John Humphries: I suppose all parents have three reactions to what has happened
in the Algarve. The first obviously is to pray that the little
girl will be returned safe and well to her parents. The second is deep sympathy
for the parents of little Madeleine McCann, 4 days after she disappeared. The
third is to ask would we have left a child in the same circumstances. Professor
Carolyn Hamilton is the Head of the Children's Legal Centre a charity concerned with law and policy in this area. Professor Hamilton, what does the law say, is there a legal minimum age at which we can leave children?
Carolyn Hamilton: There isn't any minimum
age in law. It's very much based on outcomes. It's based on 'are you placing a child at risk if you leave the child alone'. So parents have to weigh up all the factors and decide, is it safe to leave my child
alone for a period of time. So for instance if you left a child alone for four
hours, a small child, probably we would say 'no that's not'. But in the case of
these parents, the children were asleep. We presume perhaps they were good sleepers
they popped back every half an hour. The door was locked. The shutters were down on the windows.
JH: They weren't very far away.
CH: They weren't very far
away, at all. One would probably say that's a reasonable choice to take, that's
a reasonable risk. There are those who say you should never leave your child alone
for a minute, but perhaps that's not truly practical for any of us. And I think
it also has to be remembered that sometimes children are abducted when the parents are in the house. That you can't sit in the room with the child all day and all night. But
that's a very difficult decision to take, whether to leave a child alone or not.
JH: Well probably particularly on holiday I suppose in a way because
you're in a hotel you think, you know, can we leave them in the room while we nip down to the restaurant for a couple of hours
and I suppose most people would say that they would do that, depending obviously on the age of the child and whether they
are good sleepers and all that. But it is an incredibly difficult decision
to take all the time isn't it.
CH: It is a difficult
decision to take but even babysitting services aren't really in the room with the child. It
is difficult and I think it's fair to say that most people would leave their children alone for very short periods
of time in those circumstances. It's not an unreasonable decision to take. It's just terribly unfortunate.
JH: But the problem is I suppose that in the end if
you do it and something goes wrong then action can be taken against you.
CH: Yes, if you could be shown to have neglected the child or abandoned the child, yes, you could
be committing a criminal offence and what the court would look at is all the factors. What
did you do to make sure that child was safe, because that's what they really looking at. Was
the child safe when you went out for a few minutes?
JH: Did you do all the reasonable things?
CH: Did you take every precaution that was reasonable? It's interesting that we have a website and 'Home Alone: Leaving Children On Their
Own' is our most downloaded piece of information. It's what people want to know
all the time. And it is a very unclear situation.
JH: Well, I've no doubt we'll get lots of emails about
that and again if people want to join in the conversation on that on the message board that's available at 9 o'clock. Professor Hamilton. Thank you very much.
Listen on RealPlayer (starts at 19:10)
*
Professor
Carolyn Hamilton Childrens Legal Centre
Professor Carolyn Hamilton is the Director
of The Children's Legal Centre, a position she has held since 1995. She is a well known child rights lawyer, who has published
widely on issues of children's rights and child law. Professor Hamilton is the Senior Legal Adviser for the Children's Commissioner
in England and the Child and Family Commissioner for the Legal Services Commission. She has acted as a consultant to UNICEF
on child protection and juvenile justice in many countries, including in Georgia, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova,
Tajikistan and Kosovo and to the UN Crime Prevention Branch on juvenile justice, working with the Ad-Hoc Expert Group on the
Application of United Nations Standards and Norms. From 2001-2003, Professor Hamilton was appointed as Consultant on Juvenile
Justice to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
*
Would you leave your child alone?
Timesonline
Madeleine McCann's parents checked on her every half-hour while she slept in her room at an Algarve resort –
yet still she was abducted. What is the law in relation to leaving children alone? Professor Carolyn Hamilton offers her legal
opinion and two Times writers give their own experiences as mothers
Professor Carolyn Hamilton
May 9, 2007
Scenario 1: You have three children under 5. You go shopping at the supermarket for 20 minutes, leaving them
asleep in their car seats with the doors unlocked to avoid their movements triggering the car alarm.
This scenario is not advisable. It is an
offence under section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to neglect or abandon a child under the age of 16 for whom
a parent or carer has responsibility, but the law gives no detail of what amounts to neglect or abandonment. Prosecution and/or
conviction depend largely on the circumstances. The punishment can range from a fine to ten years' imprisonment.
The court is to likely to take into account
the age and maturity of the child, for how long he or she was left alone and the arrangements to ensure his or her safety.
Here, the children might get out of the car and wander on to the road – or anybody could remove a child from the car.
If the car doors were locked the children
might be safer, but then what might happen if the children became very distressed in an enclosed space? Technically, children
should not be left alone like that until they are 16. Five minutes might be acceptable in a locked car; 20 minutes is too
long.
Scenario 2: You
have 18-month old twins. You put them down for their afternoon nap in their cots, then dash down the road to get a pint of
milk for a cup of tea. You are gone for less than ten minutes.
In this scenario, if the twins were asleep
in cots and couldn't get out, a parent might reasonably decide to leave them. If they were able to walk about – for
instance, leaving a child of 6 awake and alone at home for ten minutes – it would be more problematic. You would need
to worry not only about intruders but also about accidents; the possibility of a child burning some toast, for example, and
starting a fire.
For a child of about 12 and above, it would
depend largely on his or her maturity and factors such as whether he or she had been left at home alone before. Obviously
it would be much better to have neighbours who could check up, and doors should be locked. I would never recommend leaving
a child of any age for very long, but for children in cots, ten minutes is probably safe enough. I wouldn't say this situation
is desirable but it's better than scenarios 1 and 3.
Scenario 3:You have
three children aged 10, 8 and 6. You go out for dinner, leaving them in bed at home. You tell the eldest to ring you on your
mobile if there are any problems.
This would be a real matter for concern.
If the parents were out for dinner, they might easily be gone for a few hours. Even if this was for lunch and not for dinner
(so in the middle of the day) it would still be highly undesirable.
If they were very close by and checking
on the children often, the situation would be different – but leaving three children of that age alone for several hours
would still be extremely unadvisable, as the potential risks are simply too great unless you can come back and check on them
often.
Even if the eldest child could be relied
on to use the phone, if the parent could not get back within 15 minutes there is a possibility that he or she might be charged
with abandonment.
If a neighbour was there in case of emergency
it would certainly be better, but because of the length of time involved it would still be very ill-advised.
Scenario 4:You go
out for dinner in a hotel complex on holiday abroad, leaving a child aged 3 and twins aged 18 months in a locked room. You
return to check on them every half hour.
If the parents have taken all the risks
into account and decided that it is safe to leave the children, this would probably be reasonable. If the children were awake
or a bit older and able to wander around, or potentially even to open the door to an intruder, perhaps not. But asleep, with
the door locked and people constantly checking up on them, it is likely to be reasonable.
You should be checking on them very regularly.
I don't think it's any less safe in Continental Europe than it is here. Leaving children alone in this manner is not desirable,
but parents have to balance the demands of life and will probably have to consider such issues regularly.
A parent needs to ensure that children are
safe if they are left alone. Leaving them for a short while, asleep, in a locked room with regular checks is acceptable. Leaving
them for two hours, or with unlocked doors, is not.
MARY ANN SIEGHART:
Your children are 20 times more likely to be killed by lightning than to be abducted by a stranger. You are much more likely
to get five out of six numbers right in the National Lottery. Yet "It could be you" is the dread thought that all we parents
have had since hearing the news that a three-year-old girl had been snatched from her hotel room in an Algarve resort.
How should we react? How protective should
we be? The least we can do is try to match our behaviour towards our children with the real – rather than the imagined
– risks that they face.
If we were rational, we would make much
more fuss about them playing in the park and sheltering under a tree during a storm than talking to strangers. If we were
rational, we would be more worried about them dying from a wasp, bee or hornet sting than from a paedophile murder. And we
wouldn't let them anywhere near a bicycle.
In our family, we have always been pretty
robust about children's safety. Our general view is that oversheltering does them no favours.
If they never learn to cross the road as
a child, they are more likely to be run over as a teenager. If we don't teach them to be streetwise, they won't cope when
– and there has to be a when – they are out on their own. For dependent children have to grow up into independent
adults. There is no way of avoiding that. The best we can do is to prepare them for independent living. And that means gradually
increasing the amount of freedom and responsibility that we give them.
When our elder daughter was 5, we let her
walk round the block to the sweet shop. It didn't involve crossing any roads, and she knew not to walk into the street or
to get into a car with a stranger.
Unbeknown to her, my husband followed her
the first few times at a distance. She was fine, and was generally rewarded with a free sweetie from the kindly shop owner,
which allowed her to learn that other adults outside the family could be trusted to keep an eye on her, too.
By the time our children were 9 and 7 we
were letting them go for walks and bike rides (wearing cycle helmets) together in the countryside. They learnt to rely on
each other and to take note of their surroundings rather than following a parent blindly.
At 11, our elder daughter was walking to
school and back, a mile each way, every day. And last Friday our younger daughter, now 13, made it from Winchester to Norwich
on her own, a journey involving four trains and a crossing of London. All this – we hope – will encourage self-confidence
and self-reliance.
You have to make them aware of the risks
and teach them how to deal with them. Both our daughters have been on a self-defence course but, equally, neither is shy of
asking a friendly-looking adult (ideally a woman) for help if necessary.
They know that abductions happen but they
also understand that the reason why the occasional child-snatching fills so many acres of newsprint is precisely because it
is so very, very rare.
Of course we parents all worry about our
children. Yet childhood is the safest part of a person’s life and is becoming ever safer. You are least likely to be
murdered between the ages of 5 and 16, and if you are, the killer is likely to be someone you know – possibly even your
parent.
What is more, child deaths from any cause
in this country have more than halved in the past 25 years.
The world isn't getting more dangerous for
them. It's just that parents are getting more neurotic.
SARAH VINE:
I am living proof that it is perfectly safe to leave your children at home alone. From a relatively young age (7
or 8, if memory serves), my parents used to leave my brother and me in the house at night while they popped out for a bite
to eat. No harm ever came to us, principally because they always took precautions to make sure that we were fundamentally
safe (locked doors and windows, watchful neighbours, etc), but also because, thanks to their trust, I was a sensible little
girl.
You might have thought, then, that I would
be similarly disposed towards my children. But no. It anything I am even more neurotic than most about leaving them alone.
In the evenings, when they are asleep upstairs, I will not even go as far as the bottom of the garden (where I have my home
office) for fear that something might happen while I am out of earshot. If I fill up the car with petrol with them in the
back, I will drive to the front of the forecourt to pay, just so that I can keep an eye on them.
Ridiculous behaviour, of course, but I cannot
seem to help myself. In my defence, both my children are under 4: they are small, trusting and extremely accident-prone. Only
the other day I caught my daughter sitting in her Wendy house with a plastic bag "hat" on her head – this despite the
fact that all plastic bags in our house are meticulously knotted and put away safely.
But there are other reasons. First, I am
older than my parents were when they had me – much older. And the older you get, the more risk-averse you become: too
many scare stories, too many chilling news reports (and, it has to be said, a few nasty experiences of my own). They were
21 when they had me: barely out of nappies themselves. I was 36 when I had my daughter: an entirely different proposition.
If life teaches you anything, it is that not everybody is as good as they ought to be. I know we are all supposed to rail
against our risk-averse society, but when it comes to your children, it's hard.
There is another factor, too. Being left
alone in the house was scary. I never let on to my parents how scary, as I didn't want to disappoint them. But I was pretty
terrified. I would lie in bed, wide awake, listening to the strange noises of the night, analysing every squeak and rustle,
until I heard the welcome crunch of their car's tyres on the driveway – at which point I would finally succumb to sleep.
So I agree: we should not cocoon our children.
But nor, by the same token, should we assume that the process of growing up is always an easy one.
