Over 21 years of parenting four sons I have found that spanking or “whupping” is an evergreen topic which can instantly spark heated debate among parents. The abuse stopped when I was 9, and I became a voracious masturbator. I longed to relive the sensation that had grabbed me between the legs and had felt so good. I would lie on my stomach and rub around the outside of my vagina until I came. Sometimes I used the stream of water from the bathtub spigot. My father once walked in on me taking a bath and masturbating in that way, and he didn't say a word about it. During my adolescence and all through my 20s I accommodated men sexually as a way of getting attention, as a way to feed my emotional needs: "He loves to have sex with me, that must mean I'm special." It was all-important to me that I be the object of someone's, often several someones', sexual attention. It made me feel whole, complete, energized.

Somebody has a pull on her that her parents haven’t been able to replicate or respect. She was out looking for love. The first thing you can do to combat that, is give her a hug. If she knows she’s going to get her ass beat, then she was probably like, ‘Let me call my boyfriend, he’ll give me a hug.’ Somebody’s going to give the girl a hug. I’d rather it be man than the other man. In the video, first streamed during a Facebook live session, Georgia residentShanavia Miller is seen beating and screaming at her 16-year-old daughter Nia Green while accusing her of having sex with her boyfriend in their home. During the fiveminute long clip, Miller makes it clear that her intent is to embarrass the teen. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism. Eventually my parents separated, meaning I spent two nights a week at my father's house. Those nights, I stayed in his bed with him, all night long. Somehow, the lie he'd told my mother to explain why I was often in their bed when she came home from work -- that I was too scared to sleep alone -- became truth. I don't know if I was truly scared or if I simply came to believe I was, but I rarely spent a night in bed by myself until I was 13 years old.

I thought it meant that I was special. I didn't know it would turn sex into an act of shame.

If your 13-year-old disappeared for three days and reappeared in a skimp outfit–what would you do? I polled three fathers, each of them have daughters. Here’s what they had to say:

If the “last straw” happened in front of Dad, though, you might hardly see the belt coming off. You wouldn’t think a man could remove his belt that fast… it was like the belt loops were greased or something. Usually 2–3 hard swats that would be remembered for more than a day. Leaves You Wondering: Regan is in big trouble. After a long afternoon of standing bare bottomed in the corner of the living room in full view of her siblings, she has to suffer the further indignity of being spanked over her dad's knee in front of everyone. Sent to her room, she then has to wait for a further spanking before bedtime. The Dictated Apology: When Lisa cheats on her finals and then forges her father's signature on a note from her teacher, things don't end well for her. A spanking from her father is followed by a dose of his belt and then she is made to write an apology to her teacher. It was a habit I kept for a long time after those days -- I'd make myself come but not in the presence of others. It was like a vestige of Daddy; for a long, long time, only Daddy would make me come. Chris gave me a lot: He replaced my father as the man who kept me front and center in his gaze, something I so desperately needed. But here's the catch, something I didn't think about until recently. How did the girls know? How had this rumor managed to get passed down? Who else played with Mr. Bernard?Some of the hardest times in life never completely end, and this was just the beginning of a long process -- unhealthy, complicated and, of course, unsuccessful by definition -- of using men to give me what Daddy had given me when I was so young and impressionable. Officer Saum says in a phone interview, waxing philosophical, “Some say never hit. Some quote the Bible and say ‘Spare the rod, spoil he child.’ Some say it’s ridiculous for a police officer to have to spend his time on a call like the one the sheriff’s department here had.” One of the other theories surrounding the girls' disappearance was that they had been sold into "white slavery." While I didn't know what this was, I intuitively knew it involved sex. Adults did not so much as pause before discussing the kidnapping of the girls and the possibility that they had been murdered, but their hushed tones and grim faces when "white slavery" was mentioned made me know it was about sex. And I could tell that it was something bad, shameful, and not to be talked about. Yet it was something being done to me all the time. About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: I didn't need him anymore. I had developed something of a relationship with a real boy, Jeff, a kid in the new neighborhood. Jeff would beg me to let him kiss and touch me, and I would tell him no. That expression of my power made me feel great. Here someone was sexually focused on me, which made me feel alive. But at the same time, I was able to prove to myself that I wasn't an awful person because I didn't let him do things to me. As an added bonus, I had the opportunity to reject unwanted sexual advances, something I was never able to do with Dad.