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Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

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Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#271

Post by em-bee »

jjav wrote: post #248
comrade1234 wrote: post #29

Here in Switzerland children start walking to school at around 5-years. Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined. It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child…

> Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. Huh? So if they live 10 miles away they must walk 10 miles? Surely not, but then how does it work?

they take a bus or train.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#272

Post by poulpy123 »

comrade1234 wrote: post #29

Here in Switzerland children start walking to school at around 5-years. Parents aren't allowed to bring them to school. If a parent escorts their children to school they'll be told not to. If they keep doing it they'll get a letter from the school and probably a police visit. And if they continue (I never heard of it getting to this stage) they may be fined. It's funny in the morning. One child walks to another child…

It's as insane as this post' article

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#273

Post by chrismorgan »

OtomotO wrote: post #99
teekert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is extremely car focused, which they often don't really realize. Things that are normal here (like everybody has a bike) conflicts with their cyclers vs drivers culture. Such a distinction simply does not exist here. Instead we have roads that are red with signs "Cars are guests". Or indeed city centers where cars aren't allowed. When I go to the US I'm often surprised that you can't get to things that are onl…

The last time I was in the US - a couple of decades ago, I admit - people were aghast that we walked to a store just a few hundred meters away. 3 people stopped and asked whether they can drive us somewhere... I mean, super friendly people, but... it's just a few hundred meters, come on! You were the wild west, once!

My mother tells much the same from when we Australians were in Denver for five months in 1996 about walking a kilometre to school. Also mild astonishment at ideas like baking cakes not from a packet mix.

Mind you, there weren’t many who would walk to school like that in Australia, and the number has continued to dwindle. But there were some.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#274

Post by JuniperMesos »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #259

I'd take this story with a grain of salt. Judges aren't heartless automatons. There's another side of the story that Ms. Parkinson hasn't told the ever-gullible Reason, and Ms. Parkinson herself is a known agitator: https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/01/immigration-crackdown-p... Look up her law firm, Holtzman Vogel. It's infamous.

Maybe right-wing agitators should make a point of trying to get Judge Brian J. Smalls of the 9th Judicial District Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court of Virginia under formal legal scrutiny for abusing his authority as a judge and imposing punitive sentences on people who work for law firms that have an immigration restrictionis political stance. Certainly if he imposed a prison sentence, even a suspended one, because he didn't like what Parkinson said about US immigration policy, then he should not serve as a judge and possibly should go to prison himself over it.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#275

Post by x-complexity »

DangitBobby wrote: post #264
x-complexity wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following this hypothesis, it would be rationally beneficial to release a wild bear every 6 months or so, just to make sure that the 'fear bank' is occupied by things that warrant actual fear.

We do have this whole global climate crisis going on. Maybe people could try being afraid of that

> We do have this whole global climate crisis going on. Maybe people could try being afraid of that

It's too conceptually big for some people to put into the 'fear bank' to be relied upon.

For the threat to be near-universally relied upon, it needs to:

(a) have a physical presence, and

(b) be within 2 orders of magnitude of size to trigger physical alertness (tick -> herd of elephants), but also

(c) not be (immediately dangerous/lethal that the only solution is to never meet it)

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#276

Post by lern_too_spel »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #274
lern_too_spel wrote: post #259

I'd take this story with a grain of salt. Judges aren't heartless automatons. There's another side of the story that Ms. Parkinson hasn't told the ever-gullible Reason, and Ms. Parkinson herself is a known agitator: https://thefederalist.com/2025/08/01/immigration-crackdown-p... Look up her law firm, Holtzman Vogel. It's infamous.

Maybe right-wing agitators should make a point of trying to get Judge Brian J. Smalls of the 9th Judicial District Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court of Virginia under formal legal scrutiny for abusing his authority as a judge and imposing punitive sentences on people who work for law firms that have an immigration restrictionis political stance. Certainly if he imposed a prison sentence, even a suspended…

Where is there any evidence he did that? My point was that the one side of the story presented by Reason came from a clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking source and that judges are not inclined to throw the book at pregnant mothers under the circumstances claimed, more so if the defendant is herself a lawyer who would know how to argue her case effectively. Hence, the recommended grain of salt.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#277

Post by JuniperMesos »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #276
JuniperMesos wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe right-wing agitators should make a point of trying to get Judge Brian J. Smalls of the 9th Judicial District Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court of Virginia under formal legal scrutiny for abusing his authority as a judge and imposing punitive sentences on people who work for law firms that have an immigration restrictionis political stance. Certainly if he imposed a prison sentence, even a suspended…

Where is there any evidence he did that? My point was that the one side of the story presented by Reason came from a clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking source and that judges are not inclined to throw the book at pregnant mothers under the circumstances claimed, more so if the defendant is herself a lawyer who would know how to argue her case effectively. Hence, the recommended grain of salt.

Perhaps the judge in this case thought the same thing you did - that being a lawyer in a law firm that at one point took a public, pro-immigration-enforcement political stance makes you a "clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking" person, who is unsympathetic and deserves to be taught a lesson. I'm not familiar with Holtzman Vogel as a law firm other than the article you linked, but if having a byline on that article makes you think that this makes Parkinson an unsympathetic defendant, then maybe the judge thought so as well.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#278

Post by lern_too_spel »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #277
lern_too_spel wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is there any evidence he did that? My point was that the one side of the story presented by Reason came from a clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking source and that judges are not inclined to throw the book at pregnant mothers under the circumstances claimed, more so if the defendant is herself a lawyer who would know how to argue her case effectively. Hence, the recommended grain of salt.

Perhaps the judge in this case thought the same thing you did - that being a lawyer in a law firm that at one point took a public, pro-immigration-enforcement political stance makes you a "clearly unreliable and outrage-seeking" person, who is unsympathetic and deserves to be taught a lesson. I'm not familiar with Holtzman Vogel as a law firm other than the article you linked, but if having a byline on that article m…

> Perhaps the judge in this case thought the same thing you did ... who is unsympathetic and deserves to be taught a lesson.

Where did I say anything like that? I said that her story doesn't pass the smell test, that the only side presented comes from a very unreliable source who has a history of seeking outrage just like the outrage induced by this one-sided presentation of the case, and that both Reason and now you are gullible for blindly believing it. I said that it is very unlikely that she would be given that punishment under the circumstances stated, not that she should get that punishment under those circumstances. Obviously, she shouldn't if her story is to be believed. The whole point is that it is unbelievable.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#279

Post by xaxbxcxdxe »

stephencanon wrote: post #228
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an international reader I'm missing some context here. Isn't a gated community supposed to be singularly safe? With private guards (like the guy who took the kid to his mom) patrolling and no strangers allowed in etc? Why did the guard tell the kid that "bad people" might take him? Where would those bad people come from? It really all does sound very weird.

Gated communities, by their nature, attract and encourage the sort of busybodies who think that everyone needs to be protected from everything.

Every guardian has the perverse incentive to make thev world (to at least appear) unsave to justify its existence and increase the upsale.

Re: Mom gets 6-month suspended sentence for letting 5-year-old walk to the pond

#280

Post by GJim »

greedo wrote: post #152
GJim wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you automatically assume somebody approaching a child is a kidde fiddler (!) then your society has problems.

Yes. As a father of two (grown) children in the US, this is the default assumption for most men.

Your society needs help.
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