept. Wake up the next morning and do it all again.My time as a trustee was probably the easiest time I served. Being a “AA –Driver” trustee meant I was on permanent “out count”. Which meant I was the responsibility of the assigned guard to my van and I didn’t have to be any particular place when the rest of the institution had standing counts. I could come and go out the gates of the institution to the vehicle pool whenever I wanted to. From 6 am to 8 pm I had free run to be almost anywhere in the institution inmates were allowed; but, for the most part, I was on the road, picking up and dropping off inmates at various institutions and work camps. Up at 6 am every morning by 6:30 I was out the gate cleaning, washing, and fueling up my van with a cup of real coffee in my hand from the guard’s shack. Depending on the schedule for the day Mrs. G and I were on the road by 7 am. Mrs. G’s daughter worked at a Dunkin Donuts so Mrs. G had an endless supply of DD coffee and brought a giant thermos full every day. She also had a hook up with the guard’s kitchen (her husband was a supervisor) and had them pack biscuits with real butter and real eggs and sausage and Smucker’s grape jelly. Mrs. G loved to eat. Giant flakey biscuits with butter, eggs, sausage and grape jelly, I could get five stamps apiece if I smuggled one back into the institution. The van was my kingdom. I drove, operated the two way radio with ten codes and times, reporting our progress to Central Communications, and delivering an ongoing count of how many inmates we had with us and where we were going next. I made sure we stayed on time and schedule, read the maps if necessary while Mrs. G watched the road for what we called “pirates” (civilians who would interfere with the operations of the van or try to pull off an escape of an inmate) and kept an eye on the prisoners we had on board. A two feet long mirror above her head gave her a bird’s eye view of everything/everyone in the van; but, she hated it because it also showed the bald spot on the top of her head. In the year and a half I drove vans, we never had any escape attempts; but, we did have one incident.We were headed to Columbia, SC with a van load of prisoners from outlying camps headed to the main prison hospital for medical appointments. I noted Mrs. G had been quiet for about 30 minutes. I looked over and saw her with eyes closed taking what looked like a brief siesta. This was highly unusual with prisoners in the back. About five minutes later Mrs. G’s coffee cup slipped out of her hand and crashed to the floor. I looked again and saw her head lolled to the side and her eyes were rolled up into their sockets. We were still an hour from our destination at the prison hospital. It was absolutely forbidden to stop the van anywhere with prisoners on board, except inside an institution’s gates. I didn’t care, this was Mrs. G. I drove until I saw the next blue “H” sign at an off ramp, designating a hospital at this exit. Driving like a bat out of hell, I pulled into the Emergency Room entrance, jumped out and ran inside to summon help. Mrs. G was a diabetic and had a blood sugar event which had lead to a heart attack. I called in the emergency and explained the situation to Central Communications and while we sat waiting I regaled the ten prisoners in the back about how we would all be getting time cuts for this. I wasn’t sure about that; but, I was mainly concerned with trying to keep an escape from occurring compounding my decision to stop. In about an hour, prison authorities arrived without incident from the nearest prison facility. The doctor said in fifteen minutes it would have been too late. Mrs. G was out for sixty days; but, when she came back we were as thick as thieves and I was her adopted son. Instead of being reprimanded and punished for breaking protocol, they cut five years off my sentence.June 1986, I went before the parole board for the first time and was denied, which was not uncommon. No one made first parole unless they paid some powerful lawyer a God awful amount of money. June of 1987, after nine years of incarceration, I again went before the parole board and was released on parole. In August of 1987, I started college and completed a four year degree in three years. Graduating in 1990, I received a BS in Business Admin. and Computer Science from Erskine College and never looked back. Within that three years I also paid off the Court ordered restitution to my victims and shortly after graduation, maxed out my 15 year sentence with 12 on a 15 (because I had paid off my restitution I forewent the customary period of probation after parole - I was a free man). I worked for Lucent Technologies in Atlanta for the ten years (1996–2006) of its existence as an IT Manager. Working on an MS in Criminal Justice from Purdue. Went to Piedmont Technical College and got an AS in Machine Tool Technology/CNC programming. I intermittently worked for JACOBS engineering for years as a precision millwright doing turbine and motor alignments making $125,000/year. Between stints with JACOBS I took short term contract work overseas as a translator for our American troops and various NGOs in Afghanistan. After thirty-five years I received a full pardon from both South Carolina and the Commonwealth of Virginia. I became a notary public, an ordained minister, got my Concealed Weapons Permit from South Carolina and an FFL from The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Federal Firearms Licensing Center (FFLC) [currently seeking SOT]. I now own my house, vehicles, a lake property and a boat free and clear and with 7 grandchildren have had a very fulfilling life. It was all because of the kindness of the people from my hometown and church who were willing to give me a second chance. My special thanks to Lee and Eleanor, Bill and Emilie, Jim and Sandra. They were with me, in a supportive role, every step of the way.

It depends. Not all fans make this claim, many don’t. But those that do, have a variety of reasons, none of them mutually exclusive. One or more of the following reasons may apply to the same individual, or not:Some only read the books once or twice and they simply miss it.Some read the books many times, but still miss it. Either because their recall isn’t the greatest, or because they just don’t recognise the clear signs of abuse, or because their reading comprehension leaves something to be desired.Some people don’t count abuse as abuse unless the person being abused ends up in a hospital.The corollary to this is the claim that Harry was “only” emotionally abused, and maybe mildly neglected, and never physically abused (by the adult Dursleys), which is demonstrably false, and minimises the suffering caused to many by emotional abuse and neglect.Some who read the books many times appear to have great reading comprehension skills, and even seem to recognise signs of abuse when it happens to others, but they seem to have some sort of twisted agenda when it comes to Harry Potter.There is one fan in particular—a rather well known Quoran and Snape-Apologist—who repeatedly makes false statements regarding Harry Potter’s physical abuse, and tends to downplay his verbal and emotional abuse, and his deliberate neglect, as well. Some people simply take her at her word.She has yet to produce the citation to prove her claim that Harry was never hit or beaten, because it doesn’t exist.That Harry was physically abused - as well as verbally and emotionally abused - there is no doubt. The books are full of textual evidence, yet the aforementioned Quoran ignores it all, while making the baseless assertion that Uncle Vernon was physically abused as a child without one single shred of textual evidence at all.It is that sort of pattern of selective inference that leads me to believe that said Quoran has some sort of “twisted” agenda. Indeed, said Quoran has been known to make numerous comments excusing and minimising the violent behaviours of Petunia and Vernon Dursley.I’m really not entirely sure why, except it seems to fit with her pattern of being an Apologist for Snape’s abusive behaviour, and even her apologia for some of the worst criminals in series, including the Death Eaters.I’ll make the case for Harry’s physical abuse by sharing my blog post in its entirety.But before I do, I should note that in California, a mother was arrested just for locking her child in a cupboard as punishment not so long ago. I’m not saying that that would have been the case in the UK in the 1990’s, but it is evidence that child service professionals tend to view locking children in cupboards as criminally abusive.Physical Abuse in Harry Potter[1]Contrary to the opinions of many, there can be no doubt that Harry was physically abused in Harry Potter—not just by Dudley, who we are told liked to use Harry as a “punching bag”—but by the adult Dursleys. The textual evidence is very clear, especially to victims of child abuse like myself, psychologists, and child service professionals.This isn’t to say that Harry was beaten to a pulp by Uncle Vernon—which is to say, badly enough as to require medical attention. But far too many people seem to think that only obvious injuries which require medical attention qualify as being indicators of physical abuse.In any case, this will be an examination of all the evidence which demonstrates that Harry was indeed subject to physical abuse by the Adult Dursleys. And I’ll start at the very beginning, with Philosopher’s Stone.PS Chapter 3: Harry didn’t move.“I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.“Let me see it!” demanded Dudley.“OUT!” roared Uncle Vernon, and he took Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them.Then, a few pages later....PS Chapter 3: Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one—“Out! OUT!” Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall...These are the first real instances we see of Uncle Vernon laying hands on Harry. And admittedly, it doesn’t sound so awful, but the strong language used—“seized” and “threw”—is indicative of violent intent, and grabbing a child by the scruff of the neck is certainly something that would raise the eyebrows of child service professionals today.The next moment we come across is this:PS Chapter 3: He [Uncle Vernon] looked so dangerous with half his moustache missing that no-one dared to argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded up doors and were in the car, speeding to the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the backseat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up when he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.Right! Well, if this is how Uncle Vernon treats Dudley—the prized son who is spoiled rotten and doted upon, while Harry is neglected and despised—when Vernon is irate, are we then to presume that the hated Harry is treated better than Dudley, and never struck by Uncle Vernon?Of course not! Though we can only reach a tentative conclusion by inference at this point, this is clear evidence that Uncle Vernon is a violent man, and is very likely to have struck Harry in anger on more than one occasion.Finally we get to chapter four, where we find Harry and the Dursleys on a little island out at sea, in a hut which Hagrid has invaded, and just informed Harry that he’s a wizard.PS Chapter four: “Now you listen here, boy,” he [Uncle Vernon] snarled, “I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured—and as far as all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world’s better off without them in my opinion—asked for all they got, getting up mixed up with those wizarding types—just what I always expected, always knew they’d come to a sticky end—”Now, one might well ask why include this piece of dialogue? Because this is a piece of dialogue that some people claim proves that Uncle Vernon never hit Harry. But anyone who is being honest can see that it proves nothing of the sort.Vernon isn’t claiming that he never hit, or beat, Harry, only that Harry hasn’t been beaten “good.” Which is a common theme expressed by abusive parental figures who are self-aware enough not to beat a child so badly that they need medical attention.Alrighty then, now we can move on to Book Two, Chamber of Secrets, and here we find more evidence of physical abuse, the first major instance, which could have had potentially deadly consequences for Harry. And shockingly, it’s not at Uncle Vernon’s or Dudley’s hands:CoS chapter 1: Harry paid dearly for his moment of fun. As neither Dudley nor the hedge was in any way hurt, Aunt Petunia knew he hadn't really done magic, but he still had to duck as she aimed a heavy blow at his head with the soapy frying pan.Then she gave him work to do, with the promise he wouldn't eat again until he'd finished.If that “heavy blow” had connected with Harry’s head, Voldemort could have won without ever lifting a finger himself. A heavy blow to the head with a frying pan can cause serious injury, even death.That it is Petunia assaulting Harry with a deadly weapon, might be surprising to some, but to those professionals who are accustomed to dealing with abusive households, this suggests that Petunia herself might have been a victim of Vernon’s rages.In many cases, mother figures in such households, feeling dis-empowered and victimised, will lash out at those in even weaker positions than themselves (this also happened to me).However, there really is no other evidence in any of the books that this is the case in Petunia’s situation. She occasionally expresses fear when Vernon is in a mood, but given that she is also capable of standing up to Vernon (after she receives a howler from Dumbledore in OotP) and that Vernon backs down from his threat to throw Harry out, I think that we can assume that Vernon probably has never struck Petunia.So, we can only assume that she herself, simply has anger issues that she occasionally takes out on Harry.The next piece of evidence is in Chapter two, following the Pudding Incident which was instigated by Dobby in an attempt to prevent Harry from returning to Hogwarts. Immediately after the incident, Harry is taken into the kitchen by Vernon, where he promises Harry that “he would flay him to within an inch of his life when the Masons had left, and handed him a mop.”At this point, it may seem like an empty threat, but we are told that “Harry, still shaking, started scrubbing the kitchen clean.”The phrase, “still shaking,” indicates that Harry is frightened to the point of trembling—i.e. he’s terrified—so clearly Harry isn’t entirely convinced it’s an empty threat, though he’s hopeful, given that the Dursleys don’t as yet know that he’s not allowed to use magic outside of school.But a short while later, a Ministry owl arrives which causes Mrs Mason to run from the house “screaming like a banshee,” blowing Uncle Vernon’s chance of making a business deal with Mr Mason completely. One doesn’t have to imagine both the rage, and the delight, that Uncle Vernon feels once he’s read the Ministry Warning indicating that Harry isn’t allowed to use magic outside of school:CoS Chapter 2: He [Uncle Vernon] was bearing down on Harry like a great bulldog, all his teeth bared. “Well, I’ve got news for you, boy. ... I’m locking you up. ... You’re never going back to that school...never...and if you try and magic yourself out—they’ll expel you!”And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry upstairs.We’re never told explicitly that Vernon gave Harry a beating once he physically hauls Harry up the stairs, but at this point, given the context provided in Philosopher’s Stone when Vernon hits Dudley “round the head” it would be very reasonable for us to conclude that Vernon did hit Harry a few times—i.e. that Vernon gave Harry a beating.So, that’s it for Chamber of Secrets. Let’s move on to Prisoner of Azkaban. There’s not much to see at the Dursleys until chapter two, on Harry’s birthday, when Harry is informed that Aunt Marge will be arriving for a week’s stay.Harry sees an opportunity to get Uncle Vernon to sign a permission slip to visit Hogsmeade, and the following conversation ensues.PoA chapter 2: “Well,” said Harry, choosing his words carefully, “it’ll be hard work, pretending to Aunt Marge that I go to that St. Whatsits—”“St. Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys!” bellowed Uncle Vernon, and Harry was pleased to hear a definite note of panic in Uncle Vernon’s voice.“Exactly,” said Harry, looking calmly up into Uncle Vernon’s large, purple face. “It’s a lot to remember. I’ll have to make it sound convincing, won’t I? What if I accidentally let something slip?”“You’ll get the stuffing knocked out of you, won’t you?” roared Uncle Vernon, advancing on Harry with his fist raised. But Harry stood his ground.“Knocking the stuffing out of me won’t make Aunt Marge forget what I could tell her,” he said grimly.Uncle Vernon stopped, his fist still raised, his face an ugly puce.Well, again, some might claim that it’s an empty threat on Vernon’s part. But again, we know that Vernon wasn’t afraid of hitting his beloved Dudley “round the head” in the first book, so again, we can presume it’s a meaningful threat to Harry.That Harry is able to stand up to the threat and negotiate, is sometimes taken as proof that Vernon is just blustering, but in fact, I can tell you from my own experiences with a violent father figure who used his fists on me regularly (and threw me around, and more…), that not everyone who is abused turns into a cowering wretch.Like Harry, I too occasionally managed to negotiate through certain situations. And I too, like Harry, became somewhat inured to the violence after so many years of it, ending up more than a bit mistrustful of authority figures, but otherwise, seeming relatively well adjusted by most standards.Anyway, getting back to Harry, by the time we reach the beginning of Goblet of Fire,Uncle Vernon’s fist is apparently stayed by the threat of Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black. So there is no indication of violence against Harry in that book.The next instance we come across is in Order of the Phoenix after a “loud echoing crack” rouses Harry, bringing him to his feet with his wand out. He hits his head on the window sill, and...OotP chapter 1: “Harry felt as though his head had been split in two. Eyes streaming, he swayed, trying to focus on the street to spot the source of the noise, but he had barely staggered upright when two large purple hands reached through the open window and closed tightly around his throat.“Put - it - away!” Uncle Vernon snarled into Harry's ear. “Now. Before - anyone - sees!”Well, Uncle Vernon is so irate at this point, that he’s forgotten about Harry’s godfather. And that Vernon’s not afraid of physically assaulting fifteen year old Wizard Harry is very telling. Just as Petunia aiming a heavy blow at nearly twelve year old Wizard Harry’s head is very telling. It shows that the Dursleys are not particularly afraid of Harry, even when he has a wand and could take a chance of defending himself.They feel comfortable physically assaulting Teenage Wizard Harry, because they had clearly been doing it for some time, long before he went to Hogwarts, when he was weaker.There is another critical piece of dialogue in Order of the Phoenix, that is definitive evidence that Uncle Vernon had hit Harry on occasion—perhaps the only time that Harry let slip to Hermione just how awful things were for him at the Dursleys.But in true Harry fashion—like a number of abused kids who try to keep it to themselves and/or have grown somewhat inured to the violence and come to view it as a normal part of their life—Harry plays it down and makes a bit of a joke out of it:OotP Chapter 29: “Well, it's a very responsible job, isn't it?” said Hermione absently. She was poring over a bright pink and orange leaflet, that was headed, SO YOU THINK YOU'D LIKE TO WORK IN MUGGLE RELATIONS? “You don't seem to need many qualifications to liaise with Muggles; all they want is an OWL in Muggle Studies: Much more important is your enthusiasm, patience and a good sense of fun!”“You'd need more than a good sense of fun to liaise with my uncle,” said Harry darkly. “Good sense of when to duck, more like.”Finally we come to this point in Half-Blood Prince, which really brings it all home.HBP Chapter 3: Harry ran down the stairs two at a time, coming to an abrupt halt several steps from the bottom, as long experience had taught him to remain out of arm’s reach of his uncle whenever possible. There in the doorway stood a tall thin man with waist length silver hair and beard.In conjunction with all the other evidence up to this point, this really is definitive proof that the adult Dursleys—especially Uncle Vernon—physically abused Harry on a regular basis before he attended Hogwarts, and even on some occasions after Harry had started Hogwarts. Sixteen year old Harry is STILL wary of being within arm’s length of Uncle Vernon, even with Dumbledore standing in the doorway.That almost wraps this up. The only thing which remains really, is to consider the most likely types of physical assault the Dursleys inflicted upon Harry, given what we now know about the Dursleys, and the most common forms of assault which might be engaged in, in a similar household in real life.While I doubt swinging a frying pan at Harry’s head was a frequent occurrence, it seems unlikely that was a first time for Petunia to strike out at him with an object of some sort—perhaps she took swipes at him with a broomstick before, or some other household items. It is also likely that she slapped him and yanked his ear on occasion.I think we can be fairly certain that Vernon used his fists, and probably his open hand as well. We know he’s not beyond striking blows around the head. But given that he manages to exert enough self-control not to send Harry (or Dudley) to the hospital, it’s more likely that most of the time he aims his blows for parts of the body which won’t be seen in public.It’s also probable that Vernon used his belt when Harry was younger, or more likely, a slipper (it’s a British thing) for spankings.We also know Vernon likes to grab Harry (and Dudley) by the scruff of the neck (and around the waist) and throw him around. So it’s quite likely that he has not only thrown Harry into the hall, but has also shoved him against a wall from time to time. And we know that Vernon is also capable of strangulation, though that is probably not a regular thing.I expect that any breaking of the skin would be most likely during Dudley and his gang’s Harry Hunts—skinned knees and elbows, split lips, that sort of thing, and maybe a black eye sometimes.That’s probably about the extent of it. There are many fanfictions which go so far over-the-top that they lose all credibility (beating Harry bloody, breaking bones, etc...), and I just end up rolling my eyes.But it is an utter falsehood to state that the Adult Dursleys did not physically abuse Harry, and seeing so many people who claim to be avid readers of the original series take such a position infuriates me to no end, when there is a whole load of textual evidence proving otherwise.Footnotes[1] Child Abuse in Harry Potter