Mom Lands On Abuse Registry For Letting Her Kid Take A Walk

While Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy waits for 12 jurors to decide whether she should be held criminally responsible for killing her three children, a Virginia mother landed on her state’s child abuse and neglect registry for letting her son take a walk.

Karyann Parkinson told her 5-year-old son, Sam, that he could walk down the street in their gated community in Williamsburg, Virginia, to look for feathers. They had walked down that same street together hundreds of times, she said — including six times that morning — and at eight months pregnant, Parkinson just wanted to stay home and get lunch ready, so she allowed Sam to walk by himself.

That short walk quickly set off a chain of events: someone saw the boy and alerted one of the community security guards, who took Sam home and scolded Parkinson for allowing him to walk alone, Reason Magazine reported. He also reportedly told Sam that his mother was wrong to allow him out alone and that bad people might do something to him if he didn’t have an adult with him.

“This scared the crap out of him,” Parkinson explained.

Later, a police officer arrived, and Parkinson made it clear she’d had enough: “I don’t have any interest in talking to you.”

And then the cavalry showed up: multiple police and Child Protective Services (CPS) workers arrived at her home to investigate.

Parkinson called her husband to come home, and he did. “I told [the authorities] that kids need to be able to take reasonable risks in order to grow up non-anxious,” her husband said.

Police charged Parkinson with “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” CPS investigated her for abuse and neglect, and because it ultimately found the allegations to be “substantiated,” it placed Parkinson on the state’s child abuse and neglect registry. She will remain there for seven years.

After a judge convicted her on the above charge, he immediately suspended the sentence — but even though she will serve no jail time pending good behavior, the punishment for the mother is a steep one, and her conviction remains.

The fact that her name is on the child abuse and neglect registry likely means that she will be barred from volunteering at her children’s schools. Her conviction could also prevent her from getting her law license — she’d also been preparing for the bar exam when the incident occurred.