Olson: 'Home alone parents' led to strict law

Mattresses used to have tags on them that warned they were not to be removed "under penalty of law," and it seemed ridiculous that it could be a crime to remove a tag from your own property.

That’s kind of similar to Illinois’ law that says parents can be charged with neglect for leaving a child younger than 14 home alone.

In both cases, there’s a legitimate reason those laws exist. In the case of the mattresses, it’s to keep retailers from selling mattresses made from recycled materials and passing them off as new.

In the case of Illinois’ “home alone” law, it’s the case of David and Sharon Schoo, a St. Charles couple who left their children, ages 9 and 4, home alone while they vacationed in Acapulco, Mexico, over Christmas in 1992.

"On Dec. 20, 1992, the Schoos left their daughters with a stack of TV dinners and instructions on what to do while they were away," the Kane County Chronicle reported Dec. 29, 2002, the 10-year anniversary of the parents' arrest. "The next day, the girls inadvertently overflowed a bathtub, causing an electrical short that set off a fire alarm."

The children panicked and ran to a neighbor's house in their bare feet. Authorities soon learned they had been left alone in the house.

The Schoos left no contact information and apparently had no clue about the furor that had ensued until their plane landed at O’Hare Airport on Dec. 29, 1992, and eight police officers boarded and arrested them.

“Officers then paraded the lightly tanned couple through the terminal, where passengers lined the corridor and yelled insults," an Associated Press story in the Dec. 30, 1992, Daily Chronicle reported.

The story was a national outrage. Newspaper, TV and radio reporters from around the country would fill the Kane County Courthouse when the Schoos appeared. They became known as the "home alone parents," – the film starring Macaulay Culkin had been released in 1990, and the sequel was in theaters as the story broke. People magazine branded them the most hated couple in America, the Kane County Chronicle reported.

Prosecutors filed more than 60 criminal counts against the couple – but the legality of it wasn't so simple. They hadn't abandoned their children, for instance – they had planned to return home.

Months later, in April 1993, the Schoos pleaded guilty to neglect of a child in connection with leaving the girls home alone. It was a misdemeanor charge, and they were sentenced to probation and 200 hours of community service. Prosecutors dropped more serious charges including cruelty to children, child endangerment and child abandonment.

“I think it was the best we could do without putting the children through severe further abuse by the system itself,” Kane County State’s Attorney David Akemann told the Associated Press in an April 20, 1993, story.

Months later, Illinois lawmakers passed the nation's strictest law about leaving your kids unsupervised. People were supportive.

“If parents now leave their young children unattended for more than 24 hours, they will be breaking the law and they will face one to three years in prison,” the Northwest Herald opined on Sept. 13, 1993. “If the Schoos haven’t made it taboo, this law makes it absolutely clear.”

In the wake of the incident, the Schoo family disintegrated. The Schoos renounced their parental rights in July 1993, and their children were adopted. The couple also divorced and filed for bankruptcy. Their attorneys sued them, and each other. A Feb.1, 1996, story from The Associated Press reported that one of those attorneys, Gerard Kepple, later had his law license suspended for a year for trying to sell the Schoos’ story to TV producers.

More than 25 years later, cellphones, video messaging and GPS give us the ability to be in near constant contact with our children, and what defines neglect of a 12- or 13-year-old doesn't seem so clear-cut.

The law says only that it’s illegal to leave a child younger than 14 home alone for an “unreasonable” amount of time. It then gives 15 factors to consider, including where the parent is, the condition of the house, the time of day, how many children are in the house alone, and so on.

The law no doubt was meant to keep people from leaving young kids alone for days at a time. Most people agree that's wrong.

But is it "unreasonable" to leave a 13- and a 10-year-old home alone for a few hours while mom and dad have date night? What about if your 12- and 8-year-old are home alone for seven hours a day over spring break while their parents work?

State Rep. Joe Sosnowski, a Rockford Republican, has proposed changing the minimum age in the “home alone” law from 14 to 12. His proposal has support from lawmakers of both parties.

To revisit the mattress-tag analogy, in the 1990s, the government changed the wording on tags to say they can not be removed "except by the consumer." That made a lot more sense.

The same should probably be done with Illinois’ child neglect law. It’s not a crime to leave a responsible child home alone, or even to have them babysit, if they’re younger than 14.

If Illinois’ current law can be interpreted to make reasonable parenting a crime, then let’s change it to make sense.

• Eric Olson is general manager of the Daily Chronicle. Reach him at 815-756-4841 ext. 2257, email eolson@shawmedia.com, or follow him on Twitter @DC_Editor.