Posted on 10/13/2026 10:21:26 AM PDT by grundle
Bundled in heavy coats, hats, scarves, and mittens, Rafi Meitiv and his little sister Dvora had just spent a sunny Saturday afternoon in December 2014 playing at a local playground in suburban Maryland.
After an hour, the 10- and 6-year-olds began their trek home, about three-quarters of a mile. While it was their first time walking from that particular park to their house alone, they'd traced the same route in Silver Spring dozens of times with their parents and had also ventured off alone to other playgrounds in the area before.
About halfway through their journey, they were stopped by three police officers, who instructed them to get in their car so they could drive them home and speak to their parents.
Rafi and Dvora were confused.
"At this point, we knew how to obviously use crosswalks, walk the street safely," Rafi, now 21, told Business Insider in his first time speaking out about this incident in over a decade. "We had our parents' phone numbers. We knew how to take care of ourselves."
The incident led to a six-month investigation into potential child neglect by Child Protective Services, followed by another, more harrowing run-in with CPS and the police.
Rafi and Dvora's parents, Alexander and Danielle Meitiv, fought back, appearing on TV news programs, including "Today" and "Good Morning America." They were eventually cleared of "unsubstantiated child abuse or neglect" — a legal limbo meaning that CPS could neither find enough evidence to prove nor fully rule out neglect — in June 2015.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
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,
Jim
Just good little kids ....
Maryland......what lib state DOESN’T think they know better than parents how to raise their children?
Crazy World we live in today. What those kids did was perfectly normal in the ‘50s and early ‘60s when I was growing up.
When I was about 10 or 11, we would load-up my friend’s fathers guns into the trunk of his family’s car, and his 16 year-old brother would drive us out to an empty field, where we would all spend hours shooting at cans, targets, etc...
Once, a cop heard the noise, and came to investigate.
He looked around, asked who drove us: “Billy did, sir!”
Then he asked who owned the guns: “Billy and Sammy’s Dad, sir!”
Then he said: “OK boys. Be safe” and he drove away.
And this was not in mountainous Utah or Montana. This was a commuter town outside NY City.
different times.....
At 10 I was walking a mile to school. Sometimes alone, sometimes with others, sometimes on a bike. The route included two fairly busy streets and a short stretch through the woods. Somehow, not sure how, my classmates and I managed to survive and gee, it was perfectly normal.
CPS was useless in the District of Columbia. The responsibility for investigating child abuse and neglect was transferred to the DC police department. My last 2 years were spent as an investigator in the Child Abuse Section of the Youth Division.
I came off of a particularly hairy undercover assignment and that’s where they put me.
You won’t believe the terrible things people do to their children.
Same here. Same general time period.
By today’s standards, my parents and all my friends parents would be in jail and we would probably be in foster care!
Wouldn’t trade my “free range” childhood for anything.
Another layer to the story, but it is the actual abuse that enables more police state growth. For the transgression of a land many are the princes thereof. (Proverbs 28:2)
This is a case of child abuse - by CPS.
You can add the 1940’s . I went all over by myself no big deal, and it is only a big deal since the communist took control of the democratic party starting in 1950’s and then they started chipping away at our freedoms.
I started riding my bike a mile to school in 4th grade. Of course that was late 60s.
Same with me and my sisters back in the '50s. My mom brought me to school the first day of Kindergarten, when I was 5. After that, I walked the mile alone to school and back. Later on, I walked with a younger sister when she started school. I remember old ladies inviting me into their homes, and they gave me cookies - no bad stuff happened. Normal for kids to be out on the streets alone.
One breath: children are addicted to video games! Asthma! Obesity! Social isolation!
Next: children went outside! Neglect! Government must take charge!
NO low-income areas get this treatment. That would be raciss regardless of skin tone). Kids play in the streets as before. Only AWFL Karens in suburbs act like hostile dog catchers with other people’s kids.
I do. My ex was in CPS. The things she saw were awful. And many a time it was prominent people in the city we lived in.
ALL 4 OF US KIDS WENT TO A ONE ROOM GRADE SCHOOL—— ABOUT 1/2 MILE WALK FROM OUR FARM.
Yep. At 7 I’d go out for days in the river bottom and forest areas nearby. Camped near a stream.
Mid 60s.
Uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes?
When I was 10 in the early 1960s, my parents had no idea where I was - same with all my friends. Now the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, but back then, I guess it was pretty rural.
We had a curfew of course, but in the summer we would “sleep out” and riam around town - nobody ever worried about danger to us - more likely we were a danger to the community - although we never did any serious vandalism.
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.