BigK--Keep the god-damned authorities out of it. They are part of the problem too. What happens inside a household should stay inside the household. It isn't anybody else's damn business how a house is run.
We're talking about a punishment for bad behavior here, maybe causing a little pain as part of the punishment, not a sexual act when a child is given an enema as a punishment, which is different from me giving you or Mr. M punitive enema because it would be fun for me.
I don't see anything wrong with spanking a child who deserves it. It's not as if they wind up in the hospital, they just have some red marks or at worst a black and blue mark. Kids are fucking spoiled today and the parents are to blame. I am ashamed to say that YOUR GENERATION (since you're ahemm, older than I am) and especially MY GENERATION have largely FAILED THEIR CHILDREN because they have been too lenient and did not step up to the plate to discipline (that means teach restraint, order and responsibility) and to appropriately punish by effective means, which may include a good smack when needed.
I am a very permissive parent. Our daughters have a wide variety of permissions in their personal and sexual lives, but they dare not cross the line. I believe in very tough love. The girls have proven their responsibility and that is why they have many permissions. A few years ago our older daughter was 15, came home in the middle of the night a day early from a party where cocaine was being used, only to walk through the front door, hear my husband/her father screaming and find my husband and myself basically naked with me flogging him tied and bent over a chair in an S&M scene in the music room. She saw all our equipment, what could I say, you can't do this? Say you can't have sex? Of course not. I had to open up and she and her 12 year old sister got a big education the next morning on S&M and "kinky things" that the younger one specifically asked about when she was about 11. Both girls have permission to have friends over even if we aren't home and to have sex at our house without any intervention from us because I know it's safer there than in a some unknown lover's lane environment. But, have a wild party that draws the neighbor's attention, lie to me about where you are going, light up a cigarette, tobacco or otherwise or experiment with drugs, and be grounded and punished severely--and I DON'T mean with "being grounded" or a "time out."
When my younger daughter who was nine or ten at the time and is really quite gifted and is the outspoken one of the house told me, "you can't do such and such because if you do I'll tell them at school and then you'll be in trouble." I invited her to do that and told her if she did, the police would come and take her away from us and she would be given to a foster family. She thought about what a good life she has with us (really, she lives in the lap of luxury people dream about) and changed her tune. That was the last we ever heard of that.