Dave Lieber is a columnist for Fort Worth Star-Telegram who has found himself in a bizarre situation where he has been criminally charged for telling his 11-year-old son to walk home a few blocks from McDonalds. It began with an argument in McDonald’s and Lieber leaving his son to walk home. Lieber would return a short time later to find police speaking to his son and thought that the matter was closed by an amicable reunion and mutual apologies of the father and son. It wasn’t.
Lieber wrote about the experience in an August 15th column, describing how he returning after cooling off to find officers speaking with his son. He described his actions as “stupid and quite serious mistake” despite support from his readers who said that they have taken the same approach with disrespectful kids. That is when it got weird. Lieber, 51, was arrested by detectives of Watauga, Texas for child abandonment and endangerment, according to Detective Tiffany Ward.
State law defines abandonment as intentionally leaving a child younger than 15 “in any place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm.” Walking home a few blocks from McDonald’s is exposing a child to unreasonable risk of harm? How dangerous are the streets of Watauga? Yet, Lieber (who has been suspended by the newspaper) accepts that his actions “could have exposed my son to grave danger. I do know that. But in the moment of anger, I didn’t think clearly.”
I am probably the most protective, risk-adverse parent on Earth. My wife accuses me of wanting to turn the four kids into bubble babies. I would not use this type of punishment or scared straight technique. However, it is an example in my view of how we have criminalized every aspect of our lives, here.
For the full article, click here.
If things don’t change somehow, we will soon be awash in a strangling chokehold of laws and regulations so cumbersome, that any citizen could be charged and convicted of a crime for merely stepping out his front door in the morning.
This case is a tribute to modern stupidty. The stupidity that has grown out of the involvement of soccer moms in government, and the busy bodies who have elevated the concept of “the children” to almost godlike status in our culture.
The only ones who should be facing criminal prosecution in this case is the people at Mcdonalds who called the police, and the police and DA who were stupid enough to act on that call.
The dad did nothing wrong. He wasn’t even “a jerk” as has been suggested. He was a dad, being a dad, and if we saw the same thing on “Rossanne” or some other family sitcom, we’d laugh it off.
Jericho,
That is a very important insight.
We have only criminalized every aspect of the lives of the people. Corporate and governmental life is free as ever and crimes are a-ok. Fraud, bribery, theft, torture, slavery, oppression, war and genocide are fine for them, but hey, it’s not like they’re exposing the people to an unreasonable risk of harm, right?
rafflaw
1, August 30, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I am surprised that they didn’t add another endangerment charge for allowing an 11 year old to eat at Mickey D’s.
Now THATS a case that could be made.
Yankee
1, August 30, 2008 at 10:07 pm
The problem here was nosey people in McDonalds with cell phones wanting to be on the 6 o’clock news
Agreed.
I am surprised that they didn’t add another endangerment charge for allowing an 11 year old to eat at Mickey D’s.
I live near Watauga Texas and have visited this particular McDonalds many times. It’s boring boring suburbia with soccer fields and christian churches.
The problem here was nosey people in McDonalds with cell phones wanting to be on the 6 o’clock news.
I agree that this should not have been a felony. I also agree that a parent should never give up on a child. Especially one that is 11 years old. Prof. Turley mentioned that one article said it was a safe area so I don’t understand how walking a few blocks is hazardous to an 11 year old. Nice story Cro Magnum! I used to walk with some friends about 3 or 4 miles to a Cook County Forest Preserve in Morton Grove and we spent the entire day there and walked back. I know it was a different time, but in safe areas, kids 11 years old don’t need to be driven everywhere they go.
When I was 12, I ran away from home. I actually made it from our home in Burtonsville all the way to College Park, where a group of wild, crazy, partying fraternity dudes put me up for the night.
The next morning, like most 12 year old boys, I recanted my new found independence, most likely due to dreaming of fruit loops and whole milk, or some other catalyst, but nonetheless I called home to my mom, and told her “I want to come home now”. Giving her intstructions as to where she could come “pick me up”, I was suddenly awoken to the awful concept of responsibility, when she told me, “you got yourself there, you can get yourself home”.
And that was that.
12 years old, I stuck out my thumb on Route 1, and hitch hiked the 20 some miles back to our home.
Was she “neglectful”? By todays overly moddle coddling standards, of course.
But in our day, it was how we formed character, and self reliance. In our day, “safety” took a back seat to just growing up.
Jill,
I read that piece by Greenwald, he’s a daily visit for me. It is terrifying, but has become all too commonplace in today’s America. The MSM and Bush, Inc. foster the fear, law enforcement feels overly empowered and a fearful citizenry are generally ignorant of the Constitution. How do we get the average citizen to understand the importance of Constitutional issues? JT, the ACLU, etc. fight the good fight, but most of the public has been deliberately misinformed. Without an angry public demanding their rights, the notion of freedom fades away. To top it off there a few outlets where the demands of an aroused public will be heard. Marches don’t get covered in today’s America. Uh, Oh. I’m beginning to sound morose. It may be time for my evening cocktail.
Mike,
I wanted to thank you for your post on Obama’s speech and for the thoughts you added above.
RB from Chicago linked in with a salon.com piece about rnc protestors being arrested and mistreated (to be charitable) by swat teams this a.m. It was by Glenn Greenwald, I think. Terrifying.
Jill
I wonder if this guy is somehow disliked because of his “watchdog” column. Perhaps he is being singled out and charged for a reason other than trying to punish for what sounds like nonfelonious conduct. This is absurd.
Bob,
You know that’s such a good point, considering the Texas mythos of rugged individualism. It’s a State of massive contradiction.
What’s funny about this pathetic story?
It takes place in Texas; of course.
JT,
Given that then from whatever expertise I’ve gained from Child Welfare, two felonies is ridiculous and arrest/bail is absurd.
Mike:
I did read one article which described this as a low-crime area. McDonalds itself is certainly high-risk for heart disease and obesity, but those are more long term dangers.
Nice grab from the web, Jill.
Jill,
I agree with your take entirely. The media and the government has scared us all as citizens. This is both a strategy of social control by the government and to capture ratings (advertising dollars)by the media. Add to that the popularity of horror and disaster films whose typical plot is: Innocent, likable people are introduced in the beginning and then killed off by an unstoppable evil. The message in all forms is: Life is unsafe and ready to kill you at any minute.
People have become frightened and to parents the most frightening thing that can happen is your child being hurt. Yet, with all the killings, wars, plagues, illnesses and genocides that are about in the world, this is ironically the safest time in human history. That’s because, to paraphrase, Life has always been bloody, brutal and short.
We all nostalgically look back to our youth, when things were somehow simpler and more innocent. Yet I was born a Jew, during WWII and might not still be alive if the Nazi’s won. I grew up in the 50’s, when headlines railed at teen gang violence. I had to fight almost every day of my school career until my junior year in high school. Yet those times were safer than what was faced during the Depression Era, or during the time my parents were growing up.
God only knows what my immigrant grandparents faced in Europe and in coming to America.
The difference was that in earlier era’s people weren’t bombarded by frightening news, fueled by politics and profit. The technique existed (Joseph Goebbels for one) but the technology wasn’t as all encompassing. They faced difficult and frightening lives, no doubt, but their fear levels were not as artificially elevated.
Mr. Lieber was a jerk, because as a parent your job is to supervise your 11yr. old, not throw up your hands and say “I’m out of here.”
However, I don’t know anything about Wautauga, Texas, so it is hard to judge whether there was any danger entailed. Is it a high crime area? What is the nature of the traffic? We have reached a point in the US where as parents we have become over-protective of our children. Much of this is the fear inculcated in us by the media, mainly TV.
We are made to believe that our country is infested by serial killers and sex perverts. While there are such people out there, we are made to believe that the dangers to our children are far greater, than perhaps they are. Yet, when my kids were young my wife and I were very, very protective parents. Perhaps my background in Child Welfare multiplied my fears. However, our daughters, when each was age 11 walked home from school, 3/4 of a mile away, with their friends. We lived in a safe town and we knew the extent of our daughters maturity.
In my opinion, given these facts without any negatives we don’t see in the story, the man should not have been charged with two felonies. Knowing Child Welfare though, his biggest problem arose from writing the story. Although he admirably was willing to publicly confess his mistake, nothing drives Child Welfare cases like publicity. In NYC whenever a bad Child Welfare case would hit the papers, pressure would come down from City Hall to our Commissioner, basically telling her/him to take no chances with other cases. This invariably led to a rise in child removals and police charges, in many cases where drastic action was not called for, or demanded by the facts. My guess is the man’s column caused the reaction of the authorities.
This is from a website called, Free Range Kids:
“Do you ever…
..let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting. Share your stories, tell your tips and maybe one day I will try to collect them in a book. Meantime, let’s try to help our kids embrace life! (And maybe even clear the table.)”
I agree with you Chris, that this is incomprehensible. There are several people who have written books on our inacurrate “threat assessment” ability in this society and how it damages us, both as adults and children. “Last Child in the Woods” is one such book. These unexamined fears do not enrich our lives, they are constricting them in very important ways. I will also add that these constant, inaccurate fears keep us blindly obediant to the fear mongering of this govt.
I think having one’s parent arrested would be rather terrifying to a child. I would have hoped police would worry about the effect of their own behavior instead of the father’s.
A few weeks back I met up with some neighbors on a walk. They were quite upset that another neighbor didn’t cut down the trees by her house because, “somebody could break in without being seen”. I have lived here for years. We’ve had exactly one crime (not counting unreported domestic violence), and that appeared to be insurance fraud. Everywhere I go people seem terrified. It creates such a contradiction of mistrust in our everyday interactions with each other and a complete authoritarian trust in distant, often, most untrustworthy officials.
Maybe the “unreasonable risk of harm” was that he left him in the McDonald’s. Who knows what he would eat without parental supervision?
I agree that the overprotectiveness is baffling. My sister and I were walking a mile through our suburban neighborhood to our elementary school, unescorted, in first grade. (I think I did escort her home for the first few years, but you’re still talking of a third-grader escorting a second-grader.) There were other kids around, but again the oldest would have only been a sixth-grader.
In retrospect it’s hard to defend that, but saying a 5th grader(?) can’t walk two blocks is incomprehensible.