A serving police officer and his wife appeared in court yesterday accused of striking her young son with a belt.The officer denies ever using a belt to strike the child. The boy’s mother however admitted using a belt to discipline the boy, but denied that the punishment left the marks visible on the boy’s leg.Both the officer and his wife have pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting the boy on a date between May 1 and May 31 this year.The victim cannot be identified for legal reasons. To protect his identity the defendants also cannot be named.Crown counsel Susan Mulligan told the court that while parents are legally allowed to “physically chastise” their children, the force used in this case was not reasonable given the boy’s age and size.“Using a belt on this child amounted to assault causing bodily harm,” Ms Mulligan said.The complainant told the court that he could not remember the date of the incident, or if it occurred in the daytime or night but he remembered being struck by both the defendants.He described the belt his stepfather used as golden brown, while he said the belt used by his mother was smaller and black.“The belts hit me really hard,” he said. “The little holes went into my skin and made the marks.”Asked why they would punish him, he said that it was either because he was rude in school or because he accidentally crashed his bicycle into another child also on a bicycle.Cross-examined by his stepfather, the complainant said that he only gets “licks” when he misbehaves, and that his stepfather usually spanks him with his bare hands on his shoulders or buttocks.Asked if he had been punished in other ways before, he said he had been sent to bed early and been banned from watching television or playing outside.He denied the suggestion that his father told him what to tell the police, saying: “He told me to be brave.”Asked if his birth father had ever spanked him with a belt, the complainant initially told the court no, but later said that he had on one occasion using a cloth belt.“It didn’t leave marks. It didn’t hurt the same way,” he told the court.Detective Constable Steven Palmer told the court he became involved with the case on May 31. On that day, he attended the Clocktower interview room in Prospect, Devonshire, where he was met by Child and Family Services staff, along with the victim.He said he took several pictures of injuries to the boy’s upper right thigh, which were presented to the court.Janea Lambert, of the Department of Child and Family Services, said she supervised a visit between the victim and his mother on June 8, eight days after DC Pitcher photographed the victim’s leg.She said the victim pulled up his right pants leg towards the end of the meeting revealing marks on his upper right thigh.Ms Lambert said the marks appeared darker and more defined than those she saw days earlier. She also noticed marks higher on the boy’s thigh than she had previously seen.Under cross-examination, she told the court that between May 31 and June 8, the victim had no contact with the defendants. She also said that to her knowledge, the victim was staying with his father, not the defendants, on the night of May 30.The trial is expected to continue in Magistrates’ Court later this month.