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Members of a Dane County church have been charged with child abuse. Police allege the members, believing they were following Biblical instructions, spanked and sometimes bruised children as young as two months old using wooden rods or spoons.

phillip carminiti

Pastor Philip Caminiti, 53, is charged in Dane County Circuit Court with eight felony counts of conspiracy to commit child abuse, and his brother, John Caminiti, is charged with four felony counts of inflicting mental harm on a child and four felony counts of child abuse. Six other church members, including two of Philip Caminiti’s children and their spouses, also face child abuse charges.

The church formed in 2006, reports the UK Daily Mail, after its members broke away from the Curtiss Street Bible Fellowship church in Mazomanie, Wis. Christian novelist Lori Wick of Mazomanie and her husband, Bob Wick, contributed about $500,000 to the new church, dubbed the Aleitheia Bible Church. (Aleitheia is an ancient Greek word for “truth.”)

Despite the funding, the church met in members’ homes, where Caminiti instructed members to discipline their children with rods, according to the Dane County Sheriff’s Department. Various passages in the Bible’s Book of Proverbs suggest using “the rod” or “the rod of correction” to discipline children. According to church members, Caminiti was easily angered by children who cried or disrupted church services.

The children allegedly abused ranged in age from two months to six years. The sheriff’s department began the investigation after former church members contacted police about the disciplinary procedures. “It was our decision … along with the district attorney’s office, that it went beyond reasonable discipline and would be something most people would consider excessive,” a department spokeswoman told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The pastor allegedly told investigators that a child became old enough for spanking using a rod at the age of 18 months. Church members allegedly used wooden spoons as rods or dowels that were over a foot long and had the diameter of a quarter.

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