WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — A Virginia mother has been convicted of a misdemeanor after letting her 5-year-old son walk a few blocks alone within their gated community to collect feathers at a neighborhood pond, a case that has drawn national attention to how far Virginia’s child-independence protections actually reach.
What happened
Karyann Parkinson, 36, said the incident began on a June morning after she and her son, Sam, returned from a bike ride that included a stop at the pond so he could gather goose feathers — his favorite activity. Back home, the boy asked to return to the pond on his own, and Parkinson agreed. She described the route as a short walk along a sidewalk separated from the road by grass, within Ford’s Colony, a community she said has 24-hour security, a 25-mph speed limit and three golf courses, requiring her son to cross only two crosswalks — something she said she had watched him do safely before.
A passerby spotted the boy alone and reported it to the community’s private security, which sent a guard to walk him home. Parkinson said the guard told her son that his mother had done something wrong and that “bad people” could try to take him if he were alone — a comment she said frightened him badly. The guard called police, and when an officer arrived, Parkinson said she declined to speak with him; two additional officers then responded, and police contacted Child Protective Services.
Parkinson’s husband, Dallin, arrived home and told officers and CPS personnel that “kids need to be able to take reasonable risks in order to grow up non-anxious,” to which he said CPS responded that “a 5-year-old child can never be unsupervised.”
The conviction
Parkinson was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a Class 1 misdemeanor under Virginia law punishable by up to a year in jail. A judge imposed a six-month sentence but suspended it. CPS separately placed her on Virginia’s child abuse and neglect registry for seven years following what is known as a Level 2 finding.
A law meant to prevent this
Parkinson holds a family science degree from Brigham Young University and previously worked as a family life educator and as a live-in behavioral specialist overseeing the care of 35 girls at a residential treatment center. She recently finished law school and had worked in the office of former Virginia state Sen. Jill Vogel, who co-sponsored the state’s 2023 Reasonable Childhood Independence law — legislation the nonprofit Let Grow says was written specifically because Virginia’s neglect statute had been “so vague and broad that parents were getting investigated simply for letting their kids walk or play outside.”
Parkinson told Reason she believes authorities pursued the delinquency-of-a-minor charge specifically as a way around that 2023 law. She has appealed both the CPS registry finding and the underlying conviction, and says she is concerned the case could affect her ability to volunteer at her children’s schools or to be licensed to practice law.
Source: Reason, East Idaho News.
