Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 4, 1995 TAG: 9504040091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Her lawyer said he will appeal to Circuit Court, where he plans to ask a judge to declare the ordinance invalid because it is "unconstitutionally vague."
Holdaway did not testify Monday, but had told police earlier that she was asleep in bed when her 16-year-old son took her car keys and slipped out of their Memorial Avenue Southwest apartment late on the night of Feb. 10.
Because her son had been cited four times earlier for violating the curfew for juveniles, Holdaway was charged with permitting or allowing "by insufficient control" her son to stay out past 11 p.m.
Defense attorney Jeffrey Dorsey of Salem had argued that Holdaway should not be held criminally accountable for her son's actions.
"Absent her handcuffing him to the bed, at which point I imagine Child Protective Services would become involved, there is literally no way for her to stop him from physically leaving the house, if he is bound and determined to do that," Dorsey said.
Dorsey said the case may have troubling implications for other parents, as police use the ordinance in their efforts to control juvenile crime.
"I don't see how the parents of the city can sleep well tonight, because apparently they shouldn't be sleeping. They ought to be awake and watching their children," he said.
But Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Joseph Bounds saw it differently.
"I don't find it very plausible that a parent doesn't know where her child is," Bounds said as he fined Holdaway $100 and sentenced her to 10 days in jail.
"There is a duty on the part of the parents, and it is a 24-hour duty, to see that their children obey the laws of the commonwealth and the city of Roanoke," the judge said.
"If you chose to have children, you accept the joys of the child as well as the burden of the child."
Holdaway, 36, was sent to jail briefly after Monday's hearing, but was released on bond to await an appeal hearing scheduled May 22.
As a convenience store clerk who worked the night shift, she told police earlier that she could not always keep up with her son's comings and goings. The 16-year-old's father does not live in the home and apparently did not help care for him, lawyers said.
Responding to Dorsey's arguments that Holdaway had done nothing wrong, Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Gerald Teaster said it was what she didn't do that got her in trouble.
"She is being charged with the crime of simply not being in control of her child," Teaster said - not just on the night of the crime, but over a longer period of time.
Teaster pointed to testimony from police Detective D.E. Sink, who said Holdaway had been warned last December that she could be charged if her son violated the curfew law again.
Roanoke's ordinance, passed in 1992, requires children 16 and younger to be off the streets by 11 p.m. weeknights and by midnight Friday through Sunday. Exceptions include juveniles running errands for their parents, responding to emergencies, or traveling to and from work.
Parents who allow their children to be out after curfew more than two times a year are subject to a misdemeanor conviction punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
After Holdaway's son was stopped at 4 a.m. Feb. 11 for driving a car with defective equipment, he told a police officer that his mother had just been admitted to Community Hospital. But after finding no record of Holdaway being treated, authorities charged the boy with violating the curfew law and driving without a license.
Dorsey said it was the latest of many run-ins with the law for the teen-ager, and authorities may have charged Patricia Holdaway out of frustration.
"There's been a failure to deal with the child involved here," he said, "so now they're going after the parent to compensate for that failure."
by CNB