A Georgia mother of four was arrested late last month for allowing her then-10-year-old son to walk outside alone.
The drama began to unfold around noon on Oct. 30th when mother Brittany Patterson drove her eldest son to a medical appointment, according to Reason magazine.
She had intended to take her youngest son, then-10-year-old Soren, with her as well but couldn’t find him at the time.
“I figured he was in the woods, or at grandma’s house,” Patterson, who lives on 16 acres of land with her father and husband, later recalled to Reason magazine.
Police handcuffed Brittany Patterson in front of three of her four children for the crime of allowing her youngest son to walk less than a mile away. https://t.co/bk5H666Xkz
— reason (@reason) November 11, 2024
But she figured wrong. It turns out Soren had in fact decided to walk to downtown Mineral Bluff, a town less than a mile away from his home. Along the way, a passing driver saw him and asked if he was OK. Though he said yes, the driver still called the cops anyway.
The cops subsequently deployed a female sheriff to pick Soren up and contact his mother by phone.
“She asked me if I knew he was downtown and I said no,” Patterson recalled, adding that while she herself was definitely upset about Soren going to town without telling anybody, she wasn’t panicked.
“I was not panicking as I know the roads and know he is mature enough to walk there without incident,” she explained.
But the sheriff disagreed.
“She kept mentioning how he could have been run over, or kidnapped, or ‘anything’ could have happened,” Patterson recalled.
After the phone call, the sheriff drove Soren home, where, upon her own arrival home shortly thereafter, Patterson scolded him.
All was well afterward until about 6:30 pm, when the sheriff returned with another officer and arrested Patterson in front of three of her children, much to her total shock.
After Patterson was released on a $500 bail, a case manager from the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) visited the following day to assess the situation at home.
Georgia mother Brittany Patterson was arrested and hauled off to jail in front of her children for letting her 11-year-old son walk less than a mile into town, where just 370 people live. She was charged with reckless conduct, and faces one year in jail. pic.twitter.com/ZEEq7OTqpi
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 12, 2024
Days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a so-called “safety plan” that would have required her to designate a “safety person” to be a “knowing participant and guardian” and watch over her kids whenever she’s out of the house. The plan would have also required that her youngest son download a tracking app so his location could be monitored.
Disturbed by the requests, Patterson got in touch with David DeLugas, the head of ParentsUSA, a legal nonprofit that helps parents wrongly accused of child neglect.
A GoFundMe for Patteron’s case can be found here.
“ParentsUSA will use its limited resources to defend Brit against these criminal charges AND to push back against DFCS (Department of Family and Children Services) efforts to impose a ‘Safety Plan’ that includes terms so that this child is NEVER left unsupervised and that a tracking device is on him or his phone (with the Case Manager watching Brit download the tracking app to his phone),” the GoFundMe reads.
After being recruited by Patterson, DeLugas contacted the local assistant district attorney, who in turn told him that the charges against his client would be dropped if she merely signed the safety plan.
“DeLugas responded that if Patterson had to sign a safety plan simply because her son walked someplace without her knowing his exact location, it would stop him from visiting friends or having any independence whatsoever,” according to Reason magazine.
But his words were met by deaf ears, meaning the case still remains open and unsettled as of mid-November.
Moving forward, DeLugas is now calling for a state law that’d force the authorities to leave kids alone — aside from checking up on them — so long as they aren’t hurt, in distress, or in immediate danger.
As for DCFS, they recently mailed Soren a card to celebrate his 11-year birthday.
Patterson meanwhile continues to refuse to sign the safety plan.
“I will not sign,” she said.
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