Guest Post by John Stossel
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.”
John Stossel is author of “No They Can’t! Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed.” For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
I know all about parenting issues and custody battles.
Not nice, but I just found out how many times DCF cited mom for mental health.
A lot.
Here’s a woman who wants to work. The state would prefer she become another welfare queen?
Yeah, not the greatest situation for the kid but we played outside all day in my youth. At 9 my perimeter was literally miles away from home. No parent had the remotest idea of where we were. Somehow we survived and learned independence and I’m sure a lot of other good attributes.
My primary rule as a kid – Be home for supper.
Slow down, cowboy. There’s a big difference between a roaming pack of preteen boys, and a 9 year old little girl left by herself in an urban park. Stossel, as usual, swings and misses. Your first job as a parent is to protect your children.
Your first job as a parent is to get you kids street wise. That means letting them out of the nest to get street wise. Children also need to learn religion by going to church. Most parents today do neither for their children. No wonder we are a nation of cowards.
A streetwise little girl is still a sitting duck. Raise any kind of livestock. You will learn fast. A predator only has to succeed once. You have to succeed all the time. The same goes for parenting. You’re going to bet on a “streetwise” 9 year old little girl? She’s a fucking 9 year old little girl. That’s beyond insane.
It worked for a thousand years before helicopter parenting became in vogue. Somehow we all survived.
“She had her cellphone, a pocketbook with money in it,” says Debra. “She had everything she needed.”
This woman was so stupid, do not know why anybody would down-voted you.
Thank you, Ginger. Standard liberal cuckery. A 9 year old girl can protect herself. That’s failure of a parent right there. If there were going to be other parents in the park, why not just call one of them and ask if they can watch over your kid? Instead the other parents were pretty concerned, much more so than the biological mother.
Dude, They’re Not Like Us! Unsupervised black kids aren’t going to do what unsupervised white kids of 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, and nothing will change that.
I recall a 50’s tv show, My Three sons. Today it would be My Three Dads.
It was safer then because everyone was White and Eisenhower/Kennedy were the Presidents.
If a park is really that dangerous, that means that the police and the judges have not done their job to begin with.
This story is just another of the millions of signs, that things are totally upside down in this country.
I was in Jerusalem last year, thousands of tourists every day, and little girls maybe 6 years old, are walking home from school through the dens crowed – no problems.
Some years ago my wife and I tried to adopt and very specifically out of the foster care system to give a tossed around kid or a group of siblings a stable and permanent home. The powers to be would not let us. They want foster parents, because that gives them control and money from the state. And that is also the reason why they are so quick to take children away from parents for very doubtful reasons
Many of those boys who are “lost” when it comes to self-sufficiency and having the ability to think through a situation and come up with a solution never had fathers. The feminizing of boys has been going on for generations now, with no signs of abating-definitely bad news. Single-parent households headed by women are missing a critical component needed to make boys “complete”.
For those men, both single and married (to females), it would behoove you to “adopt” a neighborhood boy, if only to show him what “real” men do. From repairing lawn equipment, cars, showing your “adoptee” how to drill, weld, measure, calibrate, troubleshoot and repair various items from toasters to cars, you will have provided an invaluable service. Boys DO need good men in their lives.
If you are single, such a “friendship” could lead to meeting a nice woman.
Yep ,fat black woman. I dream of such.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, becoming a “friend” to a kid can have you up on charges of child abuse, molestation or rape, regardless of whether you’re guilty or not. Even if you get off the criminal charges, they’re sitting there waiting to take you to civil court, which, with juries being what they are, will more than likely lead to a hefty payment to the so-called victim’s family.
Good advice for men, do not ever be alone with a woman or a child not your wife or your own children, because this could happen to you. People will claim victim status so they can get that payout. Men today can’t win in the court system no matter what they do.
You make a very important point point in today’s day and age. Thank you for your response.
I did it through the BigBrothersBigSisters program. It was an awesome experience to help and watch a boy grow into a man, since I don’t have any kids of my own. And it was very safe, because sanctified by the organization plus I became friends with the biological parents, too and had their full backing.
I also did jail ministry for some years and experienced what happens when they don’t have a father in their lives. It is the by far number one reason why they end up in jail – no having a father in their lives.
Throughout much of the Southwest, parks are home to groups of beer-drinking mexicans. Perhaps black women could hire them to look after their kids, you know, diversity being a strength and all.