[jbigelow76]

Maybe it's just me but I'm having a hard time taking this story seriously. The list of affronts visited on the family (strip searches, cops pissing on property, foster worse than the parents, humiliation of the parents by the state) makes it a story sound almost too good to be true if you are looking to rile up your readership.

No identifying information is another big red flag, the parents of the free range kids hassled for letting their kids walk a mile to the park were all over media but this even more horrible (if true) story of kids being taken away for playing in the back yard is totally anonymous? Come on.

The bar to get me to hate on bureaucratic drones is pretty low, over shoot it too much and you take the fun away.

[jpatokal]

Per the details in the original post, she is employed by a school, and has been suspended and told to not to talk to media until this is over:

http://www.freerangekids.com/boy-11-plays-basketball-in-own-...

And given the steady stream of well-documented, actual and equally ridiculous cases like this on Free Range Kids, I doubt this is a prank.

[jbigelow76]

I don't think it's impossible that this story is true, nor do I think it's a prank, but I wonder if the original author were pressed for identifying details if they would claim it was an amalgamation of different cases crafted into one "cautionary tale".

[tsotha]

They want to make an example out of her.

[aaron695]

Every time I can fact check a story from reason.com it's almost always not telling the whole truth.

I like alternate media picking up on buried stories, I just wish they could do it without lying but perhaps this is why the stories are not picked up, they are more complicated than reason.com's simple tales.

[tptacek]

I have the same experience. There are no other reports of this story (apart from Skenazy's blog). I went looking through Florida police blotters in April for neglect charges. I read some pretty heinous shit (cages, for instance, were involved in one case). Nothing this dumb.

Skenazy doesn't even need to be biased or dishonest for this story not to be the whole truth (or true at all); she just has to not fact-check it.

I'd be curious if anyone came up with a way to independent corroborate any part of this story.

[tptacek]

More stuff got posted today, but if anything it just muddies the water further.

Romanesko posted it to his Facebook feed yesterday after a journalist forwarded it to him calling it "bullshit". People have been picking the story apart since then. Some telling bits:

* Florida doesn't have "Child Protective Services", the proper noun Skenazy repeatedly uses; Florida has a DCF.

* Skenazy's story claims that the parents were unable to visit their child because the relative they left them with lived across county lines. But a felony charge doesn't prevent you from crossing county lines.

* By Skenazy's own account (I'm surprised I missed this): the kids were placed in longer-term foster care because the "slightly problematic" relative they left them with put them back in foster care without informing the parents.

* It's apparently not normal process in Florida for neglect charges to create both civil and criminal cases. I think it's also possible Skenazy, who is not an attorney, is confused: there may be civil-looking paperwork required to place the kids in temporary care.

* A careful reading of the original story suggests that the kid(s?) may have been locked out longer than 90 minutes; the timespans you have to account for are: the time before the neighbor noticed the kid(s?) out in the rain, the time after that where the kids remain outside unattended until the police arrive, and then the time it took for the police to wait at the house with the kids (which also doesn't sound right; why didn't they just take the kids to the station?).

What we actually know right now:

* Somebody set of parents in Florida, who may or may not live in the same place (the single page of court documentation posted lists them separately) had some sort of run-in with juvenile court involve one or more kids.

* A lawyer reviewed paperwork not yet released and said that it corroborates the parents story.

Of course, the parents could be reporting accurately the actions of the police on that day, but leaving out a bunch of additional context from prior to that day.

[ghaff]

Yeah, I don't much care for the apparent general trend and there have certainly been some documented cases that are pretty ridiculous. I daresay things that I did as a child at various ages would shock a lot of people today.

That said, this particular story is from: Lenore Skenazy is host of the reality show “World’s Worst Mom” on the Discovery Life Channel, starting Jan. 22. She is also a public speaker and founder of the book and blog Free-Range Kids.

That doesn't make it wrong. But it clearly comes from someone who is on a particular side of the issue. And a quick search doesn't uncover original reportage from elsewhere. So color me skeptical.

[cactusface]

Maybe the parents simply contacted the author with the story and asked not to be named. It's kind of pointless journalism though if you have no verifiable facts. In some other stories she uses real and full names; she has a TV show and is a published author; I don't feel like she made this up.

[nsxwolf]

She has a pretty good reputation, and has had no shortage of stories like this to report on, so I doubt she want or need to would tarnish all that.

It might just be that in a country with 300 million people, this is going to happen once in a while. It may or may not represent a general erosion of parent's rights and civil liberties.

[Klinky]

Having a reality TV show and running a popular blog would make me think they're more likely to spin or embellish things.

[ghaff]

Or simply not probe too deeply into a really perfect story about how horrible things have gotten. Might not be the case here but, if it were, hardly unique. See, for example, this discussion of the Rolling Stone Duke story: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-21/a-messy-ans...