"This is not what you do:" Louisiana mother jailed after disciplining her own children



BATON ROUGE, Louisiana -- A Louisiana mother says she was jailed for disciplining her own children.

Apparently, the mother spotted her children and their friends stealing from a neighbor's home -- and decided to hand out a stern punishment. Police say that punishment was too much.

"It's been hell," Schaquana Spears said.

Spears says she was placed in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison after she caught three of her children and a few of their friends coming home with stuff they stole from a neighbor.

"They were actually in there with the stolen items. They were jumping out the window with some stuff. They had some running out of the doors," Spears said.

Spears says she never expected punishing her own children would land her behind bars.

"Trying to catch them to try and get the stuff so I could give it back, and I just grabbed the belt off of the dresser and whooped them," Spears said.

Spears, a mother of six, says her children are her life, and never would she want to do anything to hurt them.

"I didn't want them to commit another crime. I did what I was raised to do and what my mother did to me and I'm a bad person and I don't think that's right," Spears said.

Deputies questioned Spears after her son was booked for the break-in.

According to court documents, investigators witnessed bruising on the child, and questioned Spears.

Now, her children, ages two through 13, are staying with her mother, while Spears waits and wonders what's next.

"Right now, their dad is incarcerated, so that was my main thing. I have them in the best of schools. They are on the honor roll all throughout school. They're in magnet schools and they were just being kids, being followers. So I though that I was showing them that this is not what you do. You don't steal people's stuff," Spears said.

According to an arrest report, deputies said Spears was arrested because she also used an RCA cord to whip the children and whipped them until they bled.

"We need more parents who discipline their children. Surely you would expect a parent to discipline a child who is burglarizing other people's homes as this could be a deadly encounter,"  District Attorney Hillier Moore said.

He went on to say his office would be reviewing the severity Spears used to discipline her children.