A FOREIGN father who thrashed his son with a stick for several minutes in a bid to discipline him over a playground fight told police such beatings were used against children in his homeland.

Paul Nicholson, prosecuting at York Crown Court, said the 39-year-old father beat the boy in their North Yorkshire home.

He hit him so hard he left him with visible injuries and the stick’s end split.

The father, a student from York, repaired it with an elastic band and continued the beating as the child, who attended a secondary school, lay on the ground with his trousers down.

The father told police such punishment was used against children in his own country, said Mr Nicholson.

His solicitor advocate Lee-Anne Robins-Hicks said: “There has been some conflict between his cultural norms and his previous circumstances and those he now experiences in the UK.”

The father had not intended to injure the child and accepted he had behaved wrongly.

The Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, said: “Whatever your son had done at school you were not entitled to beat him in the way you did.

"Attitudes to corporal punishments, particularly as far as children are concerned, have changed radically in this country in a generation.”

The court heard the father may as a child have experienced corporal punishment, but he had lost his temper and gone too far.

Judge Ashurst passed a 12-month prison sentence but suspended it as an “act of mercy”.

The father, who is not being identified to protect the child, pleaded guilty to causing his son actual bodily harm.

The court heard that the son no longer lives with the father.

Mr Nicholson said teachers at the boy’s school noticed marks on the boy’s hands and arms and he told them about the beating.

The boy suffered extensive bruising, particularly on the lower part of his body.

Mrs Robins-Hicks said the father had come to Britain to study and intended to return to his country at the end of his studies.