Posted on 11/14/2007 5:52:30 PM PST by Michael.SF.
A Jackson County grand jury has indicted a Medford couple whose 6-year-old son was injured after being left alone with his 9-year-old brother at a skateboard park.
The indictment issued earlier this week charges Daniel R. Willis, 44, and June A. Willis, 49, with two counts each of felony criminal mistreatment and child neglect, a misdemeanor.
The couple could not immediately be reached for comment. They must appear in court Nov. 14.
Oregon law does not set a minimum age for unsupervised children. But if the kids are younger than 10, prosecutors have discretion to decide when leaving children alone isn't just questionable parenting but criminal conduct.
Daniel Lewis dropped the couple's sons, ages 6 and 9, at a Medford skateboard park on Oct. 14 on his way to work, according to police.
The 6-year-old ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull. The boy was released a few days later and his health condition is unknown.
Article did not say if the child was wearing a helmet. But still six years old, left with his brother at a park? Not a wise move.
(Searches for prior postings produced no results.)
This from a state that has often refused to check out possible terrorist groups right in Portland.
The parents should be tried for criminal stupidity, not criminal mistreatment or whatever that part of the charge was. A felony? Give me a break.
Oh, I forgot. Oregon, where communists and terrorists and illegals can go about their business, but should a parent screw up, it’s to the gallows with them.
Only Washington State is worst, with California closing in behind them both.
Must be something in the water.
Skateboarding is not a crime. I myself am guilty, if it were. But more info is needed before condemning the parents. Most skate parks require helmets, supervision.
A 6 year old should not be left unsupervised in a (skate)park. I skated when I was younger. It can be dangerous on a flat surface. Add in quarter launches, rails, bowls, etc. and it can be deadly. I stopped in my teens due to an injury (significant) after a ramp collapsed underneath me BTW.
[Sigh]
When I was nine I would disappear for the day and go bike riding and skateboarding and swimming with my friends. Just had to be home by dark.
We didn’t even wear helmets. Somehow most of us lived through it.
Barbarian 9 year olds would disappear to rape, pillage and murder- but they did wear helmets.
Things have changed. When I was twelve, I took the train into NYC by myself, and walked around 14th street looking for pulp SF.
Several years before that, I used to walk home a mile or so from school along a busy highway, usually with a friend. I always played outdoors by myself or with friends, for as long as I can remember.
This is a FELONY? Will they put the parents in jail and send the kids to a state home? That will really fix things, eh? Maybe it wasn’t wise, but I didn’t know that Oregon was that rough a place that kids can’t go out on their own occasionally?
How about Charlie Brown and his friends in Peanuts? Didn’t they always walk home without parental supervision? Was that a criminal comic strip?
At nine, that might have been reasonable (although perhaps not so much so nowadays). I think that the problem here is that the 6-year-old was left with his 9-year-old brother and got seriously injured.
Give it another decade and unescorted 9-year olds will be tasered for their own safety.
It may be that the 9 year old gave the 6 year old mouth to mouth, and saved his life.
It could be that the 6 year old is a victim of global warming. Unusually warm day, so out to play.
We need to let this play out to see if George Bush was involved.
Yep. We were allowed in at lunch and dark. If it rained that’s what the porch was for. At 8 I was roaming all over the place.
That’s what I was thinking. When my brother was nine, mom would tell him to go out and not come back ‘til dinner time — and to take his little sister (me) with him.
When I was 9, we lived on an island and I was expected to swim across a raging torrent (with my little brother on my back) just to get to school. If we got home before ten, our parents would beat us and then force us to memorize an entire dictionary page. I was an unhappy child but a great swimmer with an excellent vocabulary (my brother, alas, slipped off one day and drowned- but he was a good speller)
How about Charlie Brown and his friends in Peanuts? Didn’t they always walk home without parental supervision? Was that a criminal comic strip?
***Good place to bump this thread and also alert Eric for a nanny state ping list.
It’s stories like this that make me glad there’s such a thing as a jury system. If there’s 12 whackos that would put such parents in jail, well, we’re all hosed. Then again, I thought OJ was guilty, so we’ve been hosed for a while now.
I’m just not convinced that it is so far out of bounds to trust a 9yr old to watch his 6yr old brother for a while at a skate park.
Depends a great deal on the kids themselves and different kids can handle things at different ages. Also depends on the general atmosphere of the neighborhood and the other kids there at the time.
In almost no case can I see my way clear to think there is a felony in this. These kids will not be “protected” by having parents in jail and being dumped in the foster system. They are now life’s losers. A couple of kids that probably would have turned out just fine will now be disturbed, angry, medicated and “troubled” kids.
Way to go... Oregon.
Depending on the kids themselves, I'm not sure that it's unreasonable either.
I was always with my brother from the age of about 4. He was two years older than me. We would go off with our friends(one in particular) and do all sorts of things. All the kids did it back in the day(1940s,1950s,1960s) and most of us lived through it. The truth is the US is turning into a bunch of wimps, they are being indoctinated daily by the press and in our schools. 50 years ago this would not have even been news and the parents would certainly not have been indicted for anything. It was an accident and could have happened at home as easily as it did at the skate park. I would bet this is not the first time those two kids were at the park and nothing happened.
We need to put of foot down and stop this sort of collective punishment for every damn accident a kid has.
We cannot wrap them in cotton and expect them to grow up to be decent human beings. Wimps are what we end up with and wimps are what are being raised in this country. I am surprised, and dissapointed, at the number of FReepers who act as if this parent, and others who have been in a similar situation, are actually guilty of a crime. This BS and the ones calling for the parents' heads are as wimpy as the kids they are raising.
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