Posted on 07/16/2014 9:55:58 AM PDT by yoe
When I was nine years old, my family moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, near Melbourne. That summer my mother decided she needed to come up with something for my younger brother and me to do. She got some kind of deal buying a book of tickets to the local skating rink. Five days a week we would walk there in the morning and spend hours there before walking back home. There were no mobile phones back then. Our only way to contact home was to use a quarter in the pay phone that was there. The walk was about two miles.
So she set us off by ourselves and we came back hours later by ourselves day after day.
A mother in Augusta, Georgia did something similar. Lenore Skenazy describes what happened at Reason magazine’s blog.
Here are the facts: Debra Harrell works at McDonald’s in North Augusta, South Carolina. For most of the summer, her daughter had stayed there with her, playing on a laptop that Harrell had scrounged up the money to purchase. (McDonald’s has free WiFi.) Sadly, the Harrell home was robbed and the laptop stolen, so the girl asked her mother if she could be dropped off at the park to play instead.
Harrell said yes. She gave her daughter a cell phone. The girl went to the park—a place so popular that at any given time there are about 40 kids frolicking—two days in a row. There were swings, a “splash pad,” and shade. On her third day at the park, an adult asked the girl where her mother was. At work, the daughter replied.
The shocked adult called the cops. Authorities declared the girl “abandoned” and proceeded to arrest the mother.
I’m not surprised that the cops nabbed the mother. That’s what they do, especially when summoned by some nosy parent. I’m not surprise that the Department of Social Services took the daughter into custody (a much less safe environment for the typical child) because, again, that’s what they do. I hate it but I’m not surprised by it.
[Earlier Post: “Child Takes a Walk; Father Arrested for ‘Child Endangerment’”]
What makes me angry is how the media is full of stupid, moronic, sermonizing, cowards. (The video below takes a minute to appear on my browser. You can also go here if you don’t see it.)
Here is a woman thrown into jail and her daughter is now the property of the Department of Social Services, and these people craft a narrative and speak with moral outrage as if the woman is the aggressor. No, she and her daughter are the victims; these interfering busybodies, both private and public, are the aggressors.
[See also: “Father Convicted & Punished for Making Son Walk a Mile Home from School”]
Debra Harrell did nothing wrong. But I doubt she can hire a real lawyer on her McDonald’s salary. If you don’t think Ms. Harrell was evaluated for her ability to afford a lawyer when the police were deciding whether or not to arrest her, then you are being naïve.
Imagining the possibility of a kidnapping is not a rational accusation. Read the story again. The girl could easily have been hurt if she had been home when it was robbed. She obviously doesn’t live in a safe neighborhood. Do we take all the children of all poor minorities now?
The playground, on the other hand, was full of witnesses. Despite the common myth, the fact is that the crime rate has dropped. Children are as safe as they were a generation or two ago.
Let’s be honest: this nine-year-old girl was abducted and imprisoned by the South Carolina bureaucrats because she is capable of taking care of herself and expects to do so. The system punishes the independent and demands dependence and helplessness. Debra Harrell and her daughter need to learn their proper place in the world. This is re-education for them.
I’ll let Skenazy have the last word:
Because some busybody thought she knew more about this girl’s safety than the girl’s own mother, a family has been separated. Harrell is in jail and the child is in the custody of the Department of Social Services. If only the girl had spent her whole summer sitting in McDonald’s—surfing the internet and eating a Big Mac instead of playing outside and getting fresh air—this never would have happened.
Thats a nice post.
I would like to add adventures on the creek and discovering firecrackers. I miss my America.
“Yep. Good God, my childhood would have been absolutely no fun if it were run by the soccer moms of today.”
With the nannystaters gaining power, us adults are also getting a taste.
Just curious. Did you get ticks while playing on the battlefield? We took our children there, and it must have been when the grass was high or something. We had to pick fifty ticks off our children that day. They would have loved to go play there every day. Sounds like you had a fun filled childhood!
(I think it was spring when the ticks attached to them. We were there the Fall before and did not get ticks, but we did see at least twenty deer roaming around.)
“Homosexual Pedophiles” need to be secured to two stories worth of piano wire off a four story building.
Yes, I do remember my mother removing ticks from me; she’d usually get most and then a day or two later we’d find one or two all stretched and swollen to the size of a pea. I guess nothing changes in 55 or more years.
When I was four and I had two siblings just one and two years older, my mother would shove us out the door and tell us to go play. There was a mob of kids in the neighborhood of similar ages. We all played together with NO!!! parents around. And we stayed out late at night in the summer as well with no parents around. Insanity has taken over
In 1953 when I was three years old, we lived in a developing neighborhood in La Crosse, Wis. There weren't a lot of houses as yet in the surrounding area. That was the year when the Evelyn Hartley kidnapping case made national news. The house where she was kidnapped from was only about one half mile from our house. It's possible the kidnapper/killer drove by our house in his escape. I didn't find out about the details of the case until I was older. My parents never told us kids. We still continued to play outside as usual. Hartley's body was never found, and the case remains an unsolved mystery to this day.
I still live near La Crosse, but as far as I know there has never been another case in the area similar to that one.
Lived in a neighborhood like that. We moved. Safer.
Actually, everything else about our little neighborhood is great. He has managed to piss off all of us, and I don’t look for him to stick around much longer. I won’t let him push us out.
Petitioning John C. Thomas Director of Public Safety, North Augusta
This petition will be delivered to: Director of Public Safety, North Augusta
John C. Thomas Director of Public Safety, North Augusta........Chief John Thomas, director of the North Augusta Department of Public Safety,
Acting State Director South Carolina Department of Social Services Amber Gillum....
help look for contact numbers or emails...and post them here.....thanks, yoe
The Overprotected Kid
A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer. A new kind of playground points to a better solution.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/
Did you even bother to read the story, like the part where it said there were about 40 other kids in the park at any given time?
The child saw an opportunity to catch up with some old friends, and was not in danger until she went into State custody.
When we found out where she was, we went over to get her and were detained by Police half a block away while the Social Services people made the grab.
In the year and a half it took for her to be finally free and home, her hands were burned by cleaning chemicals (she was told she had to work for her food--at six years old), she got scabies, lice, and all her stuff was taken from her, including gifts from family members--all by the State-approved foster parents she was placed with.
By the time the situation was resolved, our family had enough documented ethics violations to get the social worker's license revoked, but she resigned before the child was returned.
Beware of the nanny-staters!
Remember when Homosexuality & Pedophilia was not tolerated, wasn't accepted or considered natural, was instead shunned by all society, and because of this they knew they had best leave kids alone. It was leave kids alone or face very grave legal and physical consequences? Remember when that standard of morality was encouraged and considered healthy and necessary?
1965 at 8 years old & lived in the city I would ride my bike several a couple miles from home and be gone most of the day. I walked to school {about 4 blocks actually I rode my bike}, I'd take short cuts to get to a mom & pop store that by road was two miles away on two roads I wasn't allowed to ride on but by a shortcut in the woods it was less than a mile LOL. A quarter in my pocket got a coke, bag of chips, and change for penny candy.
My dad who grew up in the 30's and 40's would ride a bicycle 35 miles up to a family hunting & fishing camp on Saturday and back home 35 miles again on Sunday. In the summer he and his brother stayed camped on the river unattended until school started. His dad worked 12 hours 7 days a week so dads uncle would drive up and check on them on the weekends. They did have a friend of family who was a farmer they could go to if anything was serious.
I'm thankful I got to experience what I did when I did. That USA is gone. I go to the lake now I carry. Heck I go to the store now I carry and I'm in a rural area.
I was born in 1970. Heh.
When I was a kid, we left the house at the crack of dawn and got home when the street lights came on. We never checked in unless we had a broken bone, even that was iffy.
Besides that, my Depression-Era grandparents raised me. They had strict rules about morality and responsibility but virtually no rules when it came to “You can’t do that. You’ll shoot yer eye out!”
I was blessed. I was loved more than I could stand and experienced things that most people my age will never know or understand.
Yes I did. I also live here and got the news first hand, whereas the source of this article is out of state Loaded with conjecture and full of things to inflame the passions of others I see that it worked well.
Really? You were there, at the park, at that time, and saw for yourself how many children were there? Because that’s what “first hand” means. Otherwise, you too got your version of events from someone else.
The government is 18T in debt with over 200T in obligations. Who do you think is going to pay that off? The people. It is the people who serve the government’s debt. As such they are the government’s asset, it’s property. No one is allowed to endanger the government’s property and its ability to service its debts.
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