Reported by Fox31 Denver: “Florida mother arrested after allowing son to walk alone to park” (7/29/14)
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — A Florida mother is facing a child neglect charge after she allowed her son to walk to a local park alone.
“I’m totally dumbfounded by this whole situation,” said Nicole Gainey, who on Sunday gave her son Dominic permission to walk from their house to Sportsman Park. “I honestly didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, I was letting him go play.”
The park is one-half mile from their home, about a 10- to 15-minute walk. Along the way, the 7-year-old passed a public pool and someone asked him where his mother was.
“They asked me a couple questions and I got scared so I ran off to the park and then they called the cops,” Dominic said…
The officer wrote in the report that Dominic was unsupervised at the park and that “numerous sex offenders reside in the vicinity…”
Gainey plans to fight the felony charge, but after this, she won’t let Dominic go to the park alone. She’s afraid she’ll be arrested again.
What do you think?
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I was talking about this with friends the other day. When I was a kid, back in the dark ages, this is what we did all the freakin’ time. We went outside. We played with other kids. Our parents often had NO IDEA where we were. And it was fine. We were fine.
@RO’C – It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around this one, Russell, but I’m sure we can all tell where I’m leaning… like you: really?!!
I get that I’m several decades removed from contemporary childhood, but it seems like fear is winning at every turn – fear of evil doers in the park (legit, I get that, but we must remember that *they* have always been there), but also fear of injury, experience, or even – god forbid! – mediocrity. I have no comment, but I guess that’s a comment in of itself.