JAMES CITY — One morning in early June, Karyann Parkinson and her 5-year-old son, Sam, went out in their gated James City County neighborhood.
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They stopped at a pond so Sam could get off his bicycle to pick up goose feathers. When they got home, Sam put his bike away and came running back toward her.
He wanted to walk back to the pond — about half a mile away — to collect more feathers.
“That’s fine,” Parkinson told him, saying she would start lunch so it would be ready when he got back.
“He was happy and ready to go and just headed out,” she said. “This was something that he was excited to do on his own, and he felt confident doing. And not only was he confident that he could do it, I was confident that he could do it.”
But Parkinson’s decision has become the subject of a criminal prosecution, an intense community debate and coverage in national news publications.
In a criminal complaint filed four days after Sam’s walk, a James City County police officer, J.W. Morris, wrote that letting the boy walk a half-mile from home and “in close proximity to a pond and several busy roads” was “a serious threat” to his safety.
Morris wrote that Parkinson “repeatedly and affirmatively” said she would continue letting Sam “travel the neighborhood unattended” — and “showed no remorse or acknowledgment that her omission placed the child in a potentially dangerous situation.”
A few days before the Aug. 21 trial, a prosecutor offered Parkinson a chance at a “withheld finding.” In other words, if she acknowledged her conduct was wrong and accepted probation and stipulations by Child Protective Services, the charge would be dropped in a year.
But Parkinson rejected that offer, saying the deal amounted to a guilty plea that directly violates her approach to parenting.
“I absolutely did not want to say for even a moment that letting Sam go on that little trip was a crime,” she said.
Rejecting prosecution’s deal
Parkinson, 36, said she’s used the same approach for 14 years of parenting, including with her three older children, ages 14, 12 and 7. Sam will turn 6 later this month.
“I feel absolutely convinced that it’s an important way to raise my children to create the sort of adults that we need in our society,” she said. “There are so many other parents who need to know that parenting our children without fear is not a crime.”
At an Aug. 21 hearing in Williamsburg-James County County juvenile court, Judge Brian Smalls found the evidence sufficient to find Parkinson guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Class 1 misdemeanor.
But Smalls said in a sentencing order that he sought to withhold the conviction “with the understanding that the matter would be dismissed after a year of deferment” that included a probationary period.
But Parkinson’s attorney, Andrew Gordon, “requested a guilty finding so that the matter could be appealed to Circuit Court,” Smalls wrote.
Smalls entered the guilty verdict. He gave Parkinson a six-month jail term, all suspended, $101 in fines and ordered compliance with CPS probationary conditions.
The case is now on appeal. A jury trial on the same charge is scheduled for Feb. 4 in Williamsburg-James City County Circuit Court.
“I think it will be really great to go on the record and put on a fantastic case and help other parents to be able to defend the right to raise our children the way we see fit,” Parkinson said.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Nate Green, the top prosecutor for Williamsburg and James City County, said he stands by the prosecution but declined to comment on the details of the case.
Approach to parenting
Parkinson is a mother of five — including the three older children, Sam and the baby she delivered in late June.
She holds an undergraduate degree in family science from Brigham Young University, adding that she worked for three years as a behavioral specialist in a youth treatment center and had a business as a parenting coach.
In May, she received a law degree from William & Mary. Her husband, Dallin, is a mental health professional.
Over the past three years, Parkinson said, the couple has granted all of their children a loose rein while living at Ford’s Colony, a large gated community off Longhill Road.
Indeed, June 5 wasn’t the first time Sam had been off on his own, his mother said: He began riding his bike back from the Ford’s Colony tennis courts and pool area when he was 4. And he’s ridden past the pond “innumerable times” on his bike alone.
“I see my role as a mother as this incredibly noble calling of creating children who can someday be those competent, capable, happy adults,” Parkinson said. “And if I am so scared of the unknown that I deny my children those opportunities, I have failed as a mother, and I have held my children back.”
Ford’s Colony, she said, is what Sam knew for three years of his life before the family moved to Fauquier County a couple of months back.
“We provided him a ton of exposure to this neighborhood,” she said. “You know, this is where the turtles are, and that’s the bridge over there, and you can’t walk over there cause it goes into people’s backyards. And over there is where the blue heron lives.”
Apart from the goose feathers, the pond itself wasn’t something that Sam — who often swam at the Ford’s Colony pool — would have been attracted to, Parkinson said. It’s muddy near the edges, smells bad and has algae.
Besides, it’s only a foot deep close for several feet into the water, she said.
“We’ve walked past that pond hundreds of times,” she said. But if Sam fell near the side of the water, he would simply have gotten back up.
“He can look at something that just is a little bit outside of his comfort zone and say, ‘I can do that, I can stretch myself beyond what I’m capable of right now,’” Parkinson said.
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“That’s how you build capable adults. They don’t just spring into existence on their 18th birthdays.”
June 5
After Sam left the house and got to the pond on the morning of June 5, a woman who lives in Ford’s Colony saw the boy walking alone and grew concerned.
She called security.
According to Parkinson, a security guard found Sam and initially tried to get him into his truck. When Sam refused, the security guard walked him home.
“And on the way home, the security guard was lecturing Sam and telling him that he’d broken the rules — and that I had broken the rules,” Parkinson said. “And Sam was asking, ‘Why can’t I be out on my own?’ and he said, ‘Because there’s bad people that will hurt you.’”
The security guard then knocked on Parkinson’s door, explaining that a neighbor had called about Sam being unattended. “I was upset, because Sam looked upset, and I said, ‘Why did you bother him?’”
Parkinson and the security guard disagreed on whether Ford’s Colony’s homeowners association allows children to walk unattended in the neighborhood.
Then the guard told her that “if it’s not a rule, then it’s against the law.”
“No, it’s not against the law,” Parkinson said she replied. “There’s no minimum age at which children can be alone in Virginia.”
The guard said he needed to call the police.
“Go for it,” Parkinson said she replied. She closed the door, thinking the police would have better things to do. But a James City County police officer came knocking soon thereafter.
In the criminal complaint, Officer Morris described Parkinson as less than cooperative, saying she would not talk to him and “shut the door in my face.”
He also said Parkinson also would not initially provide her identification to either Morris or Child Protective Services.
Morris wrote that Parkinson’s husband, Dallin, “initially appeared cooperative” after he drove up. Dallin initially said he “understood the concern” about Sam walking alone near the pond, the officer said.
But “his demeanor changed” after he went inside, with the couple coming outside together and insisting there was nothing wrong with what happened. About that time, two CPS workers — called to the home by Morris — were also on the scene.
“They were just insisting, ‘5 is just too young,’” Parkinson said of CPS employees. “They said a 5-year-old can never be alone. Maybe in your yard, but a 5-year-old can’t go beyond the boundaries of their yard at any time for any reason.”
The police officers and CPS workers were outside the family’s home for about three hours, Parkinson said. CPS workers wanted to talk with Sam, wanted to search the home on the spot, wanted the names of all the other children, and wanted her to sign a parenting plan.
“And we refused,” Parkinson said. “We said, no, we’re not going to do that.” The couple ended up providing their identities and Sam’s identity.
“They left, and we thought it was over,” she said.
Arrest warrant issued
But nearly two weeks later, on June 18, Parkinson was at home studying for the bar exam when two James City County police officers knocked on the door. They told Dallin they had a warrant for his wife’s arrest.
“I went to the door, and I was just shaking,” Parkinson said, saying the officers handed her the warrant.
“I couldn’t process what I was reading,” she said.
Parkinson, nine months pregnant at the time, was not taken into custody but given a summons to appear in court later.
A few days after that, Parkinson said she and her husband got a letter from CPS saying the agency was opening an investigation into the family.
The Parkinsons’ lawyer worked it out so that a required home visit would occur after she gave birth. When that visit took place, she said, CPS stayed only for 15 minutes and saw that Sam had a bedroom.
But in early August, CPS sent Parkinson a letter saying the child neglect allegation against her was “substantiated” and that she would be placed on the child abuse registry for seven years.
The criminal trial — separate from the CPS’s administrative action — went forward Aug. 21. Before trial, Parkinson said her lawyer expressed confidence the matter would be dismissed.
At the hearing, the security guard, police officers and CPS workers testified for the prosecution — including testimony that drivers often speed on the road near the pond. About 55,000 vehicles a month travel through Ford’s Colony.
Parkinson and her friend testified about Sam’s capabilities, with four William and Mary law professors showing up in support. Her lawyer, Gordon, told the judge that Virginia law “leaves it to the parents to decide if children are capable of navigating the things around them.”
Before handing down his guilty verdict, Judge Smalls said he would have liked to hear about Sam’s capabilities from someone other than Parkinson and her friend.
Now the jury trial is scheduled to take up the matter in February.
“I have seen what happens when parents are too afraid to let their children venture into the world,” Parkinson said. “It’s not good for the parents, and it’s not good for the kids.”
“I feel that would be the greater negligence — to say, ‘Oh, our neighborhood is too dangerous for you. You better not venture out at all.’ No, we’ve taught him exactly how to encounter his neighborhood.”
“It’s really a parent’s prerogative to determine whatLibrary a child is capable of.”
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Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, [email protected]