Posted on 03/04/2020 4:28:25 AM PST by Kaslin
South Carolina mom Debra Harrell worked at McDonald's. She couldn't afford day care for Regina, her 9-year-old daughter, so she took her to work.
But Regina was bored at McDonald's.
One day, she asked if she could just play in the neighborhood park instead. "I felt safe there," tells me in my new video, "because I was with my friends and their parents."
"She had her cellphone, a pocketbook with money in it," says Debra. "She had everything she needed."
Regina was happy. Debra was happy.
But one parent asked Regina where her mom was, and then called the police. Officers went to McDonald's and arrested Debra.
In jail, they berated her.
"You can't leave a child who is 9 years old in the park by herself!" said one officer. "What if some sex offender came by?"
People interviewed by the media were also outraged.
"What if a man came and just snatched her?" asked one.
"This day and time, you never know who's around!" said another.
But what are they talking about? Crime in America is way down, half what it was in the '90s. Reports of missing children are also down.
If kids are kidnapped or molested, it's almost always by a relative or an acquaintance, not by a stranger in a park.
Nevertheless, prosecutors charged Debra Harrell with "willful abandonment of a child," a crime that carries up to a 10-year sentence.
They also took Regina away from her mom -- for two weeks. "I would cry as night because I was really scared," Regina told me. "I didn't know where I was, or what was going on."
Fortunately, attorney Robert Phillips took Debra's case for free. He didn't like the way police and media portrayed her.
"Here was this black female that society gives a hard time. 'Welfare queens, living at home, not getting a job!' Well, that's what she was doing," he said. "She was out working, trying the best she could to take care of her child. And now we're beating her up because we didn't like the way she took care of her child."
The cops said that Harrell should have sent her daughter to day care. But even if she could have afforded it, it's not clear that day care is safer. "We found 42 incidents of sexual molestations, rapes in day cares," said Phillips. "We couldn't find (in South Carolina in the last 20 years) a single abduction in a park."
Philips blames people in my business for scaring people about the wrong things. "The media has brought up this 'stranger danger' to where, if you're not under the protective wings of mom and dad 24/7, then you're exposing your child to some unknown danger."
That has frightened police and child welfare workers into taking absurd steps when parents leave children alone.
In Maryland, police accused parents of child neglect for letting their kids roam around their neighborhood.
In Kentucky, after police reported a mom who left her kids in the car while she dashed into a store, child welfare workers strip-searched the kids to make sure they weren't being abused.
This doesn't protect kids. It mostly scares parents into depriving their kids of chances to learn. "When you don't let them spread their wings, that's when they get in trouble!" says Debra.
She was fortunate that her case got enough attention that even Nikki Haley, then South Carolina's governor, asked that Regina be given back to her mom.
Prosecutors finally dropped the child abandonment charge.
It's just not right that when stranger kidnappings are increasingly rare, police and child welfare workers are more eager to punish parents who let kids play on their own.
"A Utah law guarantees that giving kids some reasonable independence isn't 'neglect,'" says Lenore Skenazy, of the nonprofit Let Grow, "More states need this!"
Of course, some parents are so neglectful that government should intervene.
But as lawyer Phillips put it, they should intervene "only if you are subjecting your child to a real harm. We should not have unreasonable intrusions by the government telling us every little detail how to raise our children."
It's almost as if Mr. Phillips is implying that people should be more concerned about bad events that happen regularly than about bad events that rarely or never happen.
Why, that's just crazy talk! How dare he not panic?!
When I was a kid, 10 years old, my parents would let me get on my bike and disappear until dinner, I had no cell phone and lived in a big city, Detroit. They would give me money to get on a bus and go downtown with a packed lunch for good part of Saturday, when I was 12. They also instilled me with common sense and what to do if I felt unsafe.
I am so grateful that I don’t have to be a kid today. Or a parent.
My childhood was spent, literally, in Rainbow Beach Park in Chicago in the ‘60s. Our back door actually opened into the park, which included two playgrounds, two football fields that were turned into skating rinks each winter, a tennis court, handball court, beautiful garden, and oh yeah, a beach.
Kiddie paradise and all mine.
We played on cast iron monkey bars set in concrete.
Nobody died.
I knew when it was time to come in because the back porch light was on.
Kids can’t know that kind of freedom now. Thanks, libtards.
I was on my own when I was 15, kids can grow up fast when they need to.
Yes, you can abort the kid up until the moment of birth, but God help you if you have him facing the wrong way in the carseat on the way home, or light up a smoke in the car, or...
At age 12, I’d head out the door for the day with a 12 gauge
Meet up across the field with a buddy and spend the day hunting.
Sometimes camp overnight so we could be in the woods when the sun came up and the squirrels started their day
Got my first job at 9.
6am to 6pm.
A different era!
I didn’t bother to actually read the entire story. It never mentions how old the mother of the 9 yr-old child is. Can’t leave the kid with one of your parents? A sibling? Baby daddy? Baby daddy’s parents/sibling? How about a neighbor? I watch your kid on my day off, you watch mine on your day off... How long a shift is she working? How many shifts a week?
They should definitely fire the journalist who filed the story, and the editor who gave it the “ok.”
Bla bla bla bla bla
Why are women having babies with men they’re not married to, who will not support them in taking care of their kids?
You can’t leave the kids in the park alone. Sorry.
At 12 I was on my bike discovering trails and talking with old men who lived in the woods. The only time I was propositioned was by a school teacher. I rejected his advances. Scared me so bad I never got near him again.
Especially at 9.
It’s a shame it is that way anymore.
growing up we ran all over the neighborhood.
Once in awhile we got in trouble for riding our bikes on the sidewalk but none of us got in any kind of trouble.
Occasionally a bully might rough you up or you might get into a fight with another kid.
Anyhow, we all knew who the “weirdos” were and we avoided them.
My folks let me and my sibs run around until nightfall.
[[[At age 12, I’d head out the door for the day with a 12 gauge]]]
Excellent. I remember working on cars when I was 12. Jacking them up (safely with jack stands) doing oil changes, tire rotations, mounting snow tires, etc. All kinds of power tools.
One of my favorite activities was melting lead for slingshot ammo and sinkers. LOL
It all taught self reliance, responsibility, a work ethic and problem solving.
I wouldn’t have sent her alone to the park, but if she was with her friends, and her friends’ parents were there, that doesn’t seem so bad. I have a feeling that the friends’ parents didn’t like this lady, and felt she was trying to use them as free babysitters. So they decided they’d “Fix her.” That’s my guess.
I did a search out of curiosity if they have babysitters now in Germany, They do, but they sure didn't have them in the late 40s and 50s.
> Officers went to McDonald’s and arrested Debra.
“What if some sex offender came by?”
If this park is such a hotbed of sex offenders maybe the officers should think about arresting them instead.
Yeah, same here. We wandered our neighborhood until dinnertime or dusk. The good old days.
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