By: Laura Meyers
An 11-year-old boy was taken from his parents custody by the state of Florida after playing basketball outside the family’s home for an hour and a half by himself.
The boy didn’t have a key, so he played basketball in the yard as he waited for his parents to get home.
He was alone for 90 minutes, so a very logical neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived (after rain and traffic delays), they were arrested for negligence.
They were put in handcuffs, strip searched, fingerprinted, and held overnight in jail.
It would take an entire month before the boy and his younger brother, could return home.
The law being used to prosecute the parents states: “A person who willfully or by culpable negligence neglects a child without causing great bodily harm, permanent disability, or permanent disfigurement to the child commits a felony of the third degree.”
Reason magazine reports that the case was discovered after the mother emailed her story to Free-Range Kids.
The authorities claim he had no access to water or shelter. We have an open shed in the back yard and 2 working sinks and 2 hoses. They said he had no food. He ate his snacks already. He had no bathroom, but the responding officer found our yard good enough to relieve himself in while our son sat in a police car alone. In his own yard, in a state, Florida, that has no minimum age for children to be alone.
So, the boys were placed in foster care for two days while the state ran a background check on a relative who was willing to take them in, and the parents were charged with a felony.
“Our first choice was my mother,” said the mother. “But she lives in another state and so the kids would have been in foster care even longer until they cleared her.”
The parents decided to have them placed with an ironically less-than-responsible relative instead, since the person lived in-state.
You see what you’ve incentivized, dear government?
Turns out, after moving in with the sketchy relative, the mother learned all the boys had to eat for the first few days was cereal- and they smelled bad.
Since the parents had a felony, they couldn’t cross the county line to go see the kids, and the relative refused to bring them to visit.
After a few weeks, the relative got tired of taking care of the kids.
“Unbeknownst to us,” said the mother, “she was putting them back in state custody.”
That’s when Child Protective Services asked the court to place the boys in foster care.
So last Tuesday, the family and their lawyer, and a lawyer for CPS appeared again in children’s court.
After much private debate between the two lawyers, the son walked up to the judge and had a private conversation.
“He went back there and spoke to the judge for about ten minutes,” said the mother. “And then the judge came out and called the two lawyers to the bench and talked to them for about 10 or 15 minutes. And with that, our lawyer came to us and said that if we admitted that we didn’t know that it was wrong to [let our son] stay in the backyard, but that we know now that it’s wrong and we will never let it happen again, and that we will explain this to our son, he would let the children come with us.”
The parents promised, the kids were released, and the case was closed.
But the fun is not over.
CPS ordered that the boys’ parents attend parenting classes and therapy. The kids are attending “play” therapy.
Reason reports:
This summer, as part of the deal, the older boy must attend day camp. The younger must attend day care. The reason, Cindy thinks, is that years ago there was a girl who disappeared while in foster care and it turned out that no one had been keeping track of her whereabouts. If kids attend day camp or daycare, their whereabouts will always be accounted for.
I asked Cindy how she and the kids spent last summer.
“We did little projects, we would go to the beach,” she said. Or they would visit dad at work. She had been planning to enjoy another low key summer with them.
Instead, she will be at home while her kids are in a program mandated by the state.
Cindy and Fred cannot be sure who called the cops and turned their lives upside down. (They have their suspicions.)
As least you know when you can’t find a babysitter, the state will always be there to fill in. And you’ve already paid them.
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