Delaware State Police have arrested a pediatrician for allegedly waterboarding his 11-year-0ld daughter multiple times over the past two years as a form of discipline, ABC News reports. Corporal Gary Fournier said that the girl told a child advocate with Delaware’s Child Advocacy Center that her father, 58-year-old Dr. Melvin Morse, held her face under a running faucet, causing the water to go up her nose. Fournier said the mother watched and did nothing. She and her husband face two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a second-degree felony conspiracy charge, and four counts of felony first-degree reckless endangering for the waterboarding that was once reserved for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay.
“Waterboarding is torture,” President Obama said of the practice in November 2011, two years after his administration vowed to not use it as an interrogation technique. “It’s contrary to America’s traditions, it’s contrary to our ideals, it’s not who we are, it’s not how we operate.”
In addition to writing three books about near-death experiences, including Pre-Death Visions and Spiritual Experiences, ABC News reports that Dr. Morse appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live in 2010 to discuss the subject.
The girl had contacted Delaware’s Child Advocacy Center in the first place after a July 12 incident where Dr. Morse allegedly pulled his daughter out of a car, dragged her across a gravel driveway, and spanked her inside their home — for which Morse was charged with third-degree assault. The State has suspended the doctor’s license and he is currently being held at a correctional institute on a $14,500 secured bond.
