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Friday, December 07, 2007
Law - More on "Justice Is Unequal for Parents Who Host Teen Drinking Parties"
Updating this ILB entry from July 4th, which quoted stories about cases in Virginia and Maryland, here is a story from the Providence Rhode Island Journal, dated Dec. 6th and headlined "Law intended to curb teen drinking not working". Amanda Milkovits' lengthy report begins:
Barbara O’Neil said she wanted to surprise her 15-year-old daughter and her friends at their birthday sleepover by arriving home early with pizzas. She was the one surprised that night last December, she said, when she found her Lincoln house and backyard filled with teenagers and beer.Her daughter told her that many of the guests had invited themselves. “She was afraid because of peer pressure to tell them to leave,” O’Neil said. “She should have had said ‘this is out of control, you’re wrecking our house, get out of here.’ [But] she’d be blackballed at school.”
The neighbors had already called the police, who arrived shortly after O’Neil did. According to a police report, teens scaled the fence and ran. O’Neil, the report said, tried to hide the beer cans and kept asking the officers if they needed to report the incident.
“I said that out of fear,” O’Neil said this week. “It was a nightmare. If it was in your home, your daughter, wouldn’t you want to protect your daughter and discipline your daughter yourself? Wouldn’t you want to handle it yourself?”
In the end, O’Neil was the only one charged, after teenagers there told the police that she’d given them permission to stay. She was fined $350, the minimum under the so-called “social host law,” passed by the General Assembly last year to punish adults who allow underage drinking at their residences.
It took three years to get the law through the General Assembly — and the final version was weaker than its original draft. Still, it was praised by law enforcement as a step toward curbing teen drinking. The penalty for a first offense is a maximum fine of $1,000 with a possibility of up to six months in prison; a third offense is a felony.
And yet, after all the promise, a Journal review of District Court records found that just three people have been charged under the new law. No one has been charged this year.
Several teenagers have died this year in alcohol-related accidents, focusing renewed attention on underage drinking.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 7, 2007 01:51 PM
Posted to General Law Related