ELYRA--Use the rod and you could go to court. Robert Boyle could have gotten two years in prison after pleading guilty yesterday to child endangering for using a switch on his teenage stepdaughter with her pants down. Gary V. Crowe, executive director of Lorain County Children Services, said the case shows how blurry the line can be between discipline and abuse. Ohio law permits use of reasonable corporal punishment, but prosecutors said Boyle's methods were a mental risk to his teenage step daughter. "It's not that he administered corporal punishment, but how," said Loraine County Prosecutor Gregory B. Wyatt. "He was over the line." Lemherst police Detective Bill Moln said Boyle, 39, who married last year, only to loose his wife to an automobile accident, was an unfit guardian.

Officials said the girl, who up to that time virtually dropped out of school, had a history of drug abuse. According to reports, Boyle disciplined the girl three times, with the first in January 1995 and the last in April 1996. Moln said she confided the humiliation to a school counselor after the April incident. According to testimony given in court, within two months after her mother's demise, Boyle had to bail his stepdaughter out of jail.   He then took her home and told her that she was going to punished, reportedly boasting that he'd use a thin flexible peach tree switch across her backside because "it'd leave her some nice big 'ol welts" to think about when she sat down.

According to testimony, the girl pleaded to be allowed to take the punishment with her clothes on:

The bench ruled that Boyle was legally responsible for the girl's actions.
Since the welts had completely faded after two weeks, and owing to her previous record, the discipline Boyle employed was deemed appropriate.

The case was then dismissed.