It was dinnertime on October 30, 2024, when police handcuffed Brittany Patterson in front of three of her four children and drove her to the station in Fannin County, Georgia. She was then fingerprinted, photographed, and dressed in an orange jumpsuit.
Hours earlier, around noon, Patterson had driven her eldest son to a medical appointment. Her youngest son, 11-year-old Soren, intended to come along but wasn’t around when it was time to leave.
“I figured he was in the woods, or at grandma’s house,” says Patterson, who lives on 16 acres with her kids and her father. (Her husband works out of state). There is no shortage of family in the vicinity. Patterson’s mother and sisters live just two minutes away.
Soren, however, was not playing in the woods. He had decided to walk to downtown Mineral Bluff, a town of just 370 people. It’s not quite a mile from his house. A woman who saw him walking alongside the road—speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others—asked him if he was OK. He said yes.
Nevertheless, she called the police.
A female sheriff picked up the boy and called Patterson. “She asked me if I knew he was downtown and I said no,” says Patterson.
Patterson was upset that Soren had gone to town without letting anyone know, but says there was hardly reason to worry.
“I was not panicking as I know the roads and know he is mature enough to walk there without incident,” she says.
The sheriff disagreed.
“She kept mentioning how he could have been run over, or kidnapped or ‘anything’ could have happened,” recalls Patterson.
The sheriff drove Soren home and left him with his grandfather. After returning to the house, Patterson scolded her son—and that, she thought, was that.
But at 6:30 p.m. that night, the sheriff returned with another officer. They told Patterson to turn around and put her hands behind her back. As three of her kids watched, Patterson was handcuffed. The sheriff took her purse and phone, put her in the cruiser, and hauled her off to jail.
To Patterson, none of this made sense. She had grown up in the area with plenty of unsupervised time to wander and play and was raising her kids that way, too.
“The mentality here is more Free-Range,” she says.
Patterson was soon released on a $500 bail. The next day, a case manager from the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) came out for a home visit, and even went to interview Patterson’s oldest son at his school. The case manager told Patterson that everything seemed fine, but declined to comment to Reason.
A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a “safety plan” for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a “safety person” to be a “knowing participant and guardian” and watch over the children whenever she leaves home. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app onto her son’s phone allowing for his location to be monitored. (The day when it will be illegal not to track one’s kids is rapidly approaching.)
Patterson did not want to be compelled to track her son. Recalling a similar case, she contacted attorney David DeLugas. DeLugas is the head of ParentsUSA, a nonprofit that often provides pro bono legal help to parents wrongly arrested and prosecuted for child neglect. A GoFundMe has been established to help ParentsUSA cover the Pattersons’ legal expenses.
As Patterson’s counsel, DeLugas called the assistant district attorney (ADA) to discuss the case. He recorded the conversation, which is legal in Georgia. The ADA told DeLugas that if Patterson would sign the safety plan, the criminal charges would be dropped.
DeLugas responded that if Patterson had to sign a safety plan simply because her son walked someplace without her knowing his exact location, it would stop him from visiting friends or having any independence whatsoever. But the ADA maintained that Soren had been in danger, and thus a safety plan was necessary.
The matter was left unsettled.
With safety plans, the veiled threat is that if you don’t sign, your children could be taken away, says DeLugas. In this case, he says, the unspoken deal seems to be: Sign it and the state won’t prosecute. If the state does prosecute, Patterson could face a reckless conduct charge, a $1,000 fine, and a year in jail.
DeLugas would like to see Georgia pass a law that permits the authorities to check up on kids and then leave them be as long as they aren’t hurt, in distress, or in actual, immediate danger from an identifiable source. Meanwhile, as if this case could not get weirder, DCFS just mailed Soren a birthday card signed by the case manager. Soren turned 11 over the weekend.
Birthday greetings do not change the facts. Patterson knows that refusing to sign the safety plan could get her in trouble. But she is resolute.
“I will not sign,” she says.
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