A mother in rural Georgia was arrested and threatened with prosecution after her almost 11-year-old son walked a short distance into town alone.
unplanned trip
On the night of October 30th, Brittany Patterson was “handcuffed” and “taken to jail.” A passing motorist spotted Patterson's 11-year-old son, then a week and a half old, while walking along the road after calling police. Reason's Lenore Skenazy reports.
Around noon that day, Patterson took her eldest son to the doctor's appointment. Soren, who was supposed to accompany him, was nowhere to be seen. But Patterson, who lives on 16 acres with her children and father (“my husband works out of state,” Skenazy said), and whose mother and sister live nearby, wasn't worried. .
“I thought he was in the woods or at grandma's house,” she told Skenerzy.
In fact, Soren was wandering down the road toward Mineral Bluff, a small town of 370 people near Georgia's northern border. The town, less than a mile from Patterson's home, has a post office, a Dollar General, a gas station and a Baptist church, but little else.
On the same road, with speed limits varying from 25 mph to 35 mph, a woman drove by, spotted Soren, and asked, “Are you okay?” Although the man said he was fine, the woman called the police.
The Fannin County Sheriff picked Soren up and called his mother. “She asked me if I knew he was downtown and I said no,” Patterson recalled.
She was perplexed that her son had left for the city without telling her, but she said, “I know the way and my son is old enough to walk there without any problems.'' I didn't panic because I knew that.”
county enforcement
Meanwhile, the sheriff expressed serious concerns about a child who wasn't even his own.
“She kept saying that she could have been run over, that she could have been kidnapped, that 'anything' could have happened,” Patterson said.
But Patterson felt this was not a cause for concern. “She grew up in this area and had plenty of time to roam and play unsupervised, and that's how she raised her children,” Skenazy wrote.
“The mentality here is more free-for-all,” Patterson explained.
Unfortunately, some sheriffs and other county officials do not share that view.
The sheriff took Soren home in the afternoon, but returned with another officer around 6:30 p.m. In front of the children, they handcuffed Patterson's hands behind his back and took him to the police station, where he was jailed. According to a GoFundMe page to raise money for Patterson's defense, she said the incident was “humiliating…and that her children were very saddened to see her arrested (and her son also felt responsible).” )” he said.
Patterson was released on $500 bail, but the next day a case manager from the Fannin County Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) visited her at her home and her oldest son at school. “The case manager told Mr. Patterson that everything appeared to be OK,” Skenazy said.
But she continued:
A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a “safety plan” and asked him to sign it. To do this, she would need to delegate a “safety officer'' as a “knowing participant and guardian'' to watch over the children whenever she leaves the house. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app to her son's cell phone so she could monitor his son's location. (The day when it will be illegal not to track your own children is rapidly approaching.) (Emphasis in original.)
mom lawyer up
Patterson is clearly familiar with the domineering treatment meted out to parents who don't monitor their children's every move. She recalled the case of Melissa Henderson, a Texas woman who was charged with reckless conduct for having her 14-year-old daughter babysit for her brother. The girl's 4-year-old brother then went to a friend's house across the street without her. knowledge. Instead of calling Henderson or her daughter to notify her, the friend's mother called police.
Henderson sought help from ParentsUSA, an organization that provides legal assistance to parents wrongly accused of child neglect. Patterson did the same, securing attorney David DeLugas, the group's founder, as his attorney.
Mr. DeLugas argued that the law under which Mr. Patterson was charged was declared unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1997, and he contacted the Assistant District Attorney (ADA) to discuss the matter. “The ADA informed DeLugas that the criminal charges would be dropped if Patterson signed a safety plan,” Skenazy wrote.
Ms. DeLugas countered that doing so would remove all vestiges of Soren's independence, but the ADA was adamant that the boy was at risk and needed a safety plan.
Skenazy wrote:
The safety plan includes a veiled threat that the children could be removed if they don't sign, DeLugas said. In this case, he said, the tacit agreement seems to be that if you sign, the state won't prosecute you. If the state prosecutes, Patterson could face a charge of reckless conduct, a $1,000 fine, and a year in prison. (emphasis in original)
However, Mr. Patterson remains resolute. “I won't sign it,” she told Skenazy.
Despite all this, don't say that DFCS bureaucrats are completely ruthless. In the end, Patterson's case manager sent Soren a birthday card.
