COME ON! A Father Takes His Kid to see the Guidance Counselor and This is What Happens?
According to a report by The BayNet, a Maryland man on the sex offender registry has been charged with a misdemeanor after entering the F.B. Gwynn Educational Center in La Plata on September 9. And what was he doing there? According to the charging documents, he was there with his child and going to the guidance counselor.
A father accompanies his child to a school to visit the guidance counselor, checks in through the school’s visitor system, provides his identifying information, and is accused of committing a crime because he didn’t obtain permission from the principal or superintendent beforehand. Apparently the law requires that he gets the principal’s permission. Now we aren’t suggesting that people should simply ignore applicable laws. But COME ON! Are we really going to treat a parent trying to address his child’s educational needs as a criminal threat simply because of his status on a registry?
According to the report, the visit lasted approximately 38 minutes. He entered through the main lobby, checked in under his own name, and indicated that he was going to the guidance office. There is no allegation in this report that he harmed a child or engaged in inappropriate conduct during the visit. The charge concerns his alleged unauthorized presence on school property.
And let’s talk about who really gets punished in situations like this. Had this father gone through the process of obtaining advance permission, imagine what that would have meant for his child. The school would know that the child’s father is a registered citizen, administrators would treat the family differently, and classmates could eventually find out. Kids can be cruel, and the stigma alone could lead to ridicule, bullying, and humiliation. The child could end up paying a social price simply because his father has a past.
We talk endlessly about “protecting children”, but how much thought goes into protecting the children of registrants who must live with the consequences of these laws? This policy exposes them to shame, bullying, or the loss of an involved parent.
So where is the common sense here? Shouldn’t a parent be able to participate in his child’s education, communicate with school personnel, and help his child access guidance services? If this guy was on school grounds for no reason. Fine, arrest him. If he (or anyone) would have done something inappropriate while on school grounds, throw the book at them. But come on! Do these circumstances really warrant an arrest?
FAC has said it before, and we’ll keep saying it: we are not defending anyone’s past criminal conduct. We are questioning policies that impose sweeping one-size-fits-all restrictions without adequately considering the circumstances.
Surely we can do better than this.
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We’ll be needing “persmission” to shop at the grocery store next.
This will get far worse the longer we stand and observe.
I have only ever been to ONE of my kids’ school functions, field day. I wore a hat, sunglasses and shaved my beard to “disguise” myself. Nowadays, when I miss their school events, (luckily my wife attends them majority of the time,) I make it a point to take them to the arcade or something to make it up. One day they’ll understand.
ok this is not going to be a popular opinion but here it is: what did he think was going to happen? He knew he was on the registry. He knew he was going onto school grounds during school hours. Did he really think that was ok? Seriously?
I now live in Arkansas and when I moved here, I had to register under Arkansas laws. Those laws put me on their 4-tier system and I was assigned as a Level 3. Now jump forward a few years and I went to see some friends put on a theatre production in a local high school’s auditorium. But what did I do first? I checked the law. I researched it and found that if I, as a Level 3, wanted to go to that show that ALL the following certain conditions must be met. First, after school hours. Second, it could not be a school sponsored event. Third, I could not be anywhere on school ground other than the site of the event (in other words, no roaming the halls). Since I knew these conditions in advance and made damn sure I was in compliance with all of them, I went, had a great time, and left without being handcuffed.
The moral of the story – take the time and effort to do the homework and make sure you meet any and all legal requirements before going somewhere you know could put you in jeopardy of violating the law. Don’t be stubborn or stupid about this. Unless you enjoy being arrested.
I am starting to lose faith in humanity. How many traps, how many hurdles and how many back flips do we have to do to get some relief, some sanity, some fairness and some compassion? What has the world turned into?
It is starting to feel like the leapers who were ousted from communities a long time ago. Are we circling back to those times? There is a passage in the bible that says “ALL have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”. But I guess people are on their high horses, but to God, all sin is the same.
Looked into similar cases and found important differences. In DeLand, a father picking up his child was arrested on an existing vehicle-registration warrant. The school district said, “There was never a threat to the school or a need for a lockdown or hold.”
In Leesburg, a father trying to withdraw his son was charged after allegedly failing to complete the school’s consent form. In Wildwood, a permitted school pickup led to an investigation over an allegedly unreported vehicle and a later arrest at home. None of these reports described a new sexual offense at school.
How can we keep schools safe while allowing parents to support their children? After a sentence served- one easy solution is abolish the registry
— FAC Media
The half-wits who write and enforce this nonsense, have zero interest in child safety or welfare. Their goals are quite different: personal aggrandizement and political recognition. Semper Fi