School Board candidate defends disciplining his kids, says school staff ‘should never use corporal punishment'

Fifteen years ago, in the wake of a contentious divorce, the ex-wife of a candidate currently running to be Chicago’s school board president told a judge she wanted an emergency change of custody after her teenage son came to her with a swollen face and scratches, saying he’d gotten them from his father, Victor Henderson.

One of Henderson’s opponents has seized on the allegations as evidence that he’s unfit to lead the school board.

Henderson acknowledges that he disciplined his children, but denies that he ever abused them. He told WBEZ and Chalkbeat in a statement that “the court never suspended my parenting time, it never ordered supervised visits, and it did not restrict my relationship with my children.”

Immediately after the ex-wife’s allegations, the court ordered the children to stay with their mother. But court records reviewed by WBEZ show that Henderson resumed having overnight, unsupervised parenting time with his children.

After NBC5 first reported the story in late August, Jessica Biggs, another candidate for school board president, wrote on the social media platform X: “Someone with a history of domestic violence and corporal punishment should not be in a leadership position, especially not for children.”

Corporal punishment is legal in Illinois but banned in Illinois schools. To decide if corporal punishment is “excessive,” a court would typically consider the age of the child, if they were injured and how badly and whether the child experienced any trauma from the discipline.

In a statement, Henderson drew a distinction between what parents may do to discipline their children and what school staff can do. “Teachers should never use corporal punishment with students,” he said.

The position of school board president is unpaid, but powerful, as that person controls what makes it on the agenda. Some see this heated fourway race as a proxy for the upcoming mayoral election and an opportunity to seize control of the school board from the Chicago Teachers Union. Right now, a majority of board members are aligned with the CTU. As of Friday, $2.1 million had poured into the race.

Henderson, a prominent defense attorney, is self-funding his campaign and has not picked up any endorsements from political groups. But he is supported by U.S. Reps. Danny K. Davis and Robin Kelly and several pastors of big Black churches. He has raised a significant amount of money from individuals, including many lawyers.

To supporters of Henderson, the only Black candidate, the focus on his ex-wife’s allegations amounts to a “smear campaign” with racist undertones. Hermene Hartman, who is working on Henderson’s campaign, wrote in an opinion piece in N’DIGO, the online journal she founded, that the incident “is really about a Black man punishing his son.”

“We should not turn cultural differences into convenient political weapons,” she wrote. “Bravo, Victor, for raising your sons to be young men with firm discipline.”

Henderson, in an interview with WGN’s Tahman Bradley, said the criticism shows a lack of cultural understanding.

“I had to raise my children,” he said, noting he took them to church, school, soccer and basketball games and chess matches. “On a rare occasion, if my children needed to be disciplined because they weren’t adhering to the household rules or even did something that was pretty bad, then, as a father, as an African American father, as a Black father, I had to address it. The alternative was to let my kids run amok, and that wasn’t going to happen.”

Henderson kept custody of kids in messy legal battle, records show

Henderson says his current relationship with all of his now-adult children is “fantastic” and that they have been involved in his school board campaign. But officials with Henderson’s campaign said the sons did not want to talk about what had been a “painful period” in the family’s history.

Henderson’s ex-wife, through her attorney, declined to comment.

The Cook County Circuit Court only has online records from 2012 onward, making it difficult to piece together everything that happened in Henderson’s divorce and custody case.

Some details are clear: Henderson filed for divorce in 2004 and it was finalized in 2008. Henderson and his wife split custody of their two sons, with the boys alternating weeks at their homes. By 2011, Henderson had remarried.

In January 2011, Henderson’s ex-wife filed an emergency change of custody petition.

In the custody petition, which was included in a separate filing from 2012, she alleged that their older son told her that Henderson once repeatedly beat him with the wooden handle of a garden hoe, and smashed his iPhone and iPad. The son said Henderson dropped him off the next day at a homeless shelter and told him to volunteer. When the boy learned he was too young to volunteer, he went to his mother’s office and recounted what happened.

The ex-wife said in the petition that her son’s face was “inflamed” and she saw scratches and bruises. There’s no indication that she called the police. But she said she called her son’s therapist that day and that her son recounted the same story to the therapist. She said her son also told her and the therapist that Henderson “will sometimes” come into his bedroom at night in a “violent rage” and “whip him with a belt when he is asleep under the covers.”

The judge’s initial reaction was to handwrite an order keeping the boys temporarily with the mom until a court-appointed legal advocate could offer his opinion at a hearing three days later. The judge also ordered both parents not to use corporal punishment on their children.

The court-appointed advocate’s report or recommendation is not included in available court documents, but a court filing entered in 2012 makes it clear that the boys resumed staying with Henderson every other week.

“It is important that reporting distinguish between allegations made during family court proceedings and the actions ultimately taken by the court,” Henderson said in a statement.

Stacey Platt, a clinical law professor at Loyola University Chicago and interim director of the Civitas ChildLaw Center and Clinic, reviewed the available court records. She said the incident as reported by the mother seems more serious than what would be considered acceptable corporal punishment under state law.

Platt says she understands that people might question why the ex-wife didn’t call the police, but she points out parents might be hesitant to do so for financial and other reasons. She also says it is important not to assume the accusation is untrue because it was made in the context of a contentious divorce and custody battle.

Yet Platt said it is telling that the sons were allowed to resume overnight, unsupervised visits with Henderson. She is familiar with the person, known as a guardian ad litem, who was appointed to represent Henderson’s sons in court and she says he is well-respected.

“At times, we always are afraid we’re going to miss something, but I don’t believe for a second that he would have agreed to this young man returning to his father’s care if he thought he was going to get hurt,” she said.

Court records filed by the guardian ad litem in 2012 said that there had been “serious allegations made by each of the parties which have required investigation by the guardian ad litem.” WBEZ contacted the guardian ad litem and he declined to comment.

Do allegations make Henderson unfit to be school board president?

Whether Henderson’s actions or views on hitting children as a form of discipline is relevant to being Chicago school board president is up for debate.

“Parents have different views on corporal punishment, and I respect that,” he said in a written statement. “My own children are now adults, so it is no longer an issue for me.”

Illinois banned corporal punishment in public schools in 1993. Two years ago, it became one of the few states that also bans the practice in private schools. Fifteen states still explicitly allow it in public schools, NPR recently reported.

Henderson said that as board president his responsibility would be to “ensure that CPS policies are followed.”

But he would also pay attention to whether “allegations are investigated fairly, and that every individual receives due process. My personal experiences reinforced for me the importance of carefully evaluating all facts before reaching conclusions.”

Notably, Henderson represented parents in a 2023 lawsuit in which a Chicago Public Schools special education teacher was accused of routinely using “harmful, physical and violent corporal punishment” on children with disabilities.

Marvin Hunter, the pastor of Grace Memorial Church on the West Side, said the issue was “a smear campaign in order to make a distraction.”

He said he endorsed Henderson because, as a certified accountant and lawyer, he possesses skills the school district needs. He also likes that Henderson supports teaching more trades in schools and has connections with corporations that Henderson plans to ask to invest in district programs.

Hunter said he thinks that people should be more focused on how Henderson’s sons turned out than on his ex-wife’s allegations in their custody case.

“The facts are his son has fared well,” he said. “We want every one of our children to become a productive part of American society, and his son has done that.”

During a televised forum on WTTW last week, Henderson said his kids love him and he loves them and revisiting this history is “not enjoyable.”

“It’s a nasty part of politics here in the city of Chicago that somebody’s combing through divorce records from 15 and 20 years ago,” he said. “But if that’s the price that I have to pay to help children all across the city, no matter what ZIP code they live in, no matter what language their parents speak, then that’s what I’ll do.”

Of the three candidates running against Henderson for school board president, only Biggs has seized on the ex-wife’s allegation.

Biggs, a current school board member, is endorsed by the Service Employees International Union, which represents CPS support staff and is in a bitter feud with the CTU. A cadre of wealthy businesspeople, as well as some former CPS leaders, have donated to her campaign.

Hilario Dominguez, the candidate backed by the CTU, declined to comment. Sendhil Revuluri said he won’t weigh in on a “family matter.”

“What matters most to me is that every child is loved, protected, and cared for — by their families and by our schools,” Revuluri said in a statement.

Mila Koumpilova of Chalkbeat Chicago contributed reporting.