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Working Mom Arrested for Letting Her 9-Year-Old Play Alone at Park

Often times it matters not if a risk is real if people are going to act as if it is.
 
Jokodo said:
doubtingt said:
IT only takes 1 such parent in a group of 40 to ruin a person's life no matter how innocent they are.
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How so? If one person does react hysterically and calls the cops, 39 witnesses who confirm that everything's OK are all you'll ever need to make sure that the cops are gone within 15 minutes upon arriving and if anyone gets a slap on their fingers (much less their life ruined), it's not going to be you.
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You're assuming the cops are going to be reasonable when someone is screaming that you're molesting a kid, especially if it's their kid.

Sure, in time you'll almost certainly be exonerated. Whether you have a job or any savings left is another matter.
 
NobleSavage said:
Latest update: She got fire from McDonald's
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...-her-kid-go-to-the-park-alone?detail=facebook
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This really sums up everything about this case:

If you're making less than $8 an hour at McDonald's, just what are you supposed to do with your child during summer vacation? Not working makes you a bad mother in the eyes of too many, because you're then a welfare queen blah blah blah, but working makes you just as much a bad mother in the same sets of eyes because your child is either sitting in McDonald's all day long or, heaven forbid, playing at the park. It's a vicious catch-22 laid on top of an oppressive ethic of parenting that has mysteriously taken over the country durin g the past decade or two. And now this woman who was clearly fighting like hell to take care of her daughter the best she could has been arrested, has lost her job, and is under investigation by the Department of Social Services.
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doubtingt said:
Jokodo said:
How so? If one person does react hysterically and calls the cops, 39 witnesses who confirm that everything's OK are all you'll ever need to make sure that the cops are gone within 15 minutes upon arriving and if anyone gets a slap on their fingers (much less their life ruined), it's not going to be you.
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Your scenario presumes that the other parents saw the event in question, are present when the cops arrive, are willing to testify that they saw everything and that nothing indicated wrongdoing, and that the cops come to arrest the person on the spot, in the park rather than 5-10 minutes later when the person is on their way home or at work and none of the other parents are even aware the cops were ever called.
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No, it doesn't presume any of that. If the arrest you somewhere else, they'll still be going back to the scene of the alleged incident momentarily to catch up with any potential witnesses, so the other parents will be quickly made aware that the cops have been called.

And as regards the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence thing, the fact that people tend to be suspicious towards males interacting with kids is actually going to help you here: It'll make some of the other adults present watch closely enough to be able to say that they saw specifically that nothing wrong happened, not just that they didn't see anything wrong.

My scenario presumes merely that any one of these things is not the case, or that even if all your presumed factors are in place that the cops give claims of wrong doing more weight than statements of "I didn't see anything wrong" (the whole absence of evidence is not evidence of absence thing). Note that the second you are arrested, your life can be ruined no matter how quickly the charges are dropped. The second you are arrested for it and anyone finds out, let alone the media, you can lose your job (like this woman in the OP did over nothing), and people around you will be forever suspicious because our minds cannot undo the knowledge that a person was arrested for being a child predator, even if we find out that "it was nothing".

BTW, are you working on a response to the rest of my post, or do you acknowledge that men are in both in fact and in perception much more likely to be child predators than women?
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I wasn't going to respond to the rest of your post but:

Whether the fear is reasonable isn't relevant to whether it is widespread and that people act upon it an ruin other people's lives because of it, as the OP and many other incidents show. That said, even though the fear that any random male will be a predator has near zero probability and is irrational, the fear that a predator is much more likely to be male is highly rational, given that 97% of child predators in sexual offense cases are male, as shown by DOJ stats.
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You're misreading me. While I agree that the fear that any random male will be a predator is irrational, I was talking about another irrational fear: That of being falsely arrested for innocently interacting with a child in a packed playground. It too has a non-zero probability, but one that's too way out there to base decisions around it.
 
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Playball40 said:
Jokodo said:
These are opinion pieces on how and why adults might be reluctant to help children. No actual data on how many actually are, much less anything remotely resembling an empirical demonstration that such a reluctance is reasonable.

Come back when you have pertinent links, will you?



And then there are many parents who will go out of there way to find a male teacher/caregiver because they want to give their chils (usually boy) a male role model. At the day care provider where we previously had our child, there was a male caregiver too and he had the longest waiting lists.

ETA: And do you really think that's comparable anyway? Giving your child to an adult for hours at a time where he'll be the sole adult in sight is something quite different from the situation we're talking about, which still is a scenario of applying a sticky plaster to a kid that's fallen off a swing in front of dozens of witnesses?
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And yet in five years, I NEVER had a "request" for the male teacher at the preschool (grade school after program, yes but not preschool). I guess your "evidence" trumps mine and male caregiver prejudice doesn't exist. :rolleyes:
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Are you saying I'm lying?

I guess the difference is mostly in the way it was organised. In the case I'm talking about, the individual day carers were basically acting as independent providers within their own homes, with the institution running organisational matters. The way parents would find a slot is to be given a list of day carers working under that organisation and contacting them individually, and only coming back to the institution to sign the contract when they've reached a verbal agreement with the individual. It's conceivable that few if any of the parents started their search with the explicit plan of giving their kid to a male teacher, but when skimming the list, his name popped out and they said to themselves "why not try?" They might not have deposited a wish for a male teacher if the way to get slots had been to wait to be centrally assigned; some of them might even have been reluctant to leave their child with a male caregiver they had no chance of previously getting to know.

That, or its a cultural difference (again something some people in this thread deny). Oh, and where did I say again that "male caregiver prejudice doesnt't exist"?

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Metaphor said:
Men are more likely to be regarded as kiddy fiddlers than women are. The evidence for this is indisputable, since airlines have actual policies that target men and not women. You'd simply have to be living in another world to believe otherwise.
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More likely, yes. But that's not what you said. You said "No-one ever thinks a woman would kiddy fiddle".
 
Jokodo said:
More likely, yes. But that's not what you said. You said "No-one ever thinks a woman would kiddy fiddle".
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Yet I stand by the spirit of what I said. No one ever thinks a woman would kiddy fiddle. Or, at least, there are plenty of innocent situations where a woman and a man could take exactly the same actions, and the woman's actions are not regarded with any suspicion, but the man's are.

Hell, even when women actually do kiddy fiddle, it's half-jokingly dismissed by a nontrivial portion of the (heterosexual male) population as 'an older woman showing a young man the ropes'.
 
Metaphor said:
Jokodo said:
More likely, yes. But that's not what you said. You said "No-one ever thinks a woman would kiddy fiddle".
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Yet I stand by the spirit of what I said. No one ever thinks a woman would kiddy fiddle. Or, at least, there are plenty of innocent situations where a woman and a man could take exactly the same actions, and the woman's actions are not regarded with any suspicion, but the man's are.

Hell, even when women actually do kiddy fiddle, it's half-jokingly dismissed by a nontrivial portion of the (heterosexual male) population as 'an older woman showing a young man the ropes'.
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A nontrivial portion of the population dismisses bombs falling on {Israel, the Gaza Strip} as just what they deserve. It doesn't follow that no-one ever thinks {Hamas, the IDF} could ever be wrong.

A nontrivial portion of the population thinks that becoming destitute is the best that could happen to the poor who need to learn a lesson about their lazy ways. It doesn't follow that no-one ever thinks wealth and income should be distributed more evenly.
 
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It still stands that while the pedo-panic is basically an irrational fear, reacting to said fear by taking measures to protect yourself isn't an irrational act.

As Loren pointed out, the mere arrest can be life ruining. Just look at how a newspaper generally would treat this issue.

Day 1: Major headline in big type on page one.

Day 10: Small box on page 23 saying the charges were dropped.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
It still stands that while the pedo-panic is basically an irrational fear, reacting to said fear by taking measures to protect yourself isn't an irrational act.
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I myself am taking measures to protect myself against being mis-identified as a kidnapper when I jump into situations where such a situation might plausibly arise. As mentioned in this thread, I carried a copy of our joint costudy agreement when travelling internationally with my own kid who doesn't have my surname (although that's not specifically protecting myself against "pedo-panic", it is still somehow comparable).

The problem I have is that the situation we are - still, unless you want to derail the thread - talking about is not such a situation.

As Loren pointed out, the mere arrest can be life ruining. Just look at how a newspaper generally would treat this issue.

Day 1: Major headline in big type on page one.

Day 10: Small box on page 23 saying the charges were dropped.
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I don't know about Los Angeles County, but where I live, the names of suspects are anonymised in media reports unless they are public figures.
But that's irrelevant because in the specific scenario we're talking about, the chances of actually being charged are negligible. Not exactly zero, but probably comparable to those of being bitten by an escaped shark when swimming in a salt-water pool.
 
Jason Harvestdancer said:
What Loren pointed out wasn't the impact of being charged, it was the impact of the arrest in the first place. Even if no charges are ever filed.
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To quote Loren (and that's his only contribution to this subthread): "in time you'll almost certainly be exonerated. Whether you have a job or any savings left is another matter."

That assumes being charged.
 
Jokodo said:
doubtingt said:
Your scenario presumes that the other parents saw the event in question, are present when the cops arrive, are willing to testify that they saw everything and that nothing indicated wrongdoing, and that the cops come to arrest the person on the spot, in the park rather than 5-10 minutes later when the person is on their way home or at work and none of the other parents are even aware the cops were ever called.
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No, it doesn't presume any of that. If the arrest you somewhere else, they'll still be going back to the scene of the alleged incident momentarily to catch up with any potential witnesses, so the other parents will be quickly made aware that the cops have been called.
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No, the cops are going to bring the suspect to the station, then return sometime later when many or most of the parents that were there could easily be gone, because they have no reason to think that anything is happening. There are not going to be any parents who are witnesses to his innocence, only those who called the cops and those who can't say anything but "I didn't see anything and wasn't really paying any attention." Do you remember every person you saw at the store today and what they were doing? No. We only attend to things when they are noteworthy, and any parent that wasn't suspicious and didn't perceive wrong doing wouldn't have paid any attention to the guy unless it was their own kid.

And as regards the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence thing, the fact that people tend to be suspicious towards males interacting with kids is actually going to help you here: It'll make some of the other adults present watch closely enough to be able to say that they saw specifically that nothing wrong happened, not just that they didn't see anything wrong.
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That makes no sense. The parents paying attention to the guy will be those that are constantly suspicious, paranoid, and unrealiable, and thus the most likely to agree with whoever calls the cops or at least not to contradict that person. The one's who would be more reliable and aren't overly suspicious, are not paying close attention in the first place. All they can say is "I didn't see anything, but wasn't really paying attention." Also, even for the parents that say "I was watching and didn't see anything", that is still nothing but "absence of evidence" and doesn't carry as much weight as someone who said "I saw something". The cops are going to err on the side of the person who said they saw something. If a person on the subway says they saw a bomb and 20 others say "I was sitting right near there and didn't see one", guess which story the cops will err on the side of, even if its 20 to 1?


Whether the fear is reasonable isn't relevant to whether it is widespread and that people act upon it an ruin other people's lives because of it, as the OP and many other incidents show. That said, even though the fear that any random male will be a predator has near zero probability and is irrational, the fear that a predator is much more likely to be male is highly rational, given that 97% of child predators in sexual offense cases are male, as shown by DOJ stats.
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You're misreading me. While I agree that the fear that any random male will be a predator is irrational, I was talking about another irrational fear: That of being falsely arrested for innocently interacting with a child in a packed playground. It too has a non-zero probability, but one that's too way out there to base decisions around it.
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I am referring to your dismissal of the idea that women have much less to fear because they are much less suspected of child predation, as they should be since they are 1/20th as likely to be child predators. It might be the case that men don't have as much to fear as some think, but it is the case that they have much much more to fear than women do.
 
doubtingt said:
I am referring to your dismissal of the idea that women have much less to fear because they are much less suspected of child predation, as they should be since they are 1/20th as likely to be child predators. It might be the case that men don't have as much to fear as some think, but it is the case that they have much much more to fear than women do.
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You said: "people suspect and are fully rational to suspect that most predators of kids are male, but they are highly irrational to suspect that any random male of being a predator"

In the same vein, while it's rational to believe that men are more likely to be falsely arrested and charged for innocently interacting with a child, it is still irrational to consider that as a threat serious enough to be taken into consideration, in the specific scenario we're talking about at least.
 
What training and certification do you have that assures the authorities you are able to fight off a kidnapper yourself?
 
Malintent said:
What training and certification do you have that assures the authorities you are able to fight off a kidnapper yourself?
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The point is that this bogeyman kidnapper that the child needs to defend itself against isn't actually there.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Malintent said:
What training and certification do you have that assures the authorities you are able to fight off a kidnapper yourself?
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The point is that this bogeyman kidnapper that the child needs to defend itself against isn't actually there.
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I failed to quote what I was referring to in my original reply... it was not this. I agree that is the point.. but someone had justified this by saying that a 9-year old is smart enough but not strong enough to defend themselves... to which I said, "neither are you", so to speak.
 
Malintent said:
Tom Sawyer said:
The point is that this bogeyman kidnapper that the child needs to defend itself against isn't actually there.
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I failed to quote what I was referring to in my original reply... it was not this. I agree that is the point.. but someone had justified this by saying that a 9-year old is smart enough but not strong enough to defend themselves... to which I said, "neither are you", so to speak.
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Well then, my response was completely irrelevant to your post. It looks like you're going to have to change your position and start arguing about how you feel that pedophiles are lurking behind the bushes in every public park in order for my response to be relevant. Sorry about that.
 
I think I shall sue my parents for the mental torment that I now suffer as a result of their consistent neglect. A class action involving all the kids in our entire city is probably in order here. We all suffered terribly from being made to run around unsupervised in the fresh air, rather than being safely watched 24/7 while we sat on the couch in front of the TV.

The truly shocking thing is that we didn't even know at the time just how cruelly we were treated. We even used to laugh and enjoy ourselves. It makes me shudder to think.

They didn't even care enough to let me have a cellphone in case of emergency; and this was in the 1970s, when violent crime rates were higher than today. Disgraceful.
 
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