Posted on 09/03/2026 7:48:38 PM PDT by Red Badger
The government also placed Karyann Parkinson on its child abuse and neglect registry, where she will remain for seven years.
=================================================================
A mom of five was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Her offense: allowing her 5-year-old son to walk about a half-mile by himself in their gated community.
Until very recently, Karyann Parkinson lived in leafy Williamsburg, Virginia. She and her husband, Dallin, moved there from Utah so Parkinson could attend William and Mary Law School.
In June, when Parkinson was preparing for the bar—and also happened to be eight months pregnant with her fifth child—she and her then-youngest, Sam, went for a bike ride, as they often do. They stopped for her son's favorite activity: collecting goose feathers from the path near their community pond. When they got home, he asked if he could walk back and get some more.
Parkinson said yes. It's a short walk, along a sidewalk separated from the street by 10 feet of grass. Sam would have to cross two streets with crosswalks, which she'd seen him do safely hundreds of times—including six times that morning, she says. Off he went while she made lunch.
A passerby saw Sam and alerted security. One of the community's security guards escorted the boy back and gave Parkinson an earful. Pretty soon there were three cop cars, just as many cops, a security vehicle, and two Child Protective Services (CPS) workers at Parkinson's door.
CPS ended up investigating her for abuse and neglect.
The cops, meanwhile, charged her with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. CPS found the allegations substantiated and placed Parkinson on the state's child abuse and neglect registry. She will remain there for seven years.
The ordeal reached its nadir last week when a judge convicted Parkinson of the delinquency of a minor charge, a first-degree misdemeanor. This comes with a six-month jail sentence.
While the judge immediately suspended the sentence, pending good behavior and compliance with CPS' conditions, the conviction remains. Parkinson assumes this means she will not be able to volunteer in her kids' schools. She fears it could also mean she will not get her law license.
So let's look at how the events unfolded.
Parkinson is no newbie to parenting. She graduated Brigham Young University in 2012 with a degree in family science. She then became a family life educator and spent three years as a live-in behavioral specialist at a residential treatment center. There, she and her husband, a marriage and family therapist, oversaw the care of 35 girls.
In Virginia, Parkinson spent one summer interning at the Institute for Justice and another working in the law office of former Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel (R–Winchester). Vogel was actually co-sponsor of the reasonable childhood independence law that passed in Virginia, unanimously, in 2023.
The bill says that neglect is only when you put your child in serious, obvious danger. So what happened?
When the security guard brought Sam back to Parkinson's house, he told the boy that his mom had done something she wasn't supposed to, and that bad people would want to take him if he was out alone. "This scared the crap out of him," Parkinson says now.
She admits she was upset with the guard and asked him where in the homeowners-association rules it says that a child can't walk by himself. The guard said it was against the law anyway and called the police.
When the first cop arrived, Parkinson told him, "I don't have any interest in talking to you." This did not make things go smoother. The cop called for backup and summoned CPS.
At that point, Parkinson asked her husband, who was having lunch with their daughter, to come home. "I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks," he says, "in order to grow up non-anxious." CPS responded, he recounts, that "a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised."
Parkinson admits now that she is embarrassed by her confrontational demeanor. But of course, that was not the primary issue. The issue was whether her son could handle a walk in this community with 24-hour security, a 25-mph speed limit, and three golf courses.
CPS opened an investigation and found Parkinson guilty of a "Level 2 finding" for lack of supervision. That's what put her on the child abuse and neglect registry. The family immediately appealed.
As for the criminal charges: Parkinson believes the "delinquency of a minor" charge was an attempt to bypass Virginia's reasonable childhood independence law.
David DeLugas, founder and executive director of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents wrongly accused of neglect, scoffed at the charge. "Delinquency?" he asks. "Is the kid going to rob banks at 14 because he collected feathers at age 5?"
At the trial, the security guard, his boss, and the police testified against Parkinson. The CPS worker testified that Sam seemed happy and healthy when she saw him that day. Parkinson's friend testified to Sam's maturity, and that he could be trusted to walk to the pond without going rogue.
The James City County family services specialist assigned to Parkinson's case declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements. The prosecutor in the Commonwealth Attorney's Office for James City County said the same.
Parkinson's attorney, Andrew Gordon, took the case pro bono and argued that the only real "evidence" against the mom was that Sam was 5, and that, hypothetically, a host of horrible things could have happened.
But of course, a host of horrible things can happen at home or in a car or anywhere. We don't arrest moms for driving their kids to the store, even though they could be hit by someone running a stop sign. Hypothetical dangers are not reason enough to condemn a person. And neither is hypothetical immaturity. No one proved that the boy was incapable of walking a few blocks safely by himself. After all, that would have been difficult to do, seeing as he had already done it without issue.
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Are you kidding me? A 5 year old is a baby. There are kid snatchers just looking for children like that. What If he falls in the pond and drowns? What if the wrong coyote walks by? I don’t even have kids and I wouldn’t let a 5 year old out of my sight.
When were you 6? 1958? Yeh, it was OK then.
yope, you get it pretty close.
A five year old is not a baby. The world is a lot safer then you assume. Remember the press and other media thrive on fear mongering. That includes fear mongering about children being in danger wherever they go. Ironically the one place that children are most likely to face harm from others is where the gov’t forces them to go for 180 days out of the year. School, especially public schools.
A five year old can certainly be A. taught to swim and B. taught to stay away from ponds. (I am not writing about autistic children. Open water poses a real danger to them. But usually they would be under supervision)
If you live where there are predators then appropriate safety measures would apply. But not every place on this green earth is full of predators waiting to pounce. In fact the odds of that happening are rather high.
What do you mean?
This is wicked, to ruin a woman's life when no one was hurt. I hope she wins on appeal.
We had this happen in Maryland over a decade ago, and the parents fought it and won (but with lawfare, the process is the punishment):
'Free range' parents cleared of child neglect charge in Maryland
I hope she wins an appeal; and then sues that Karen good and hard.
I see you don’t have kids either. 😆
You are way off base. I even have grandchildren. Truth to tell I do like them best.
Oh and I also live where there are alligators, and venomous snakes, and lots of open water (hello Mr. Gator), and brain sucking amoebas, and insects that could be disease vectors.
Yet somehow my children survived without me hovering over them every minute the stepped outside our house.
Who needs a seatbelt when you have mom’s arm? Grandma arms were better though they had cushioning.
Does your daughter/son let their 5 year old child wander the subdivision alone? I’ll bet hell no! 😆
My daughter does not have children. My son does. He has three children who are now 20, 16,and 11. And yes at the age of five they were allowed to go around their neighborhood. Usually they would be with friends but they did not have to be. It’s not like they were going from pillar to post and did not have to be home by a certain time. You forget too that even five year olds have phones these days and are easier to keep track of then I ever was.
I may have missed an earlier answer so forgive the oversight.
Do you have kids?
Either way I am going to assume you have or will teach them how to be safe around firearms. You will base your teaching on the child’s readiness to understand the danger and whether they will always be obedient to what you have taught. Taking sensible precautions because kids are not adults. You would use your judgment about your child. Because (unless you are an idiot, I will take for granted you are not) you know what your child’s capabilities better than anyone else.
The same goes for deciding how much freedom of movement to allow a young child.
“”A passerby saw Sam and alerted security. One of the community’s security guards escorted the boy back and gave Parkinson an earful. Pretty soon there were three cop cars, just as many cops, a security vehicle, and two Child Protective Services (CPS) workers at Parkinson’s door.
CPS ended up investigating her for abuse and neglect.
The cops, meanwhile, charged her with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. CPS found the allegations substantiated and placed Parkinson on the state’s child abuse and neglect registry. She will remain there for seven years.””
***
Is it just me, or is this the most surreal week ever seen ... so far.
On one hand, you have a woman that murdered her three kids with a huge crowd of supporters wanting her to get away with it. And now, here in another state, you have a major over-reach and over-reaction to a mom that merely wasn’t watching her kid 24/7, even though the kid wasn’t hurt AT ALL.
This is getting really weird.
That’s the world the Democrats have created................
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.