First off, I am sorry this happened to you.
There is a difference between "discipline" versus "abuse". In your case, it was abuse. Like others, it's one thing if you got swatted on the bottom out of a lesson versus getting it beat out of anger.
The first time I got my lesson was in the orphanage....if someone got in trouble then we ALL got in trouble by getting hit with a stick to our hands and feet. It stung but it did not harm me.
It wasn't until I was adopted at the age of 6 and half years and I lived with my new parents when my mother (after getting mad at me for stepping on her foot) that she decided to grab hold of my shirt collar and throw me against the wall until my head hit it and my nose bled that I knew something wasn't right or for the first time I "feared" for my life...many more incidents followed after that...
Yeah, say what you want about being "lucky that you were adopted or what not" but growing up, I had wished at times I still lived in the orphanage and so what if I ONLY lived a certain time, it was better than what I had gone through physically and emotionally.
To this day, I feel fortunate that I got through what I did and I admit, it wasn't ALWAYS bad compared to others. I can't explain the past but I can rewrite and better myself for the future and I have...
I have two kids of my own today and I treat them TOTALLY the opposite the way I was treated back then...I don't fault my past, I just learn and treat it differently.