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jen70's latest comments
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13th Feb 2015jen70 commented on:
Should it be illegal to leave a child home alone under 12 years old?It will not save children from abuse, and risk putting perfectly responsible parents on the wrong side of the law. So it would be legal to send my child out on the streets to play, but illegal for me to walk to the postbox (which is closer than the bottom of my garden) or nip out to pick up one child from Cubs while the other is safe asleep in bed? (Yeah, I could get killed in a car crash on the way, but if I've dragged the toddler out with me, he's dead too!) So my eleven year old can walk home from school by himself, but the minute he sets foot inside the house, if I'm not there yet, I'm breaking the law? It would be a pointless law if time would be wasted prosecuting parents who had taken reasonable steps to make sure their child was safe, like teaching them about safety and who they could phone for help if they were worried. I could be blind drunk in the living room while my toddler plays with matches upstairs, or leave them being babysat by a psychopathic 16 year old, or forget to feed them for three days. The law would clearly see that this was abuse, without having to define the exact circumstance of leaving them alone as illegal in its own right.