Mom arrested after her 10-year-old son went on a walk alone

A Georgia mom arrested after her 10-year-old son took a solo walk to a store about a mile from home in rural Georgia has vowed to fight the charges in a case that has prompted confusion and criticism from experts and parental rights activists.

Body camera footage from Fannin County Sheriff’s Office shows Brittany Patterson, then 41, being confronted and arrested at home on Oct. 30 by deputies hours after a bystander reported seeing her son in public alone.

Deputies returned the boy, who was unharmed, home. Then, they came back several hours later to arrest Patterson.

“Last time I checked it wasn’t illegal for a kid to walk to the store,” Patterson said in the footage.

“It is when they’re 10 years old,” replied Deputy Kaylee Robertson said. (Patterson’s arrest warrant and a report written by Robertson says that the root of the charge was that Patterson didn’t know where her son was and failed to report him as missing to authorities before leaving the home.)

The case is a relatively rare example of law enforcement in Georgia intervening with criminal charges in a case where a child wasn’t hurt and in which many reasonable parents would behave the exact same way, said Emma Hetherington, a law professor at the University of Georgia and the director of the school’s Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic.

Brittany Patterson describes what happened before her arrest

Patterson had to take one of her older children to a medical appointment on Oct. 30, and called out for her 10-year-old, Soren, to get in the car and go with them. When Soren didn’t come, Patterson said she looked around the house for him a bit, assumed he didn’t want to go, and then she left.

Patterson lives on 16 acres in Mineral Bluff, Georgia, an unincorporated rural community in the northern part of the state. There, Patterson told USA TODAY, it’s pretty common for families to let their kids and pets explore their properties on their own or play in the woods.

Soren is homeschooled, and the mom of four said when she has to leave for an appointment, her kids get to choose to go with her or stay at home, where their grandfather also lives. She thought nothing of leaving that day without him.

Then she got a call from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office saying deputies had picked up Soren, who has since turned 11, about a mile away from home. He had walked on his own to a Dollar General store and a bystander who saw him reported it to law enforcement. They brought him home, and Patterson thought that was the end of it.

“I talked to Soren and said, ‘Buddy, if you want to go to the store, that’s fine, just let me know when you want to. You gotta let me know where you’re at,’” Patterson said.

A few hours later, the sheriff’s deputies returned, this time with a set of handcuffs for Patterson. Body camera footage provided to USA TODAY shows Robertson telling Patterson that she is under arrest for “reckless endangerment.” (Reckless endangerment is not a charge under Georgia law; Patterson’s actual arrest record lists reckless conduct as her charge.)

But Patterson and her lawyer, David DeLugas, who is also the executive director of the nonprofit Parents USA, say she did nothing wrong, and that her son was perfectly safe that day.

What does Georgia law say, and why was this mom arrested?

In Georgia, there’s no law about how old a child has to be to go somewhere on their own or be left home alone, but its child welfare agency does publish guidelines that say children 9 and older may be left alone for up to a couple hours, and that children 13 or over may watch younger siblings. It makes exceptions if the child isn’t mature enough to do so.

Documents from the Sheriff’s Office allege Patterson didn’t know where Soren was and failed to report him as missing to authorities before leaving the home. Patterson says there's a difference between not knowing his exact location at all times and him being missing.

“If I thought for one second that he was actually missing or in danger, or had run away or been abducted, of course I would call the authorities,” she said.

Patterson said she spent about an hour-and-a-half in jail that day, and was fingerprinted, had a mugshot taken and had to change into orange jail clothes.

After she was released, the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services presented her with what it called a “Safety Plan.” The plan, which USA TODAY reviewed, includes downloading GPS tracking to Soren’s cellphone and designating a “safety person” to be a guardian to the children if she leaves, among other provisions.  Patterson said she refused to sign it.

DeLugas said Patterson should not have to sign a plan wouldn’t make him any safer. He wants authorities to drop the charge against Patterson and says the case represents an absurd overreach.

The Fannin County Sheriff’s Office and DCFS said they wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the case and the district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Unsupervised kids can lead to legal trouble for parents

In 2016, a mom was charged with child endangerment after she left her 8- and 9-year-old children alone so she could pick up food while they were on vacation in Delaware, the News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported at the time. The kids took their dogs out for a walk and ended up chasing after them, prompting bystander intervention and a call to authorities. The charges were ultimately dropped.

Another Maryland family sparked national debate over their parenting choices when the parents were investigated after letting their two kids, 10 and 6, walk home from school alone and again after letting them play at a park alone.

But such cases are relatively rare, and parents usually have leeway to responsibly give their kids freedom, at the appropriate age, according to Hetherington.

Hetherington said parents have the constitutional right to decide how to parent their kids, and authorities can only intervene if there’s a risk to the child’s safety or well-being. Whether any case rises to that level is dependent on so many individual factors, and sometimes, the opinions of individual law enforcement officers, she said.

"What I might think of as a parenting practice as being unsafe, another person in another neighborhood, in another culture, in another community might find perfectly safe,” Hetherington said.

Most parents who give their kids a degree of independence to stay home on their own when they are mature enough or play on their own in the neighborhood don’t need to fear criminal prosecution, Hetherington said.  She also noted that people of color may be more likely to face charges or DFCS involvement.

"I wouldn't want parents to suddenly worry too much about it," she said. "Parents know what's best for their own kids."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Georgia mom arrested after her 10-year-old went on a walk alone