A single mother faces one year in prison after she let her 14-year-old daughter babysit her siblings while she went to work at the beginning of the pandemic – an act some are calling ‘reckless,’ and others defend as the act of a desperate mother.
Melissa Henderson, a single mother of five, is charged with criminal reckless conduct after she let her children under the care of her eldest child, 14-year-old Linley, in May 2020 when COVID shut down their daycare center.
Linley was reportedly engaging in online learning and did not notice that her four-year-old brother, Thaddeus, had slipped out of the house when he saw his friend outside and went to play with him in Blairsville, Georgia.
Within about 10-15 minutes, Linley noticed he was gone and found him at his friend’s house down the street. The friend’s mom called the police, and about two weeks later, Henderson was arrested in front of her children, according to Reason Magazine:
Now Henderson, a single mom in Blairsville, Georgia, is facing criminal reckless conduct charges for letting her 14-year-old babysit. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 1 year in prison and a fine of $1,000. The arresting officer, Deputy Sheriff Marc Pilote, wrote in his report that anything terrible could have happened to Thaddeus, including being kidnapped, run over, or “bitten by a venomous snake.” (When Henderson protested that the kid was only gone a few minutes, Pilote responded that a few minutes was all the time a venomous snake needed.)
The case has been in the court system for two years. Henderson’s lawyer claims the charges are unconstitutional. A Georgia Supreme Court ruling in 1997 threw out the prosecution of a parent who left their child at home, allowing their older sibling to watch over them when they died in a tragic accident. The court claimed that the decision could not be seen as ‘reckless conduct’, since it is a decision that many parents make on a regular basis.
