Georgia mom convicted for letting her 10-year-old walk into town alone

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 taken her oldest son to a medical appointment. Her youngest son, 11-year-old Soren, planned to come along, but wasn’t there when it was time to leave.

“I thought he was in the woods or at grandma’s house,” said Patterson, who lives on 40 acres with her children and her father. (Her husband works out of state). There is no shortage of family in the area. Patterson’s mother and sisters live just two minutes away.

However, Soren didn’t play in the forest. He had decided to walk to downtown Mineral Bluff, a town of just 370 people. It’s less than a mile from his house. A woman who saw him walking along the road (speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others) asked him if everything was okay. He said yes.

Still, she called the police.

A female sheriff picked up the boy and called Patterson. “She asked me if I knew he was in town and I said no,” said Patterson.

Patterson was angry that Soren had gone to town without telling anyone, but says there was hardly any reason to worry.

“I didn’t panic because I know the roads and know he’s mature enough to walk there without incident,” she says.

The sheriff disagreed.

“She kept saying he could have been run over, or he could have been kidnapped, or ‘anything’ could have happened,” Patterson recalled.

The sheriff drove Soren home and left him with his grandfather. After returning to the house, Patterson scolded her son — and that was that, she thought.

But at 6:30 that evening, the sheriff returned with another officer. They told Patterson to turn around and put her hands behind her back. As three of her children watched, Patterson was handcuffed. The sheriff grabbed her purse and phone, put her in the cruiser and took her to jail.

To Patterson, none of this made sense. She had grown up in the area where she had a lot of free time to wander and play, and raised her children that way.

“The mentality here is more free-range,” she says.

Patterson was soon released on $500 bail. The next day, a case manager from the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) made a home visit and even went to interview Patterson’s eldest son at his school. The case manager told Patterson everything seemed fine but declined to comment Rode.

A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a “safety plan” for her to sign. It would require her to delegate a “safety person” as a “knowing participant and guardian” who would watch over the children when she leaves the house. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app on her son’s phone so his location can be monitored. (The day it will be illegal not to track down your children is fast approaching.)

Patterson didn’t want to be forced to track down her son. Reminiscent a similar caseshe contacted attorney David DeLugas. DeLugas is the head of ParentsUSA, a non-profit organization that often provides pro bono legal assistance to parents wrongly arrested and prosecuted for child neglect. A GoFundMe was formed to help ParentsUSA cover the Pattersons’ legal costs.

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 signed 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 somewhere without her knowing his exact location, it would prevent him from visiting friends or having any independence. But the ADA insisted that Soren had been in danger, so a safety plan was needed.

The case remained undecided.

Safety plans carry the veiled threat that if you don’t sign, your children could be taken away, DeLugas says. In this case, he says, the unspoken deal seems to be: Sign it and the state won’t prosecute. As the state do If prosecuted, Patterson could face a charge of reckless endangerment, a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

DeLugas would like to see Georgia pass a law that would allow authorities to monitor children and then leave them alone as long as they are not injured, in distress or in actual, imminent danger from an identifiable source. Meanwhile, as if this case couldn’t get any stranger, DCFS just sent Soren a birthday card signed by the case manager. Soren turned eleven this weekend.

Birthday greetings don’t change the facts. Patterson knows that refusing to sign the safety plan could get her in trouble. But she is determined.

“I don’t draw,” she says.