A MAN who sued his mother for ruining his childhood and failing to protect him from a tyrannical and violent father has lost his unique High Court bid for compensation.

Judge Mrs Justice Thirlwall rejected claims that his mother, from the Bishop Auckland area of County Durham, did not do enough to save her children from their hard-drinking father and that she was negligent in failing to kick him out of the house.

Exonerating the pensioner of all legal liability for the psychiatric problems that have blighted her son’s life, the judge concluded she never caused him any injury.

Mrs Justice Thirlwall said, however, there was no doubt that the man, now in his 30s and referred to in court only as X, was for ten years beaten with a stick, belt or clothes brush, sometimes several times a week, by his strictly Catholic father.

This, she said, often went beyond “lawful chastisement”.

The judge said his Irish father had been brought up by a strict religious order which believed in physical punishment.

“Far from rejecting the treatment inflicted upon him ... he adopted it within his own home,” she said.

Frequently intoning the phrase “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, he believed it was “entirely acceptable and normal”.

In his claim against his mother, X said she never expressed any regret for his suffering and he came to believe “she was at least as responsible”

for the regime of violence.

He said she had violated the duty of care she owed him as his mother.

But the judge said her overwhelming impression of the mother was that she was genuinely baffled and distressed by her son’s decision to take her to court.

X, who was claiming substantial damages against his mother, had claimed she instigated some of the violence.

However, Mrs Justice Thirlwall said the occasional smack or blow with a wooden spoon that she had meted out to her children when they had been naughty were very minor and none had been scared of her.

As a result of his childhood experiences, X suffered anxiety and other mental health problems from his mid-teens, although the judge described him as an intelligent man now studying for an Open University degree.

Rejecting claims the mother had been negligent in failing to leave or divorce her husband, the judge said the records showed a number of separations and reconciliations and that it was clear she had never encouraged his violence.

The mother had also reported his behaviour to priests, social services and doctors, which showed she objected to his excessive punishments.

The judge said: “I do not accept that the beating of the children by the father was part of a joint enterprise.

“It is plain that there was little ‘joint’ in this marriage.

The household ran in the way the father wanted. Mother’s views were plainly irrelevant.”

Although physical punishment had been part of the mother’s upbringing and she considered it acceptable, the judge concluded that “she did not ever seek or encourage brutal or excessive punishment for any of her children.”