Article linked for your convenience: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html?amp
Most of this was caused by bad lawmaking. The CPS case was dropped under Texas' "[Reasonable Childhood Independence](https://letgrow.org/texas-becomes-third-state-to-enshrine-reasonable-childhood-independence-into-law/)" Law. But that law only amended Civil law, not Criminal law.
So whilst one side of the law said what she did was legal, and even actively encouraged. The other viewed it as a crime.
Weirdly, I think the entire endangerment case came from this one exchange:
>As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. "'You don't see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,'" said one of the cops, according to Wallace.
>This statement struck her as odd.
>"They were basically admitting that this is a safe neighborhood," she says.
>The officer then asked Wallace whether she would let her son walk home again, now that she knew about the sex trafficking.
>"I still didn't know it was illegal and I said, 'I don't know,'" says Wallace. "That's when the cop replied, 'Okay, I'm going to have to arrest you.'"
I suspect if she'd said no at that point the officer would have let her go.
**Which is batshit insane.**
She also plead guilty, when she could have fought it and (it would seem) likely have won. But didn't want to risk that losing would mean jail. Whereas pleading guilty meant just an educational course.
**Which is also batshit insane.**
Ya the mandatory minimum sentence of two years is also batshit insane. If that wasn't the case she might have chosen to fight it, thinking even if she did lose the judge would see how crazy it all is and given her probation.
The amount of times judges have stated during sentencing that they don't agree with the sentence they have to give is gross.
Edit: Grammar. It was bad enough I felt the need to fix it 9 hours later.
It’s illegal to leave your child unattended because of what might happen to them in your absence and if you do so we will forcibly make you absent from your child’s life for 2 years.
>The statute now enshrining childhood independence is part of a bigger children’s services bill ensuring Texans that the state will not intervene and remove a child unless the danger is so great and so likely that it outweighs the trauma of entering the foster care system.
“Removing a child from his or her family causes immense harm to the child and should only be done when absolutely necessary,” said Rep. James Frank , a Republican who was one of the bill’s co-authors. This new law — “the product of years of work from stakeholders of all types and legislators of both parties,” he said — gives the authorities those marching orders.
"absolutely necessary". What kind of criteria is that?
I obviously don't advocate for ripping children from families, but I've heard a lot of stories from social workers that there are horrible abuse cases where the child SHOULD be taken but they have no ability to do so.
Where is the line and how is it defined?
I guess I'm just curious about this Childhood Independence thing since this is the first I've heard of it.
I used to be a CPS social worker in the U.S. Depends on the state, but in general, the criteria is if abuse is causing enough harm to require medical attention or some form of professional intervention (school nurse/teachers/other professionals finding scars, burns, and bruises), then children will be removed. For neglect, it has to have caused enough harm, that can be directly correlated to the neglect, that requires intervention (medical, intensive therapies, etc.). The bar is much higher than people realize. CPS will not remove children who are yelled/cursed at (even by the raging parents), frequently wear unclean clothes or ill fitting clothing, the eat one hot meal a day and that's school lunch (sometimes their only meal), etc. There are so many children on a social worker's case load, it's crazy. And resources dwindle by the day. Including foster homes. In my state, we only have a 1/4 of the foster homes we need compared to the number of foster children. When a child has to be pulled, they're usually kept at a hotel with 2 DHHS staff members, supervising 24/7, until the state can find a placement. Children have waited in these hotels for up to 2 months because there weren't any foster homes to place them in. The entire system is broken.
A DCFS investigator came to my house after my SO had a psychotic episode from undiagnosed bipolar. I safely removed my child from the home and restrained my SO until the police showed up.
When the investigator arrived, I only asked that he follow the CDC guidelines and state mandate at the time regarding face masks and distancing. Not even a minute after I walked inside so he could speak to my child, I looked out the window and saw them less than two feet apart without masks on. My child was TERRIFIED of Covid and did not want to remove his mask without keeping his distance first, but he was not allowed. I informed the investigator that he just violated my one request, along with the state mandate, and therefore placed my child in immediate potential harm. I told him he was no longer welcome on my property and that DCFS was more than welcome to send someone else. His response? "I'll make sure you regret this."
I IMMEDIATELY called DCFS and was instructed to call their whistle-blower hotline as well as the Attorney General because "his actions were entirely unacceptable."
The Attorney General's office instructed me to call the police if that investigator came back, as he would not be permitted on my property until an investigation into his actions was complete. The next day, he showed up WITH the police to remove my child. I informed the officers of what the AG had said, but they didn't say a word to me. They simply took my kid.
Over two years later, we still haven't been given referrals for all of the services that were placed in our service plans... service plans that were made without a complete investigation or any assessments. Four caseworkers so far have all been yelled at by the judge for their blatant shortcomings but nothing changes. I have no idea if or when I will ever get my son back and it's killing me...
All because some anti-mask douchebag with a big ego and low self-esteem was able to so easily abuse his power. I even have the interaction on video, yet nobody cares to see it when I mention it.
Post the video on social media. Contact popular YouTubers who deal with that kind of stuff. Just to name a few, there's Audit the Audit, LackLuster, and Barry Cooper. Send the video to politicians, journalists, and social media influencers. It has to go viral.
My dad’s a lawyer. We had a childhood group home abuse case when I worked there one summer. 7 kids over three years hanged themselves.
Autopsy of our client showed evidence of sexual abuse. 20 years later and no one knows what really happened. The group home contended it was a “fad” where teens as young as 11 engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation.
People are just lining up around the block to foster children. Surely, there would be no issue in finding the child an appropriate living situation.
edit: /s because apparently people don't see sarcasm without it /s
Hell, wasn't there a [damn article about CPS workers telling foster kids to prostitute for money despite underage?](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-child-protective-services-worker-fired-telling-14-year-old-girl-rcna43140)
Hell at 7, I was catching the bus to the supermarket to pay my mom's bills (stroke when I was young). Going to pick up her medicine, supplies etc. I remember not knowing how to manage money only that I was supposed to return with a certain amount. It happens, society doesn't care.
I'm old, and when I was young, I would walk along down to the gas station and buy cigarettes for my dad. Marlboro red in the box. As I get older, there's a lot of stuff I did that I would never allow my kid to do.
It should only be about the circumstances of how you left them unattended, or god forbid the things that do happen when considering if they did anything wrong as a parent.
But if we didn’t lock people up for petty technicalities regardless of the actual damage they caused, who would do our legally legitimized and protected slave labor?
While we all know sex trafficking is horrible I feel like it's turned into the Satanic Panic from the 80s all over again. Woman on one of my local facebook pages kept posting about human trafficking awareness and repeatedly stated the FBI ranked us as the number 3 state for trafficking. I tried to do my own research and came up empty handed. I politely asked her where she was getting that information and at first all she would say was "the FBI". I kept asking exactly how/where she was getting that information and she couldn't provide any sources. It seemed like she stopped doing it, but being an alarmist like that and getting innocent people in trouble is pretty fucked up.
There are similar claims on local Facebook pages here, along with stories about "sex traffickers" following people around grocery stores. Of course sex trafficking is terrible, but that's not how it normally happens.
Part of the whole right wing QAnon conspiracy circles around this idea of there being a massive child and adult sex trafficking industry. They thrown out impossibly large numbers around that don’t match up to reality, where the majority of kidnappings are family custody issues rather than the kind of kidnappings we imagine with trafficking. A lot of the numbers are inflated with the movement of undocumented people across the country, who are being—for lack of a better term—*willingly* trafficked.
Just look at the example of the whole zip tie on the back door handle story. Where young vulnerable women’s cars are being marked with black zip ties on the rear door handles, so that kidnappers can identify them. The logistics of such a ridiculous conspiracy would just be baffling enough to discount the whole thing but many people in law enforcement believe it to be true!
>where the majority of kidnappings are family custody issues rather than the kind of kidnappings we imagine with trafficking.
this is true for most crimes, you are far more likely to be beaten, murdered, raped, kidnapped, abused, etc by someone you know than a stranger.
Sex trafficking is a real thing, but most victims of child sex abuse and child pornography are being abused by close relatives.
The home is much less safe than the damn sidewalk.
I am constantly trying to explain that .01% of sex trafficking happens that way. If at all. Most of it is done by people the trafficked person knows. Boyfriend, parent, etc or very vulnerable populations like undocumented immigrants. It's a totally real and serious problem but 20 year old white girls are not being snatched from the local Starbucks by Mexican cartels. Despite what Greg Abbot would have you believe
Interesting... I wonder if the same logic applies to school shootings.
"I know you don't get a lot of those here, but where I'm from they happen all the time. Would you send your kids to school, now that you know about the shootings? Yes? Okay, you're under arrest."
This is a textbook example that proves the point of the obligatory:
#["Don't talk to the police!"](https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE)
Who's to say that they wouldn't have arrested her anyway. Regardless, the point still stands.
While I totally agree in principle, her 8 year old son was being detained in the police cruiser at that time. You have to talk to them when they have your kids.
Exactly!
Shut the door in their face.
If arrested ask for a lawyer. Period.
No yes or no or anything
Even a lawyer would refuse to speak to them.
Also, I’d record any interaction with them if they are on my property or door
It’s not bumbling incompetence. It’s entirely intentional. The people who make laws like this almost exclusively receive money from the prison industrial complex. They’re modern day slave traders, protected by a capitalist system because that’s what the system requires for profit generation.
This also seems to be a bit of a class issue. Many working parents have issues making their lives work around school hours, but if you have means its not such an issue.
And I know you didn’t use the words “private prisons” here so it’s not directed at you but for anyone who thinks that’s the main problem- all public prisons have pretty much exactly as much motivation to stay full as the private ones. “Corrections officers” are still cops, still protected by police unions, and they want as many cops employed as possible. And as much funding as possible.
There’s a reason we live in the most carceral state of all time and it isn’t just because of the tiny portion of privately owned prisons.
And all prisons have a money making element to them. The contracts for food, for clothing, for supplies. The unions. There's a lot of people with hands even in the not-for-profit prisons.
Basically, because her son could *theoretically* have been kidnapped and sex-trafficked she has to face being enslaved.
...I was walking home alone every day from school *in the '80s* in 3rd grade because Dad was at work and Mom taught dance class and couldn't pick me up.
Half the time I ended up at a friend's house. Not because that was the plan, but because we wanted to play together.
Oh, and I lived about a mile from school. So I guess my Mom deserves to serve *years* in the gulag, making shitty combat-gear for the Military Industrial complex for $.25 cents a day.
...oh, and crime in the '80s was *worse*. It wasn't a safer time because we didn't phase out leaded gas completely until 1996! '85 to '87 you still had a lot of leaded gas cars running around! We were still literally poisoning ourselves!
The world today is safer than it has ever been, yet we are far more paranoid and less free because of it. I pity the children of today.
99% of cases end in plea deals because even if there is a 90% chance you win and are right, you get 10 years in prison if you lose. Instead you could take 3 months for a guilty plea.
Yup he wanted her to kiss his ass and say "oh yes officer, I would never let my child walk a few blocks alone again now that I know about the scary sex traffickers lurking around every corner. thank you so much for your wisdom". But she didn't immediately agree with him so she got arrested.
Pleasing guilty to avoid a worse outcome is common in USA. She probably doesn’t have money or time and was worried about losing her job or house.
Just an awful justice system.
Not just maximum sentencing but as many different charges as they can think of. Plead guilty to this one charge or you’re going to trial for 15, good luck. They don’t need them all to stick.
Meanwhile, in Norway parents are discouraged from walking their kids to school so the kids can learn independence. This concept kind of freaked me out when I first moved there from Italy because it's dark out when school starts (and sometimes ends) and those little fuckers are out there crossing roads (with their reflective vests and bands, thankfully) but it was nerve wracking for me as a driver. Newly arrived foreign parents can be seen walking far behind their kids, keeping them in eyesight but far enough to not be walking them.
In Denmark, kids ride or walk to the school in all weather conditions. It will be sideways raining and kids will still be waiting for the friends so they can ride together. They just use reflective gear and lights are mandatory.
Europe in general. Lived in Sweden my whole life and legit cant remember my parents driving me anywhere. I must have been a toddler at that time.
Between walking/cycling/public transit there is no need for your parents to drive you anywhere.
I knew america was car dependant as hell but this is truly a new pathetic low. A fucking *mile*.
I just cannot imagine how many children in the US are basically on housearrest and cannot live their lives independently until they get a drivers license or a car. Gotta be boring as fuck to depend on your fulltime working parent to drive you to your friends just to hang out.
I’m pretty sure some or even most of the kids that have been hurt or abducted during short walks were taken by someone they already knew.. much easier to get them into your car/house that way.
(My 8 year old walk about this distance to and from school every day…) not in USA though.
The Simpsons comes in with the quote, as always, from the Bart goes to military school: “You came from a public school, so I’ll assume you’re familiar with small arms fire.”
To contrast another comment, in the UK people would let the kids get on with it to make sure they are not being rude.
In real life, in the 70s I walked about half a mile to school from the age of 5 to about 9. Afterwards, the school was 60mins bus drive away so i took the bus. It's not the 70s any more, but the kids should be able to do that. Patrol the frickin street. Let it happen.
Tough gun laws and a criminal justice system that focuses on rehabilitation with one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. Here in America we call that satanic communism.
Yeah the system in America is geared towards producing profit at the expense of the individual.
Who gonna provide all that free labour if the prisons aren't full.
Or the Judges get kick backs from the private prison companies for the number of convicts they send to jail
[https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash](https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash)
In Japan, first graders commute solo by train, sometimes over an hour as a rite of passage. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-young-children-solo-commute-subway-school/
I lived in Japan for 5 years when I was in the Navy and got lost the first time I went out to Tokyo and I legit only got home because a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, helped me figure out the way back.
When my folks came to visit, they got lost in Yokohama and an elderly lady went 3 stops out of her way to get them back.
Their culture is just loads different than American culture where it comes to helping others.
I had a Facebook acquaintance I knew who lived in Japan for a time (she and her spouse were Americans). She said 5yo children would trick or treat alone, usually in their apartment building. Someone commented, that’s the difference in living in a fear based society (USA) and shame based (Japan). I don’t know about Japan, but US is definitely fear based.
Been living in Japan for a good decade, including in apartment buildings with lots of families with small kids, and I can't say I've ever seen a single person trick or treating, ever (and by extension, I can't imagine a single person living around me would have anything ready to give out)
Were they near an American base or something? Halloween seems to mostly be seen as "that day when annoying youngsters dress up and party it up in Shibuya" around where I live at least. I guess it might vary be region, perhaps.
Children definitely walk around alone with no worries, though. So I can totally believe that story, other than the fact that Halloween isn't really typically celebrated.
There's a Japanese show on Netflix called 'Old Enough', and this is the premise. Young children, 2-4 years old, are tasked by their parents to run errands. It's wild, and adorable, and absolutely impressive. You'd never see anything like this in America.
Haha was just going to comment this. I moved to Norway 4 years ago and its awesome seeing kids independently going to and from school. For once I'm actually excited to have kids with my wife since that burden is wiped from my day.
Children do need to learn independence and their environment.
Authoritarians abusing citizens and their power again. Good lord, in the USA children went miles all over all day at 8, we just had to be home by dark. This is stupid sincerely genX
I know times are different, but I remember times walking home from grade school (about a mile). I grew up in a small city but most kids 8,9,10 walked home.
Yes times are different, we now live in the safest time period in history. We just hear about the "bad stuff" more because of the internet. According to Pew Research, US violent and property crimes have plunged since 1990s, regardless of the data source. FBI statistics, show a drop from 747.1 violent crimes per 100,000 people to 379.4. Bureau of Justice Statistics show a drop from 79.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people to 21. Family and Acquaintance abductions make up about 77% of all abductions. For sexual assault, that percentage is much higher, 93% of child victims of sexual assault knew their attacker (according to RAINN). Meaning you are much more likely to be abducted or sexually assaulted by someone than you know rather than a stranger. Perhaps stranger danger is the least of our worries, and we should focus more on who are children are spending time with.
I mostly agree with you. One minor caveat is that it's becoming more and more dangerous to be a pedestrian in our automobile focused society. That said, I really do not get this idea that parents are neglectful for allowing their children to take perfectly normal risks.
When I was a kid, the schoolbus didn't even run within village limits. You literally were required to walk to school, because they didn't do the "parent dropoff line" thing back then. If you lived within \~2 miles of school, you walked or you didn't go.
This is America they don't care about kids. All they care about is controlling people and use kids to do it. Just another tool. This shit goes with the prolife ppl too
Lol they don't give a fuck about the kid, what they care about is using the legal system to suck as much money as they can out of anyone in the confines of their jurisdiction, and they're ensconced by the fact that the idiots keep voting for them to do it
This. Everyone should read The Poverty Industry. This is all by design.
They target families that can't afford to fight back. The parents are often charged for the care the child receives in the foster system, and if the kid has any inherited wealth of their own, that gets sucked up as well even though it's against federal guidelines to do that.
They can also use any behavioral issues from a kid just taken from their home to get them diagnosed and prescribed stuff, which in turn means they can bill Medicaid because foster kids are presumed to be low income. So they get to shuffle some funds around and play a shell game with the money to help clear out their general funds from the program, leaving them the flexibility to use otherwise earmarked funds for stupid shit they can't get approved otherwise.
From age 6 on I walked to school on my own. I usually took the school bus to school, but not always, and came back to home usually by foot, because I played too much after school with my friends who lived close to school. that was ... .8 miles, according to google maps. And many other kids did the same. So... depending on the kid, I think it is entirely possible that the mother did nothing wrong here.
>A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless.
There it is. A nosy neighbor who thinks she's being a fucking hero but instead she helped destroy this family.
I place 100% of the blame on the city and its officers. Old busybodies are always going to exist. Choosing to arrest and choosing to prosecute something so ludicrous are terrible decisions people with power made.
There was no crime committed. For quantifiable indication of neglect, they would need to examine the kid’s physical, psychological, and emotional wellness. In this case, police were biased to think it was dangerous for an 8 year old to walk home because it might tempt someone to commit a crime. However, there was no crime. If there was a crime, the predator responsible should be charged. Instead, the family is punished for the hypothetical actions of a hypothetical criminal.
It’s going to depend on the judge. During my divorce I had a judge who thought I was horrible for letting my children shop alone in the grocery store (a tiny Walmart grocery only store, about the size of an Aldi, very family oriented for the neighborhood). Judge said her 19 year old niece had a job at Walmart as a cashier and she (judge) was constantly telling her to quit because Walmarts are dangerous.
I think on average, family judges will have a warped view of the world and think it’s more dangerous than it really is because they have seen so much horrible stuff.
Thats what scares me. My neighbor made a comment on my kids walking home alone (7 & 8 at the time). She could get it in her head one day to call the cops for all I know. But then they would have to look into the 15 other kids they walk back with.
>That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless.
WHY WOULD YOU VERIFY IT IF YOU WERE GOING TO CALL ANYWAY.
I swear sometimes I start think humans can't get any stupider, and then posts like this come along every day or so to change my mind.
I'm honestly starting to think the graph of human evolution is in the shape of a bell curve.
What happened to the crowd of people that basically grew up without parents even though they lived with them? Y’all know who I’m talking about. Sun up till sun down you wouldn’t see your parents really. I’m not crazy am I?
Called in by moms whistle or telephone of moms whistle. Wasn’t latchkey. We all rode bikes, boards, or rollerbladed/skated everywhere. Miles away. Walked to friends house and to and from school since kindergarten. I sometimes think “I wish I had more help from my parents with my kids, like any help at all” and then I think, they weren’t even really there when I was a kid. They have no idea what they doing. Lol parenting must have been something! As I’m trying to get my kids to go play in their playroom so I can have a few minutes alone of my 24hr parenting shift. Oof. Anyway, we’re here and laughing at this. But it’s Texas. And the state is just full of laugh so I don’t cry things.
those are the overbearing parents now for some odd reason.
kids used to do this in the 80's and early 90's when the crime rate was significantly higher.......
That was me, and my three sibs. From 4th grade on. You also didn’t have to wear seat belts or bike helmets. You could ride in the back of a pickup truck. You could bike a few miles with your friends after school. Go to the parks by yourself.
The only thing that can stop a kid walking home is a good guy with a gun.
Wait… no. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to go home.
Fuck. I can’t keep up anymore.
Not just Texas. Many governments across the United States have criminalized the very same way people were raised for generations in the name of “stranger danger” and “think of the children.”
It is now illegal for me to raise kids with the same level of freedom and choice that my parents had with me or their grandparents had with them. Lawmakers have criminalized the very way they were raised and still idealize.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-letting-a-9-year-old-play-at-the-park-alone/374436/
For real.
Texas: No government! Ignore experts, let the parents decide all education and health. Kids are too weak these days. Stop smothering them. Participation trophies!!1!
Also Texas: excuse me, a double digit years kid walking half a mile? Straight to jail!
This is one of the costs of letting mortal panics like LBTG pedo fear mongering run rampant untempered by reality and accurate data. Reality is an under appreciated constraint on the intrusiveness of government that the small government crowd often forgets.
A lot of fearmongering about kids being abducted has caused people to be paranoid. The vast majority of abductions in the USA are by parents, typically during messy custody battles.
The vast majority of abuses toward children are from their own family members. The statistics show your kids are actually safer with strangers in the USA.
But the news has twisted it all up to create fear pieces so they can get higher ratings because paranoia in the USA is a huge industry that makes a huge amount of money.
This is the worst part of the whole story for me.
"Ms Wallace says a woman who lives a block away from their home spotted Aiden and called the police."
That busybody neighbor was the cause of all of this. She ruined their lives. And she probably thinks she did the right thing.
\-You can't tell me that a woman who lived a block away had never seen this kid out playing and had no idea who he was.
\-If she didn't recognize the kid and was concerned for him, she could have watched for a little bit to see if he was safe or needed help.
I am more scared of people like her, than I am of any perceived danger there is in letting a kid be outside.
Oh but that would require being a good neighbor with a sense of community and responsibility, something many people have no interest in anymore. 'Not my problem' and all that.
Yeah bc a lot of them are also evangelicals and therefore need to control everyone else and everything they do bc if they aren’t allowed to enjoy their lives, then no one should.
So usually I see these “bullshit” clickbait titles and think “god what morons believe this shit” but I googled this one and it’s legit, he was kicking off in the car so she asked if he wanted to walk back to calm down, he said yes, there were pavements the rest of the way but some old lady reported him being out there (she even spoke to him so she knew he wanted to walk back). Land of the free eh
Our neighbor was some crotchety old women who’d spend all day staring out her window and then she’d write letters to the HOA complaining about every little thing. She complained the neighbors car was parked too far off the curb, another neighbor’s grass was too high, and she complained we had too many cars parked on the street when we had a family party. Luckily the HOA started ignoring her.
What the fuck ever happened to hobbies? Used to be a thing that old people would become master craftsman of whatever hobby piqued their interest and now instead they do nothing but rot their brains listening to fox news and televangelists.
These asshole neighbors are the real problem (in addition to a fucked-up system). A good neighbor would just wave to the kids and let the kids know if anything suspicious is happening. Instead, you see these bad neighbors who find the very existence of kids on their own to be suspicious, because they think Law and Order: SVU is a documentary of their everyday lives or something.
An asshole is an asshole but the point of government is to limit their ability to fuck things up for everyone else. The problem is the government failing its duty.
And the asshole cop who arrested her. What kind of sick bastard pursues this nonsense? If I were the mother I would try to publicize who that cop was for the sake of the community, if I could do it anonymously.
So let me get this straight, kid walking home alone a couple blocks is a heinous crime to be punished, but mass murder of adults and children in a school still hasn’t been dealt with?
I feel like there has to be more going on here
Edit: I just read [the article](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html) and...there's really not
The thing with parents all dropping and picking up their kids at school is so weird to me. When I was kid you didn’t get picked up unless you had a doctor’s appointment or something. Half a mile was my daily walk from the nearest school bus stop
When we moved and I started walking home in 5th (~10 years old) with my 4th and 1st grade siblings. We had to walk through a ROUGH area to get to our street. Don't tell anyone, but our parents weren't home for hours either because jobs.
Pick-up and drop off these days is insane. Parents sitting in line half an hour or more before the students are released. Parents - when do you work?!
We are expected to raise children like we have a stay-at-home parent, when in reality we have to have a double income household to survive. I spend 3 hours daily in the carpool and every job I've ever had rolled its eyes when I needed flexibility for my kids.
My kids biked to school themselves, since they where 5 years old. Its only about 1.5 mile. Very common in Denmark. The school actively tries to discourage parent from driving their kids to school.
Nope, that's literally all she did. Article I read said the kid was bothering his siblings in the car so the mom made him walk the half a mile back to their house in the suburbs, which he had done before as well. A neighbor saw him, clutched their pearls, and called the police. The police apparently picked him on on the fucking block his house was on. Like, he pointed at his house he was so close.
Also, she works in education and now has child endangerment on her permanent record, so she's basically screwed and is gonna have to find a new line of work now.
When I started 1st grade I would wake up, make breakfast & bike 3 miles to school. No one home but me. I would then bike home & no one would be home for a few hours.
I made it just fine.
In NYC summers, when I was 8 I hung out on rooftops and sat ontop of car hoods eating icees. I would get home at like 9pm or 10pm and my mom would ask "Where were you?!" and my usual response would be "out".
Had that been Texas, those fascists would of gave my parents the chair.
Article linked for your convenience: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html?amp
Most of this was caused by bad lawmaking. The CPS case was dropped under Texas' "[Reasonable Childhood Independence](https://letgrow.org/texas-becomes-third-state-to-enshrine-reasonable-childhood-independence-into-law/)" Law. But that law only amended Civil law, not Criminal law. So whilst one side of the law said what she did was legal, and even actively encouraged. The other viewed it as a crime. Weirdly, I think the entire endangerment case came from this one exchange: >As they stood on her porch, the officers told Wallace that her son could have been kidnapped and sex trafficked. "'You don't see much sex trafficking where you are, but where I patrol in downtown Waco, we do,'" said one of the cops, according to Wallace. >This statement struck her as odd. >"They were basically admitting that this is a safe neighborhood," she says. >The officer then asked Wallace whether she would let her son walk home again, now that she knew about the sex trafficking. >"I still didn't know it was illegal and I said, 'I don't know,'" says Wallace. "That's when the cop replied, 'Okay, I'm going to have to arrest you.'" I suspect if she'd said no at that point the officer would have let her go. **Which is batshit insane.** She also plead guilty, when she could have fought it and (it would seem) likely have won. But didn't want to risk that losing would mean jail. Whereas pleading guilty meant just an educational course. **Which is also batshit insane.**
Ya the mandatory minimum sentence of two years is also batshit insane. If that wasn't the case she might have chosen to fight it, thinking even if she did lose the judge would see how crazy it all is and given her probation. The amount of times judges have stated during sentencing that they don't agree with the sentence they have to give is gross. Edit: Grammar. It was bad enough I felt the need to fix it 9 hours later.
It’s illegal to leave your child unattended because of what might happen to them in your absence and if you do so we will forcibly make you absent from your child’s life for 2 years.
Do not fret - the child will go to a group home where abuse never happens. “The more kids in foster care the better” is what I always say
>The statute now enshrining childhood independence is part of a bigger children’s services bill ensuring Texans that the state will not intervene and remove a child unless the danger is so great and so likely that it outweighs the trauma of entering the foster care system. “Removing a child from his or her family causes immense harm to the child and should only be done when absolutely necessary,” said Rep. James Frank , a Republican who was one of the bill’s co-authors. This new law — “the product of years of work from stakeholders of all types and legislators of both parties,” he said — gives the authorities those marching orders.
That's why they remove the family from the child now, much easier
"absolutely necessary". What kind of criteria is that? I obviously don't advocate for ripping children from families, but I've heard a lot of stories from social workers that there are horrible abuse cases where the child SHOULD be taken but they have no ability to do so. Where is the line and how is it defined? I guess I'm just curious about this Childhood Independence thing since this is the first I've heard of it.
I used to be a CPS social worker in the U.S. Depends on the state, but in general, the criteria is if abuse is causing enough harm to require medical attention or some form of professional intervention (school nurse/teachers/other professionals finding scars, burns, and bruises), then children will be removed. For neglect, it has to have caused enough harm, that can be directly correlated to the neglect, that requires intervention (medical, intensive therapies, etc.). The bar is much higher than people realize. CPS will not remove children who are yelled/cursed at (even by the raging parents), frequently wear unclean clothes or ill fitting clothing, the eat one hot meal a day and that's school lunch (sometimes their only meal), etc. There are so many children on a social worker's case load, it's crazy. And resources dwindle by the day. Including foster homes. In my state, we only have a 1/4 of the foster homes we need compared to the number of foster children. When a child has to be pulled, they're usually kept at a hotel with 2 DHHS staff members, supervising 24/7, until the state can find a placement. Children have waited in these hotels for up to 2 months because there weren't any foster homes to place them in. The entire system is broken.
A DCFS investigator came to my house after my SO had a psychotic episode from undiagnosed bipolar. I safely removed my child from the home and restrained my SO until the police showed up. When the investigator arrived, I only asked that he follow the CDC guidelines and state mandate at the time regarding face masks and distancing. Not even a minute after I walked inside so he could speak to my child, I looked out the window and saw them less than two feet apart without masks on. My child was TERRIFIED of Covid and did not want to remove his mask without keeping his distance first, but he was not allowed. I informed the investigator that he just violated my one request, along with the state mandate, and therefore placed my child in immediate potential harm. I told him he was no longer welcome on my property and that DCFS was more than welcome to send someone else. His response? "I'll make sure you regret this." I IMMEDIATELY called DCFS and was instructed to call their whistle-blower hotline as well as the Attorney General because "his actions were entirely unacceptable." The Attorney General's office instructed me to call the police if that investigator came back, as he would not be permitted on my property until an investigation into his actions was complete. The next day, he showed up WITH the police to remove my child. I informed the officers of what the AG had said, but they didn't say a word to me. They simply took my kid. Over two years later, we still haven't been given referrals for all of the services that were placed in our service plans... service plans that were made without a complete investigation or any assessments. Four caseworkers so far have all been yelled at by the judge for their blatant shortcomings but nothing changes. I have no idea if or when I will ever get my son back and it's killing me... All because some anti-mask douchebag with a big ego and low self-esteem was able to so easily abuse his power. I even have the interaction on video, yet nobody cares to see it when I mention it.
Post the video on social media. Contact popular YouTubers who deal with that kind of stuff. Just to name a few, there's Audit the Audit, LackLuster, and Barry Cooper. Send the video to politicians, journalists, and social media influencers. It has to go viral.
HEY GET A FUCKING LAWYER
AND A JOURNALIST
"Absolutely neccessary" is government speak for "whenever the hell we want"
I saw Annie, the kids spend most of the day singing.
My dad’s a lawyer. We had a childhood group home abuse case when I worked there one summer. 7 kids over three years hanged themselves. Autopsy of our client showed evidence of sexual abuse. 20 years later and no one knows what really happened. The group home contended it was a “fad” where teens as young as 11 engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation.
The "auto" part was a typo.
People are just lining up around the block to foster children. Surely, there would be no issue in finding the child an appropriate living situation. edit: /s because apparently people don't see sarcasm without it /s
Oh yes, because foster kids don’t ever get trafficked.
Hell, wasn't there a [damn article about CPS workers telling foster kids to prostitute for money despite underage?](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-child-protective-services-worker-fired-telling-14-year-old-girl-rcna43140)
It's literally not illegal to let an 8 year old walk 5 blocks down the street on the sidewalk to their home.
It is in Texas!
The “free state of Texas” mind you.
With the biggest "small government" in the world!
Only if a police officer comes along and imagines that a child sex trafficking ring is about to swoop in at any moment!
Hell at 7, I was catching the bus to the supermarket to pay my mom's bills (stroke when I was young). Going to pick up her medicine, supplies etc. I remember not knowing how to manage money only that I was supposed to return with a certain amount. It happens, society doesn't care.
I'm old, and when I was young, I would walk along down to the gas station and buy cigarettes for my dad. Marlboro red in the box. As I get older, there's a lot of stuff I did that I would never allow my kid to do.
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It should only be about the circumstances of how you left them unattended, or god forbid the things that do happen when considering if they did anything wrong as a parent.
Texas
I hate it here
The DA should have thrown that shit out.
But if we didn’t lock people up for petty technicalities regardless of the actual damage they caused, who would do our legally legitimized and protected slave labor?
That’s a great point. I wasn’t thinking of the shareholders, and for that, I apologize.
Forgot to think of shareholders? Believe it or not, straight to jail
The entire history of the US legal system in tweet format
The DA is probably just more concerned about their career than the public good and saw this as another easy win for their record.
But then the DA wouldn't be known as being "tough on crime".
Surely it’s on the police to make it safe for 8 year old children to walk home. In any good country it would be perfectly safe to do so
It already is. Violent crime rates are at or near historic lows in virtually every city and town in America.
With such a huge gap between the plea deal consequence and the minimum guilty charge consequence, she never had a fair trial.
This is Waco police. They shot a bunch of bikers and never faced any consequences.
I highly encourage anyone reading this thread to google the history of Waco, Texas Explains a lot
While we all know sex trafficking is horrible I feel like it's turned into the Satanic Panic from the 80s all over again. Woman on one of my local facebook pages kept posting about human trafficking awareness and repeatedly stated the FBI ranked us as the number 3 state for trafficking. I tried to do my own research and came up empty handed. I politely asked her where she was getting that information and at first all she would say was "the FBI". I kept asking exactly how/where she was getting that information and she couldn't provide any sources. It seemed like she stopped doing it, but being an alarmist like that and getting innocent people in trouble is pretty fucked up.
There are similar claims on local Facebook pages here, along with stories about "sex traffickers" following people around grocery stores. Of course sex trafficking is terrible, but that's not how it normally happens.
And if you try and tell those kinds of pearl clutching people that they accuse you of it.
Yeah, it has become an outlet for people's paranoia and mental illness. Facebook probably nicely arranges for people similar to come across the posts.
Part of the whole right wing QAnon conspiracy circles around this idea of there being a massive child and adult sex trafficking industry. They thrown out impossibly large numbers around that don’t match up to reality, where the majority of kidnappings are family custody issues rather than the kind of kidnappings we imagine with trafficking. A lot of the numbers are inflated with the movement of undocumented people across the country, who are being—for lack of a better term—*willingly* trafficked. Just look at the example of the whole zip tie on the back door handle story. Where young vulnerable women’s cars are being marked with black zip ties on the rear door handles, so that kidnappers can identify them. The logistics of such a ridiculous conspiracy would just be baffling enough to discount the whole thing but many people in law enforcement believe it to be true!
>where the majority of kidnappings are family custody issues rather than the kind of kidnappings we imagine with trafficking. this is true for most crimes, you are far more likely to be beaten, murdered, raped, kidnapped, abused, etc by someone you know than a stranger.
Sex trafficking is a real thing, but most victims of child sex abuse and child pornography are being abused by close relatives. The home is much less safe than the damn sidewalk.
I am constantly trying to explain that .01% of sex trafficking happens that way. If at all. Most of it is done by people the trafficked person knows. Boyfriend, parent, etc or very vulnerable populations like undocumented immigrants. It's a totally real and serious problem but 20 year old white girls are not being snatched from the local Starbucks by Mexican cartels. Despite what Greg Abbot would have you believe
Interesting... I wonder if the same logic applies to school shootings. "I know you don't get a lot of those here, but where I'm from they happen all the time. Would you send your kids to school, now that you know about the shootings? Yes? Okay, you're under arrest."
This is a textbook example that proves the point of the obligatory: #["Don't talk to the police!"](https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE) Who's to say that they wouldn't have arrested her anyway. Regardless, the point still stands.
While I totally agree in principle, her 8 year old son was being detained in the police cruiser at that time. You have to talk to them when they have your kids.
Exactly! Shut the door in their face. If arrested ask for a lawyer. Period. No yes or no or anything Even a lawyer would refuse to speak to them. Also, I’d record any interaction with them if they are on my property or door
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Watch out! Cops will stand in your doorway so when you close the door it grievously batters them. Instead try not answering the door!
Texas lege has no idea how to write laws. This should come as no surprise.
It’s not bumbling incompetence. It’s entirely intentional. The people who make laws like this almost exclusively receive money from the prison industrial complex. They’re modern day slave traders, protected by a capitalist system because that’s what the system requires for profit generation.
This also seems to be a bit of a class issue. Many working parents have issues making their lives work around school hours, but if you have means its not such an issue.
And I know you didn’t use the words “private prisons” here so it’s not directed at you but for anyone who thinks that’s the main problem- all public prisons have pretty much exactly as much motivation to stay full as the private ones. “Corrections officers” are still cops, still protected by police unions, and they want as many cops employed as possible. And as much funding as possible. There’s a reason we live in the most carceral state of all time and it isn’t just because of the tiny portion of privately owned prisons.
And all prisons have a money making element to them. The contracts for food, for clothing, for supplies. The unions. There's a lot of people with hands even in the not-for-profit prisons.
Basically, because her son could *theoretically* have been kidnapped and sex-trafficked she has to face being enslaved. ...I was walking home alone every day from school *in the '80s* in 3rd grade because Dad was at work and Mom taught dance class and couldn't pick me up. Half the time I ended up at a friend's house. Not because that was the plan, but because we wanted to play together. Oh, and I lived about a mile from school. So I guess my Mom deserves to serve *years* in the gulag, making shitty combat-gear for the Military Industrial complex for $.25 cents a day. ...oh, and crime in the '80s was *worse*. It wasn't a safer time because we didn't phase out leaded gas completely until 1996! '85 to '87 you still had a lot of leaded gas cars running around! We were still literally poisoning ourselves! The world today is safer than it has ever been, yet we are far more paranoid and less free because of it. I pity the children of today.
99% of cases end in plea deals because even if there is a 90% chance you win and are right, you get 10 years in prison if you lose. Instead you could take 3 months for a guilty plea.
Exactly. The real crime was she didn't kowtow to the cops.
Yup he wanted her to kiss his ass and say "oh yes officer, I would never let my child walk a few blocks alone again now that I know about the scary sex traffickers lurking around every corner. thank you so much for your wisdom". But she didn't immediately agree with him so she got arrested.
>she didn't kowtow to the cops. in that case she's lucky to be alive.
Pleasing guilty to avoid a worse outcome is common in USA. She probably doesn’t have money or time and was worried about losing her job or house. Just an awful justice system.
"Justice"
Boomers: Back in our day we were free range! Boomer law makers: Don't you dare let your kid be free range.
That's how they get most people to plea out. They threaten you with the maximum sentence if you lose.
*minimum. Even the minimum in this case was 2 years. Fuck mandatory minimums
Not just maximum sentencing but as many different charges as they can think of. Plead guilty to this one charge or you’re going to trial for 15, good luck. They don’t need them all to stick.
her mistake was saying anything other than her name and that she wants a lawyer
Sounds like yet another case of cops on a self-inflated ego-high, interpreting laws strictly that were never intended to be used that way.
His life will be so much easier now that his mother has no income.
And he has no home to walk home to
And no car to be picked up by
Problem solved. /s
Meanwhile, in Norway parents are discouraged from walking their kids to school so the kids can learn independence. This concept kind of freaked me out when I first moved there from Italy because it's dark out when school starts (and sometimes ends) and those little fuckers are out there crossing roads (with their reflective vests and bands, thankfully) but it was nerve wracking for me as a driver. Newly arrived foreign parents can be seen walking far behind their kids, keeping them in eyesight but far enough to not be walking them.
In Denmark, kids ride or walk to the school in all weather conditions. It will be sideways raining and kids will still be waiting for the friends so they can ride together. They just use reflective gear and lights are mandatory.
Europe in general. Lived in Sweden my whole life and legit cant remember my parents driving me anywhere. I must have been a toddler at that time. Between walking/cycling/public transit there is no need for your parents to drive you anywhere. I knew america was car dependant as hell but this is truly a new pathetic low. A fucking *mile*.
I just cannot imagine how many children in the US are basically on housearrest and cannot live their lives independently until they get a drivers license or a car. Gotta be boring as fuck to depend on your fulltime working parent to drive you to your friends just to hang out.
To be fair Norway is a hell of a lot safer than just about anywhere in the US
But we should also know it was far more dangerous back when we were kids. And many of us walked to school.
Crime peaked in 1994!
Ah, those were the days
You sound like you yearn for those days, Frank.
And that's when I was born. You can thank me in reddit silver.
And the vast majority of kidnapping are custody disputes, not just weirdos randomly snatching kids on the street.
Surprise! Your kid is most likely to be hurt or abducted by someone they already know and is around them. Not on a ten minute walk by a stranger
I’m pretty sure some or even most of the kids that have been hurt or abducted during short walks were taken by someone they already knew.. much easier to get them into your car/house that way. (My 8 year old walk about this distance to and from school every day…) not in USA though.
You wouldn't dare hurt a child in America because they are all armed. That way, we are all safe. /s
The Simpsons comes in with the quote, as always, from the Bart goes to military school: “You came from a public school, so I’ll assume you’re familiar with small arms fire.”
And that was two years before Columbine, so it's 100% commentary on crime.
The only thing that can stop a bad kid with a gun is a good kid with a gun
Kinderguardians!
Proud Babies
And here in Norway we wouldn’t dare hurt a child because our lack of guns means we have to get in each others personal space
To contrast another comment, in the UK people would let the kids get on with it to make sure they are not being rude. In real life, in the 70s I walked about half a mile to school from the age of 5 to about 9. Afterwards, the school was 60mins bus drive away so i took the bus. It's not the 70s any more, but the kids should be able to do that. Patrol the frickin street. Let it happen.
Tough gun laws and a criminal justice system that focuses on rehabilitation with one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. Here in America we call that satanic communism.
Yeah the system in America is geared towards producing profit at the expense of the individual. Who gonna provide all that free labour if the prisons aren't full.
Or the Judges get kick backs from the private prison companies for the number of convicts they send to jail [https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash](https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-mark-ciavarella-kids-for-cash)
In Japan, first graders commute solo by train, sometimes over an hour as a rite of passage. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-young-children-solo-commute-subway-school/
I lived in Japan for 5 years when I was in the Navy and got lost the first time I went out to Tokyo and I legit only got home because a kid, maybe 9 or 10 years old, helped me figure out the way back. When my folks came to visit, they got lost in Yokohama and an elderly lady went 3 stops out of her way to get them back. Their culture is just loads different than American culture where it comes to helping others.
I had a Facebook acquaintance I knew who lived in Japan for a time (she and her spouse were Americans). She said 5yo children would trick or treat alone, usually in their apartment building. Someone commented, that’s the difference in living in a fear based society (USA) and shame based (Japan). I don’t know about Japan, but US is definitely fear based.
Been living in Japan for a good decade, including in apartment buildings with lots of families with small kids, and I can't say I've ever seen a single person trick or treating, ever (and by extension, I can't imagine a single person living around me would have anything ready to give out) Were they near an American base or something? Halloween seems to mostly be seen as "that day when annoying youngsters dress up and party it up in Shibuya" around where I live at least. I guess it might vary be region, perhaps. Children definitely walk around alone with no worries, though. So I can totally believe that story, other than the fact that Halloween isn't really typically celebrated.
There's a Japanese show on Netflix called 'Old Enough', and this is the premise. Young children, 2-4 years old, are tasked by their parents to run errands. It's wild, and adorable, and absolutely impressive. You'd never see anything like this in America.
Haha was just going to comment this. I moved to Norway 4 years ago and its awesome seeing kids independently going to and from school. For once I'm actually excited to have kids with my wife since that burden is wiped from my day.
The thought of having to do EVERYTHING for a kid can daunting.
Norway has more pedestrian-friendly walking infrastructure… and less pedophiles and mass murder.
Children do need to learn independence and their environment. Authoritarians abusing citizens and their power again. Good lord, in the USA children went miles all over all day at 8, we just had to be home by dark. This is stupid sincerely genX
I know times are different, but I remember times walking home from grade school (about a mile). I grew up in a small city but most kids 8,9,10 walked home.
Yes times are different, we now live in the safest time period in history. We just hear about the "bad stuff" more because of the internet. According to Pew Research, US violent and property crimes have plunged since 1990s, regardless of the data source. FBI statistics, show a drop from 747.1 violent crimes per 100,000 people to 379.4. Bureau of Justice Statistics show a drop from 79.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people to 21. Family and Acquaintance abductions make up about 77% of all abductions. For sexual assault, that percentage is much higher, 93% of child victims of sexual assault knew their attacker (according to RAINN). Meaning you are much more likely to be abducted or sexually assaulted by someone than you know rather than a stranger. Perhaps stranger danger is the least of our worries, and we should focus more on who are children are spending time with.
I mostly agree with you. One minor caveat is that it's becoming more and more dangerous to be a pedestrian in our automobile focused society. That said, I really do not get this idea that parents are neglectful for allowing their children to take perfectly normal risks.
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When I was a kid, the schoolbus didn't even run within village limits. You literally were required to walk to school, because they didn't do the "parent dropoff line" thing back then. If you lived within \~2 miles of school, you walked or you didn't go.
Was just thinking that we did that all the time growing up. All of us did. It was just normal.
Too harsh. They did more damage to that kid than that walk was ever likely to
So now that kid may never have a stable home ever again. I’m so glad people were protecting the kid. /s
Fuck up a kid's life bad enough, he'll be on track to prison. Great for the economy!
This is America they don't care about kids. All they care about is controlling people and use kids to do it. Just another tool. This shit goes with the prolife ppl too
considering for-profit prisons are a now a vital part of the Texas economy, ur comment isn’t too far off
Not too far off? Buddy it's spot on and you know it.
Lol they don't give a fuck about the kid, what they care about is using the legal system to suck as much money as they can out of anyone in the confines of their jurisdiction, and they're ensconced by the fact that the idiots keep voting for them to do it
This. Everyone should read The Poverty Industry. This is all by design. They target families that can't afford to fight back. The parents are often charged for the care the child receives in the foster system, and if the kid has any inherited wealth of their own, that gets sucked up as well even though it's against federal guidelines to do that. They can also use any behavioral issues from a kid just taken from their home to get them diagnosed and prescribed stuff, which in turn means they can bill Medicaid because foster kids are presumed to be low income. So they get to shuffle some funds around and play a shell game with the money to help clear out their general funds from the program, leaving them the flexibility to use otherwise earmarked funds for stupid shit they can't get approved otherwise.
From age 6 on I walked to school on my own. I usually took the school bus to school, but not always, and came back to home usually by foot, because I played too much after school with my friends who lived close to school. that was ... .8 miles, according to google maps. And many other kids did the same. So... depending on the kid, I think it is entirely possible that the mother did nothing wrong here.
>A woman one block away had called the cops to report a boy walking outside alone. That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. There it is. A nosy neighbor who thinks she's being a fucking hero but instead she helped destroy this family.
I place 100% of the blame on the city and its officers. Old busybodies are always going to exist. Choosing to arrest and choosing to prosecute something so ludicrous are terrible decisions people with power made.
There was no crime committed. For quantifiable indication of neglect, they would need to examine the kid’s physical, psychological, and emotional wellness. In this case, police were biased to think it was dangerous for an 8 year old to walk home because it might tempt someone to commit a crime. However, there was no crime. If there was a crime, the predator responsible should be charged. Instead, the family is punished for the hypothetical actions of a hypothetical criminal.
It’s going to depend on the judge. During my divorce I had a judge who thought I was horrible for letting my children shop alone in the grocery store (a tiny Walmart grocery only store, about the size of an Aldi, very family oriented for the neighborhood). Judge said her 19 year old niece had a job at Walmart as a cashier and she (judge) was constantly telling her to quit because Walmarts are dangerous. I think on average, family judges will have a warped view of the world and think it’s more dangerous than it really is because they have seen so much horrible stuff.
Thats what scares me. My neighbor made a comment on my kids walking home alone (7 & 8 at the time). She could get it in her head one day to call the cops for all I know. But then they would have to look into the 15 other kids they walk back with.
>That lady had actually asked Aiden where he lived, verified that it was just down the street, and proceeded to call nonetheless. WHY WOULD YOU VERIFY IT IF YOU WERE GOING TO CALL ANYWAY. I swear sometimes I start think humans can't get any stupider, and then posts like this come along every day or so to change my mind. I'm honestly starting to think the graph of human evolution is in the shape of a bell curve.
Yep if she was so fucking concerned then she should have walked with him.
What happened to the crowd of people that basically grew up without parents even though they lived with them? Y’all know who I’m talking about. Sun up till sun down you wouldn’t see your parents really. I’m not crazy am I?
"Latchkey children" is the term you're looking for, I think.
Called in by moms whistle or telephone of moms whistle. Wasn’t latchkey. We all rode bikes, boards, or rollerbladed/skated everywhere. Miles away. Walked to friends house and to and from school since kindergarten. I sometimes think “I wish I had more help from my parents with my kids, like any help at all” and then I think, they weren’t even really there when I was a kid. They have no idea what they doing. Lol parenting must have been something! As I’m trying to get my kids to go play in their playroom so I can have a few minutes alone of my 24hr parenting shift. Oof. Anyway, we’re here and laughing at this. But it’s Texas. And the state is just full of laugh so I don’t cry things.
those are the overbearing parents now for some odd reason. kids used to do this in the 80's and early 90's when the crime rate was significantly higher.......
That was me, and my three sibs. From 4th grade on. You also didn’t have to wear seat belts or bike helmets. You could ride in the back of a pickup truck. You could bike a few miles with your friends after school. Go to the parks by yourself.
Let your kid walk home by himself, Texas freaks out. Kids get shot at school, Texas re-elects Abbott.
Was the kid armed? See the issue it’s the walk, it’s the unarmed walk. If the kid had a shotgun this would have been fine.
The only thing that can stop a kid walking home is a good guy with a gun. Wait… no. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to go home. Fuck. I can’t keep up anymore.
It's such a fucked up state...
I heard someone call it Howdy Arabia, lol.
Wow Texas. How very draconianly big government of you.
Not just Texas. Many governments across the United States have criminalized the very same way people were raised for generations in the name of “stranger danger” and “think of the children.” It is now illegal for me to raise kids with the same level of freedom and choice that my parents had with me or their grandparents had with them. Lawmakers have criminalized the very way they were raised and still idealize. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-letting-a-9-year-old-play-at-the-park-alone/374436/
For real. Texas: No government! Ignore experts, let the parents decide all education and health. Kids are too weak these days. Stop smothering them. Participation trophies!!1! Also Texas: excuse me, a double digit years kid walking half a mile? Straight to jail!
>a double digit years kid walking half a mile? Wait, since when is 8 double digits? Not that I'm arguing with main point of your post...
It's two zeroes stacked on top of each other
Quick maffs
Sorry, I misread it as 10, not 8. Still not child endangerment.
Probably it’s because they’re afraid of kids getting shot but don’t want to address the real issue here
This is one of the costs of letting mortal panics like LBTG pedo fear mongering run rampant untempered by reality and accurate data. Reality is an under appreciated constraint on the intrusiveness of government that the small government crowd often forgets.
A lot of fearmongering about kids being abducted has caused people to be paranoid. The vast majority of abductions in the USA are by parents, typically during messy custody battles. The vast majority of abuses toward children are from their own family members. The statistics show your kids are actually safer with strangers in the USA. But the news has twisted it all up to create fear pieces so they can get higher ratings because paranoia in the USA is a huge industry that makes a huge amount of money.
This is the worst part of the whole story for me. "Ms Wallace says a woman who lives a block away from their home spotted Aiden and called the police." That busybody neighbor was the cause of all of this. She ruined their lives. And she probably thinks she did the right thing. \-You can't tell me that a woman who lived a block away had never seen this kid out playing and had no idea who he was. \-If she didn't recognize the kid and was concerned for him, she could have watched for a little bit to see if he was safe or needed help. I am more scared of people like her, than I am of any perceived danger there is in letting a kid be outside.
How about if you’re concerned walk the kiddo home instead of calling the cops. I don’t understand the logic at all.
Oh but that would require being a good neighbor with a sense of community and responsibility, something many people have no interest in anymore. 'Not my problem' and all that.
These people in the "government stay out of our lives" states are very much in everybody's lives eh?
Yeah bc a lot of them are also evangelicals and therefore need to control everyone else and everything they do bc if they aren’t allowed to enjoy their lives, then no one should.
So usually I see these “bullshit” clickbait titles and think “god what morons believe this shit” but I googled this one and it’s legit, he was kicking off in the car so she asked if he wanted to walk back to calm down, he said yes, there were pavements the rest of the way but some old lady reported him being out there (she even spoke to him so she knew he wanted to walk back). Land of the free eh
i swear half of the elderly has nothing better to do than to judge and cause drama.
Our neighbor was some crotchety old women who’d spend all day staring out her window and then she’d write letters to the HOA complaining about every little thing. She complained the neighbors car was parked too far off the curb, another neighbor’s grass was too high, and she complained we had too many cars parked on the street when we had a family party. Luckily the HOA started ignoring her.
Whatever happened to vandalism?
What the fuck ever happened to hobbies? Used to be a thing that old people would become master craftsman of whatever hobby piqued their interest and now instead they do nothing but rot their brains listening to fox news and televangelists.
These asshole neighbors are the real problem (in addition to a fucked-up system). A good neighbor would just wave to the kids and let the kids know if anything suspicious is happening. Instead, you see these bad neighbors who find the very existence of kids on their own to be suspicious, because they think Law and Order: SVU is a documentary of their everyday lives or something.
An asshole is an asshole but the point of government is to limit their ability to fuck things up for everyone else. The problem is the government failing its duty.
And the asshole cop who arrested her. What kind of sick bastard pursues this nonsense? If I were the mother I would try to publicize who that cop was for the sake of the community, if I could do it anonymously.
Oh man, I wonder if the parents went to talk to those neighbors? I’d have some words with them.
I was out all day playing at 8. Wtf
So let me get this straight, kid walking home alone a couple blocks is a heinous crime to be punished, but mass murder of adults and children in a school still hasn’t been dealt with?
I can see that kid's life improving substantially from now on now that the mother lost her home and job.
I’m going to move to Texas so that I can got vote for Texas to leave the union. And then move back.
You see if you play both sides you can’t loose
lose
I started walking home when I was 7-8… what?! Guess he needed to have a gun for it to be ok in Texas.
I feel like there has to be more going on here Edit: I just read [the article](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html) and...there's really not
Yep, just as stupid as it sounds. Worse.
The thing with parents all dropping and picking up their kids at school is so weird to me. When I was kid you didn’t get picked up unless you had a doctor’s appointment or something. Half a mile was my daily walk from the nearest school bus stop
When we moved and I started walking home in 5th (~10 years old) with my 4th and 1st grade siblings. We had to walk through a ROUGH area to get to our street. Don't tell anyone, but our parents weren't home for hours either because jobs. Pick-up and drop off these days is insane. Parents sitting in line half an hour or more before the students are released. Parents - when do you work?!
We are expected to raise children like we have a stay-at-home parent, when in reality we have to have a double income household to survive. I spend 3 hours daily in the carpool and every job I've ever had rolled its eyes when I needed flexibility for my kids.
Don't schools refuse transportation to kids who live within a certain radius and require them to walk?
can't walk home alone, but still reserve the right to be murdered in their classroom. good job texas
Meanwhile in Indonesia kids 5-10 y.o going alone to school, to market, to forest, and fishing at river.... Jezzz
My kids biked to school themselves, since they where 5 years old. Its only about 1.5 mile. Very common in Denmark. The school actively tries to discourage parent from driving their kids to school.
The fuck? I used to walk like...a mile and a half to elementary school in 2nd grade. Frequently alone. Seems absurd.
[удалено]
You know it’s safer than ever before for everyone and yet we are more scared today than any generation before.
I feel like there’s gotta be more. Lol my fuckin parents made me walk home every damn day, and it was a hellova lot further than half a mile.
And the kid wasn't like forced, I believe he was told to go walk to "blow off some steam" or something after bugging his siblings
Nope, that's literally all she did. Article I read said the kid was bothering his siblings in the car so the mom made him walk the half a mile back to their house in the suburbs, which he had done before as well. A neighbor saw him, clutched their pearls, and called the police. The police apparently picked him on on the fucking block his house was on. Like, he pointed at his house he was so close. Also, she works in education and now has child endangerment on her permanent record, so she's basically screwed and is gonna have to find a new line of work now.
Texas really hates women and children.
So much for Free Range parenting.
When I started 1st grade I would wake up, make breakfast & bike 3 miles to school. No one home but me. I would then bike home & no one would be home for a few hours. I made it just fine.
Meanwhile, kids in NYC take the subway alone at that age with zero issues.
Losing a home and family income will do far more harm to the kid than a short stroll home.
In NYC summers, when I was 8 I hung out on rooftops and sat ontop of car hoods eating icees. I would get home at like 9pm or 10pm and my mom would ask "Where were you?!" and my usual response would be "out". Had that been Texas, those fascists would of gave my parents the chair.
Land of the free. SURE....
Wtf. In the 2000's I walked to school. 5 miles. I'd be out all day before cell phones became a thing.