are defending their decision to charge the father who left his two young children at Scott Park without supervision for nearly two hours while shopping and showering.
Govindaraj Narayanasamy, 38, of Scott, was charged with two counts of child endangerment after township police said he left the 6-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy alone in the park for nearly two hours Saturday. Police say he went to to buy snacks and later drove to to shower.
The child endangerment charges after a group called Free Range Kids linked to the story and several members criticized the woman’s call to police and the officer’s decision to file charges.
Scott Township police Chief Jim Secreet said the woman, whom he would not identify, went over to the kids after noticing they were alone. She spoke to the boy, who told her their father went to park the car at LA Fitness, which is about three miles away. When the father still hadn’t returned after an hour, she thought something might be wrong and called police.
“She felt uncomfortable leaving them there because that (explanation) didn’t make sense to her,” Secreet said. “To say the father went to park the car at LA Fitness, that tells me that the child isn’t mature enough to understand what is going on. That makes me think the boy thought he was coming right back.”
Secreet said an aggravating circumstance is that the father lied to officers about how long he was gone and that the children did not have an ability to contact anyone in the event of an emergency.
“He tried to shorten the time, so that tells me he must’ve been uncomfortable with what he did,” Secreet said. “There was no contingency. They had no recourse if something happened.”
Secreet said the police officer consulted with the Allegheny County district attorney’s office before filing charges Wednesday. He said the law is ambiguous on when a child can be left alone, but said the circumstances warranted charges.
“There really is no set age as far as when a child can watch another child or babysit,” Secreet said. “You have to look at each individual’s maturity. It’s a judgment call on law enforcement and you have to look at the totality of the situation.”
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As for these two kids, I never wrote anything about whether they were happy playing in the park. They might have been having a splendid time. They might have been scared. They might have been malnourished. They might have been in great physical condition. Those are assumptions readers from afar have been making for the past week.
And we KNOW they were healthy kids having a splendid time because everyone is silent on the issue. Not a single supporter of the police, including the police and yourself, has said that the kids were scared, unkept, malnourished, etc. That would have been the first words out of everyone who wanted to defend this action, including yourself in your articles, if that were true because nobody would support leaving miserable, malnourished kids alone in the park.
As for the wording of the story, please explain tome how the story is slanted?
Helicopter parenting is not the cause of the decline. We know this because all forms of violent crime are declining, including adult-adult crimes. Of course, any kidnapping of any child is not acceptable, but these are vanishingly rare occurrences. If we truly responded to the risks we are likely to encounter, we'd happily let our children walk alone, but we'd never take them in our cars. There were 115 reported stranger kidnappings of children in 2011, this about equals the number of children that were killed or catastrophically injured playing football last year. 6466 children died in car accidents in 2007, and that number has been increasing (2011 data were not readily available).
Most people love their children and mean well. We, as a community, have to support other people. People, by and large, mean well and do right by others. Not everyone, not all the time... but absent real neglect or abuse - we should be supportive not punitive. That is better for society, families, and children. Free range doesn't mean no judgement... it means using your judgement to help your children learn to be responsible citizens. It means helping them learn to navigate in their world before they are thrust into it. Children are capable of amazing things and they want to participate. No one advocates dumping a child in the park with no preparation... but, prepared children are perfectly capable of playing in the park for a few hours. This whole issue has facilitated a wonderful discussion with our 6, 8, and 11 year-olds ("what if", "what then?", "how would you...").
Look at the actual statistics and determine your actual risks. I didn't even say that the 115 kidnapped children were injured (and, most of your 58,200 weren't either). If you wanted a particular child to be kidnapped... and you left them on the street to make that possible, on average they would wait there for 750,000 years. Why, then does the news make the world sound so scary? Because that is precisely what sells news. Nothing more, nothing less. One in five girls was sexually abused? Why do we think that this is any different than it's always been? Acceptable? No. But, wrapping children in bubble wrap does not protect them - read "The Gift of Fear" by a well-known expert - what saves people is developing and listening to that fifth sense or intuition or whatever it is. Really, this book could really save lives and it has to do not with overprotection, but with helping people listen to and use their "gut instincts" about people and situations, in those rare instances when it is needed.
It's sad...They never found out what happened to Jacob, but my friends and I grew up knowing his name, and knowing to be wary of strangers, and to never get into a stranger's car, etc. In fact, just a few years later, a stranger did try to lure my friend and I into his car, and thanks to hearing Jacob's story, we were prepared and got away. Oh, and that incident happened on my own doorstep, not at a park. In short, there are limitless things that could hurt your child, but what will constantly sheltering them do? How will they function as adults without you hovering over them constantly?
The fact of the matter is that a kidnapped kid draws more viewers than the daily car accidents that kill thousands of kids. Sensationalism sells. I don't put on a Supermom cape each time I drive my kids somewhere, like I somehow can protect them from a dump truck crashing into our car. I also don't assume supermom status at the park, where I may leave my kids while I go for a run with our dogs on the running trails around the park. Our park (also in PA) has a parents "gallery" where caregivers can sit and read or have coffee and let the kids play freely in a separate area. What I CAN prevent my kids from suffering is an accidental overdose of a prescription drug(these are way up-80 percent). We have no need for drugs like Xanax or Paxil as we don't need to medicate our irrational fears of child predators. Our family prefers to live rationally, thank you.
There is no excuse to leave children that young at Scott Park