It was dinnertime on October 30, 2024, when police handcuffed Brittany Patterson in front of three of her four children and took her to the Fannin County, Georgia, police station. She was then fingerprinted, photographed and dressed in an orange jumpsuit.

Hours earlier, around noon, Patterson had taken her oldest son to a doctor’s appointment. Their youngest son, Soren, 11, had intended to accompany them, but was not there when it was time to leave.

“I imagined I was in the woods or at Grandma’s house,” says Patterson, who lives on 16 acres with her children and father. (Her husband works out of state.) There is no shortage of relatives in the surrounding area. Patterson’s mother and sisters live just two minutes away.

Soren, however, was not playing in the forest. I had decided to walk to the center of Mineral Bluff, a town of only 370 residents. It’s not a mile from his house. A woman who saw him walking on the road (speed limit: 25 in some places, 35 in others) asked him if he was okay. He said yes.

However, he called the police.

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

Patterson was upset that Soren had gone to town without telling anyone, but says there was no reason to worry.

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

The sheriff disagreed.

“She kept mentioning that he could have been run over, kidnapped, or ‘anything’ could have happened,” Patterson recalls.

The sheriff took Soren home and left him with his grandfather. After returning to the house, Patterson scolded his son and that, he thought, was that.

But at 6:30 pm that night, the sheriff returned with another deputy. They told Patterson to turn around and put his hands behind his back. As three of her children watched, Patterson was handcuffed. The sheriff took her purse and phone, put her in the patrol car and took her to jail.

To Patterson, none of this made sense. She had grown up in an area with a lot of unsupervised time to walk and play, and she was raising her children that way, too.

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

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

A few days later, DFCS presented Patterson with a “safety plan” for him to sign. It would require her to delegate a “security person” to be an “informed participant and guardian” and watch the children whenever she leaves the house. The plan would also require Patterson to download an app on his son’s phone that would allow his location to be monitored. (The day it will be illegal No Tracking down the children is fast approaching.)

Patterson didn’t want to be forced to track down her son. Remembering a similar casecontacted attorney David DeLugas. DeLugas is the head of ParentsUnited States, a nonprofit organization that often provides free legal help to parents wrongfully arrested and prosecuted for child neglect. TO GoFundMe has been established to help ParentsUSA cover the Pattersons’ legal expenses.

As Patterson’s attorney, 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, that would prevent her from visiting friends or having any independence. But the ADA maintained that Soren had been in danger and therefore a safety plan was necessary.

The matter remained unresolved.

With safety plans, the veiled threat is that if you don’t sign, your children can be taken away from you, DeLugas says. In this case, he says, the unspoken agreement seems to be: Sign it and the state won’t prosecute. if the state does Prosecute, Patterson could face a charge of reckless conduct, a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

DeLugas would like to see Georgia pass a law that allows authorities to check on children and then leave them alone, as long as they are not injured, endangered or in real and immediate 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 11 this weekend.

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

“I won’t sign,” he says.