Mom thought she was doing the right thing when she whipped kids who broke into home

BATON ROUGE - A Baton Rouge mother who was arrested by East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's deputies after she admitted to whipping her sons as punishment for breaking into a house has bonded out of jail. She told our cameras she thought she was doing the right thing by disciplining her children.

30-year-old Schaquana Spears was booked on child cruelty charges Monday morning.

The arrest reports says her 13-year-old reportedly told East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office detectives that Spears had struck him with an RCA cord multiple times. The boy had cuts on both arms and marks across his body, according to investigators.

The other two boys, aged 10 and 12, also had injuries, according to arrest documents.

Spears was booked into the parish prison on two counts of cruelty to juveniles with bond set at $2,500.

District Attorney Hillar Moore released a statement about the incident:

"Parents have the right and obligation to discipline and teach their children. We often time see children who have no parental authority or discipline which eventually results in delinquency and criminal acts. 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 for the child. The degree of physical discipline will be reviewed. The law does not allow excessive pain or cruelty but does allow physical parental discipline. I only have the short synopsis which does indicate that the discipline resulted in marks on the child’s body and possibly an open wound. I will review all of the reports; meet with the DCFS office and review any history of this mother and her children to get a better picture of the entire family dynamics before making a decision. In the meantime my office is working with the juvenile court to ensure the speedy release of the mother under conditions satisfactory to the court."

News 2's Brett Buffington was there when Spears bonded out of jail Tuesday night.

"They're just being kids, being followers," Spears said. "I thought I was showing them this is not what you do. You do not steal people's stuff, what they work hard for. I know how that feels, I've had my house broken into."

She told News 2 that someone saw her story on TV and showed up to post her bond for her.

Multiple crowdfunding campaigns appeared in the mid-morning hours of Wednesday on sites like GoFundMe and Plumfund. The GoFundMe account had garnered more than $700 in donations as of 11 a.m. with the stated aim being "to find suitable care for her children during the summer (if she needs it)." Just 20 minutes later that campaign was no longer active. News 2 has reached out to the creators of the donation campaigns but have not received a reply at the time of this writing.