....the slippery slope. “Didn’t think I was doing anything wrong:” Mom arrested for allowing 7-year-old son to go to park alone POSTED 10:45 AM, JULY 29, 2014, BY CNN WIRE SERVICE, UPDATED AT 08:38PM, JULY 29, 2014 FACEBOOK2K+TWITTER16GOOGLELINKEDINPINTERESTEMAIL Port St. Lucie, FL (WPTV) — A mom faces a charge of child neglect after she allowed her son to go to a park alone. She says he’s old enough but Port St. Lucie Police disagree. Now she’s fighting back. “I’m totally dumbfounded by this whole situation,” says Nicole Gainey. It began last Saturday afternoon when Gainey gave her son Dominic permission to walk from their house to Sportsman’s Park . “Honestly didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” says Gainey, “I was letting him go play. It’s a half mile from their Port St. Lucie home. Dominic says it only takes him about 10 to 15 minutes to get there. During the walk, the 7-year-old passed a public pool. Someone there asked him where his mom was. “They asked me a couple questions and I got scared so I ran off to the park and they called the cops,” says Dominic Guerrisi. Dominic was playing at the park when an officer pulled up. “They said ‘where does your mom live,’ ” says Dominic. Police took him home. That’s when his mom was arrested and charged with child neglect. Gainey says she was shocked. “My own bondsman said my parents would have been in jail every day,” says Gainey who paid nearly $4,000 to bond out. The officer wrote in the report that Dominic was unsupervised at the park and that “numerous sex offenders reside in the vicinity.” “He just basically kept going over that there’s pedophiles and this and that and basically the park wasn’t safe and he shouldn’t be there alone,” says Gainey. She believes Dominic is mature enough to go to the park alone during the day. Gainey adds her son always has a cell phone which she calls to check on him. “That I’m here and safe,” says Dominic. Gainey plans to fight the felony charge. But after this she won’t let Dominic go to the park alone. She’s afraid she’ll be arrested again. The St. Lucie County State’s Attorney’s office says there is no law that specifies how old a child has to be before he or she can go somewhere unsupervised. It’s done on a case-by-case basis.
I walked or biked alone to school everyday from age 7-12. I would not let my child make the same walk in my home town today. I would where I live now though. Maybe not the best idea for this FL mom? Sure. Deserved to be arrested and fined? Absolutely not.
My mother would not have allowed me to go someplace a half mile away by myself when I was seven. We would not allow our daughters to do that either. I think an arrest for the first time is overdoing it though.
So, so dumb. How many of us biked, walked, whatever all over our neighborhood, woods, etc when we were younger and grew up in the 80s and 90s? I'm going to guess we all did. And guess what? That was one of the most dangerous times in modern history. Murder, rape, thief, etc were all much higher than they are today. But today we have the internet so we constantly read about all the bad things and it scares us all into being helicopter parents. Today kids are safer and have one thing that we never had as kids. CELL PHONES. We have a park right around the corner from our house and I will most certainly allow my daughter to ride her bike to the park if she wishes at 7 years old.
This is stupid. when i was 7 in New Mexico, I would ride to the other side of our neighborhood to hang at the park with friends. I mean yeah, it might not have been the smartest idea on her part, but the arrest for a felony is a bit extreme.
When I was 7 I would tell my mom where I went but would probably end up somewhere else with friends riding our bikes. Nobody knew where we were and nobody could call us since nobody had a cell phone. On one hand I think arresting her is a little bit much but we don't live in the same world we used to.
There is a nice park right down the street from our house. There is even a nicely equipped playground for the kids. No one allows there kids to go there unaccompanied unless they're part of a group of kids. I agree though. The felony arrest was way too much. A warning would have been the right thing.
Nanny state, soooo stupid. I used to play outside and in the woods for hours at that age. As long as I came home when either my mom whistled or the front porch light came on I was good to go. The idiot soccer mom talking on the phone while driving a mini-van full of kids at 80 mph is putting her children in more harms way than this lady is.
I think it depends somewhat on your where you live. If you go to the state police website that reports sex offenders, there is no shortage of them in our neighborhood. I played outside, when I was young, went to the park, rode my bike around, even into the woods by the river, but not alone.
That kid should have been sitting on the couch watching kick boxing, or at least playing xbox, what the hell was this woman thinking allowing a kid out in those harmful ultra violet rays.
Well the facts are that we live in a safer world than the 80s and 90s. You think the opposite because of the internet and 24/7 news reporting we have now.
Imagine if the cops would have seen me drinking out of the garden hose as a child and asked why I was doing it and I said I told my mom I was thirsty and she told me to get a drink from the hose?
Rum/whiskey on the gums for teething...and sips of beer from our parents because we kept asking to try it even though we thought it was disgusting.
I grew up in the sixties as an adolescent and seventies as a teenager. Most families back then only had one car, so we walked or rode bikes all over town at a very young age out of necessity. No one ever thought anything of it. Don't think it was any safer back then, maybe we were just more naive as a society. Regardless, we can't police everything nor should we. As I mentioned, this is a slippery slope we are on.
