Q:

Does "punish" imply guilt?

In the phrase "They were hugely punished", am I implying that the punished subjects had done something wrong?
If so, is there a word that has the same meaning as punish (meaning damage done to someone, physically and/or psychologycaly) but without the implied guilt?

A:

Punish has 3 forms:
Punish (verb) to inflict a punishment (noun) on a person.
Punishing (adjective) use the known harshness of punishments to describe other (often unrelated) activities

Punish
  VERB
  [WITH OBJECT]
  1. Inflict a penalty or sanction on (someone) as retribution for an offence, especially a transgression of a legal or moral code.

It doesn't imply guilt, it states guilt as that is the meaning of punish.
There are hundreds of words to mean hurt somebody, hurt being the first good example.
There is a informal usage of punishment

Punishment
  NOUN
  [mass noun]
  1.2. informal Rough treatment or handling.
  ‘your machine can take a fair amount of punishment before falling to bits’

or punishing

Punishing
  ADJECTIVE
   1. Physically and mentally demanding; arduous.
    ‘the band's punishing tour schedule’  
  1.1 Severe and debilitating.  
     'the recession was having a punishing effect on our business’

There is this definition for punish
1.4 Subject to severe and debilitating treatment.
BUT if you look at the example sentences they are all using punishing as an adjective, rather than Punish the verb
all definitions are from oxford dictionary

"They were hugely punished"
isn't actually correct, you can't be hugely punished, The 2 just don't go together. Huge is a counting/size qualifier and punish is a verb, there is one punish of 1 size, just different severity.
You could be severely punished, unfairly punished, mildly punished, but NOT Hugely. You could take a huge punishment because that is a noun. A thing has a size an action does not.

