A mother was arrested after her 10-year-old son went for a walk alone

A Georgia mom arrested after her 10-year-old son walked alone to a store about a mile from their rural Georgia home has vowed to fight charges in a case that has sparked confusion and criticism of experts and defenders of parental rights.

Body camera footage from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office shows how Brittany Patterson, then 41, was taken into custody by deputies at her home on Oct. 30, hours after a passerby reported seeing her son alone.

Deputies returned the unharmed boy home. They then returned several hours later to arrest Patterson.

“Last time I was checking to make sure kids weren’t allowed in the store,” Patterson said on the footage.

“It’s when they turn 10,” Deputy Kaylee Robertson replied. (A warrant for Patterson’s arrest and a report written by Robertson say the root of the charge was that Patterson didn’t know where her son was and didn’t report his disappearance to authorities before leaving the house.)

The case is a relatively rare example of law enforcement in Georgia stepping in with criminal charges in a case where the child was not harmed and where many reasonable parents would have done exactly the same, said Emma Hetherington, a law professor at USAID. Georgia and director of the Wilbanks School Child Abuse and Abuse Clinic.

Brittany Patterson describes what happened before her arrest

Patterson had to take one of her older children to a doctor’s appointment on Oct. 30 and called her 10-year-old Soren to get in the car and go with them. When Soren didn’t show up, Patterson said she looked around the house for him for a bit, assumed he didn’t want to go, and then 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 that families often let their children and pets explore the property on their own or play in the woods.

Soren is homeschooled, and the mother of four said that when she has to go to an appointment, her children can choose to go with her or stay at home, where their grandfather also lives. She didn’t think of leaving that day without him.

She then got a call from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office saying deputies had picked up Soren, who has since turned 11, about a mile from home. He went to the Dollar General store himself, and a passerby 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, ‘Dude, if you want to go to the store, that’s fine, just let me know when you want to.’ You have to let me know where you are,” Patterson said.

A few hours later, 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 was under arrest for “reckless endangerment.” (Under Georgia law, reckless endangerment is not a charge; Patterson’s actual arrest record lists reckless conduct as her charge.)

But Patterson and her attorney, David DeLugas, who is also the nonprofit’s executive director USA parents, to say that she had done nothing wrong and that her son was perfectly safe that day.

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

Georgia has no law on how old a child must be to go out on their own or stay at home, but its child welfare agency publishes guidelines that say children as young as 9 can be left alone for a few hours. , and that children 13 and older can watch younger siblings. He makes exceptions if the child is not old enough for this.

Documents from the sheriff’s office allege that Patterson did not know where Soren was and did not report him missing to authorities before leaving the home. Patterson says there’s a difference between not knowing his exact location at any given time and him being missing.

“If I had thought for one second that he was truly missing or in danger or runaway or abducted, of course I would have called the authorities,” she said.

Patterson said she spent about 1.5 hours in jail that day, was fingerprinted, photographed and had to change into orange jail clothes.

After she was released, the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) presented her with a so-called “Safety Plan.” The plan, which USA TODAY reviewed, includes uploading GPS tracking to Soren’s cell phone and appointing a “guardian” to take care of the children if she leaves, among other provisions. Patterson said she refused to sign it.

DeLugas said Patterson shouldn’t sign up to a plan that won’t make him safer. He wants authorities to drop the charges against Patterson and says the case is an absurd overreach.

The Fannin County Sheriff’s Office and DFCS said they would not comment on specifics of the case, and the county attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Unsupervised children can cause legal trouble for parents

In 2016, a mom was charged with child endangerment after she left her 8- and 9-year-olds alone to pick up food while they were on vacation in Delaware. News magazinewhich is part of the USA TODAY network, it said at the time. The children took their dogs for a walk and ended up chasing them, prompting bystanders to intervene and call the authorities. The charges were eventually dropped.

Another Maryland family sparked a national debate on their parenting choices when the parents were surveyed after they let their two children, ages 10 and 6, walk home from school alone, and again after they let them play in the park alone.

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

Hetherington said parents have a constitutional right to decide how to raise their children, and authorities can only intervene if there is a risk to the child’s safety or well-being. According to her, whether a case will rise to this level depends on many individual factors, and sometimes on the opinion of individual law enforcement officers.

“What I might consider a parenting practice to be unsafe, another person in another neighborhood, in another culture, in another community might consider perfectly safe,” Hetherington said.

Most parents who give their children some independence to stay home alone when they’re old enough or play alone in the neighborhood shouldn’t fear criminal prosecution, Hetherington said. She also noted that people of color are more likely to face charges or involvement in DFCS.

“I wouldn’t want parents to suddenly worry too much about it,” she said. “Parents know what’s best for their children.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A Georgia mother was arrested after her 10-year-old child went for a walk alone