Why wasn’t the father getting on the church bus? Sounds like someone’s a dirty heathen who needs to be led to the power of Christ via prison.
A child was permitted to play outdoors? Who was keeping the predators away?
Um, only black guy I saw was the news anchor …
My bad.
Ok, while I agree this is a ridiculous charge for the circumstances, it doesn’t sound to me like the church part had any relevancy. He was charged with child-endangerment because his 8 year old son was unsupervised and the father had no idea where he was.
The reason this is ridiculous is because my children walk to the end of the neighborhood to catch the bus to school. If they decided to “miss” the bus, I wouldn’t know because an 8 year old should be able to walk a block and get on a bus without me holding a hand!
For crying out loud, kids sneak away all the time! I once nearly gave my mother a heart attack in a Sears store because I hid in a clothing rack and she couldn’t find me. That wasn’t child endangerment … that was a kid who needed his bottom smacked for not coming when mommy called!
The troubling part to me is the lack of discretion exercised by the cops who decided to charge the father instead of just returning the child home.
Maybe the dad got all uppity and became belligerent to the cops in which case the arrest really wasn’t for child endangerment but rather an attitude adjustment.
Now THAT is some bullshit right there. The kid is 8 years old, it’s not like he was 2.
No he wasn’t, oh sure, that’s the pretense, but it is ridiculous, so much so that it can’t possibly be this simple.
My own half baked theory is he was charged because (and I’m only half serious here), The kid was not under proper surveillance. Not the same as unsupervised, rather, nobody was tracking the kid, the only way for the powers that be to guarantee this doesn’t happen anymore is to outfit kids with some sort of tracking device, nothing as invasive as RFID tags, possibly a cellphone.
And that makes it okay? American prison state. It is what most accept as normal, and has been for a long time. You should be allowed to be “uppity” w/a cop if he is wrong. They work for us. Thanks sheep!
The greater misdeed here, if there is one at all (and to my mind there isn’t), is that the father was sending kids off to a church in the first place. Is there a higher concentration of sexual predators in any profession outside of clergy?
I started writing that with snark as my intent but before I finished the question it occurs to me it’s not an unreasonable question and worth trying to find the numbers …
Rob, it says you’ve disabled playback of this video anywhere other than youtube. That seems… a bit off for an embedded video. Just thought I’d let you know some of your settings might be borked!
Double double en-like-ancy points
And this is why us parents now days are “helicopter parents”.
Church probably called the cops because the kid was missing and the sibs ratted him out for skipping. The church would have done this to avoid liability. Cops messing with the dad was bullshit, but there are in fact people in jail because their kids were truant from school.
School is a bit more mandatory than church. I’d imagine that the truancy wouldn’t have been a one time deal that would’ve put parents in jail either.
Sooo… The cops are claiming that this little rural town in Ohio is dangerous to be walking around in on a Sunday morning?
Then again, it does have a cemetery for internatinal odd fellows.
Hardly. The real undertone is that the father wasn’t making his son go to church.
Playing is one thing. Skipping church is quite another.
He didn’t say it was OK. In fact, the subtext of that comment was pretty critical of the practice from my perspective.
You might find audiences more receptive to your opinion if you don’t call them “sheep”, incidentally. Kinda makes you look like a loon.
Sadly, religious organizations have been the most successful at suppressing revelations about child abuse in their ranks, so you’re not going to get remotely accurate numbers.
