To the Editor:
Open letter to Senator Crow and Representative Hill, please take a moment to read over my email as I believe it contains some information that will make your upcoming “Evelyn’s Law” more practical and more effective than the one that has been floated around so far. I am a retired law enforcement officer with much experience in the area of search and recovery aspects of law enforcement and have received hundreds of hours of training and expertise in this narrow field. I will gladly forward my credentials to you for your review if you wish them. I have outlined my concerns about Evelyn’s Law below as well as some important suggestions to make it more effective.
• The real issue with the Evelyn Boswell case is not that she was not reported missing for two months. By then, the critical 48 period had already elapsed and the benefits that are gained in the first few hours have already been lost.
• The real issue at hand, in this case, is extremely poor parenting and outright neglect and abuse. The 48-hour proposal does not address this core issue, especially in Evelyn’s case.
• The core issue in Evelyn’s case is that initially, the mother was dragging the story out, saying she did not know where her baby was or who the baby was with. Of course, her story kept changing and she eventually blamed other people or claimed that they had possession of her child.
• That is the heart of what Evelyn’s Law should be about. Knowing where your child is, who your child is with and what are the conditions in which your child is staying.
• Most parents will immediately under most circumstances report their loved ones missing when there is a potential for danger or they are truly missing, so this law does not and should not be directed at normal citizens. It should be directed at those who have extremely poor parenting skills due to lack of intelligence, common sense, drug induced stupors or because of outright neglect and abuse.
• TCA 39-15-401 requires that “physical abuse” must have occurred before officers can levy a charge of “child endangerment” against an offender. In Evelyn’s case, physical abuse may or may not have been happening the whole time she was missing, so that is why the current law is ineffective and it is also why the newly proposed law would not be effective as well. The deputies could not make a child abuse type charge against the mother because they would have to have the child in their presence to determine physical abuse. This is exactly why we need to put the emphasis on the parent’s behavior and not the condition of the child.
• Evelyn’s Law needs wording and teeth that will hold the appropriate offenders accountable for their parenting/behavior and, at the same time, provide law enforcement agencies and investigators the tools they need to charge suspects. The current definition of “child endangerment” in TCA 39-15-401 needs to be amended and add the language below or create a totally separate Evelyn’s Law. I believe that something along the following lines will accomplish this.
• “Child endangerment” is defined as any form of abuse or neglect, to include willfully or knowingly putting or allowing a child under your charge to be placed in any situation, location or with any person where their wellbeing or safety is not known, or cannot be readily verified by a parent, guardian, caretaker, doctor, Law Enforcement Agency, or verified by any person with whom the child’s whereabouts and well being is known or would be reasonably expected to be known of said child.”
• The key to an effective Evelyn’s Law is to put the emphasis requiring parents and guardians to know where their child is, who their child is with and under what conditions their child is existing in. The arbitrary 48 hour proposal does none of this.
• As I mentioned before, most parents are not going to wait an extra minute to report their child missing. Forty-eight hours is way too much time to pass before reporting a two year child missing in a snow storm. In addition, if a parent waits 47 and a half hours to report their child missing, then Law Enforcement has just lost 99% of the most critical time needed to resolve these types of cases.
• As with all laws, there will have to be some reasonable exemptions for cases like a mother who is immediately searching her 50-acre wooded area and was unable to get to her neighbor’s phone 8 miles away in time to report her two year old missing.
• If our current law was in place as I have proposed above, Sullivan County Investigators would have been able to charge the mother as soon as she told them that she did not know where her child was or who her child was with on day one and would not have to prove the current physical abuse requirement to make an arrest. The bottom line is if you don’t know where your child is due to drug stupors, abuse or neglect, then your child could be walking down the middle of the highway somewhere. We need to fix this.
We understand that there is a lot of emotion going around on this issue and many people are in support of the first petition to pop up on this matter because they are frustrated and want to do the right thing. It is my belief and the belief of many others that the bill you are introducing does not effectively deal with the core issue of what happened in Evelyn’s case. It is simply a 48-hour mandatory reporting period, which by all accounts will not have a single effect on parental behavior or crimes being committed in offenses like this. Please reconsider what you are proposing, listen to those who may have a better recommendation and do more research into other similar laws before making any final decision on this 48 mandatory reporting bill. Please do this for Evelyn’s sake and for future children who may end up in a similar situation. Please honor Evelyn Boswell with a law that will be effective and give Law Enforcement the tools they need to do the job right. She and other children deserve the best effort we can give them in this proposed legislation.
Senator Crowe and Representative Hill, thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. I am passionate about this cause because I have participated in and been in command of many missing person searches and one in particular, which resulted in the creation of the Kayla McKean law in Florida. As the Special Operations Commander for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, I was the first Deputy on the scene the day six-year-old Kayla was reported missing by her father. Three days later, we found her body in a shallow grave by a spring, where she loved to swim in when she was alive. Like the mother of Evelyn, Kayla’s father lied to us and misled us for three days. When all was said and done, he had beat his daughter to death because she had soiled her underwear that day. As I mentioned above, we need to put the emphasis on the parents and guardians and not on the current physical abuse requirement, nor do we need to allow parents up to 48 hours to react to situations that cry out for minutes. Thank you again for your time and consideration. I sincerely hope that this information may help you in your quest to make our children safer. Please contact me if you have any questions or need any of my credentials.
If you believe that 48 hours is way too long to report a child who is lost and wandering around in freezing weather or it is too long to wait is in any other dangerous situation like walking down the middle of a highway or just not knowing where a child is then, please contact Senator Rusty Crowe and Representative Timothy Hill and ask them not to pass Evelyn’s Law in its current form. Please help Evelyn and other children by passing a law on their behalf that we can be proud of. Contact Sen. Crowe or Rep. Hill at the Capitol at 615-741-2468 or email at sen.rusty.crowe@capitol.tn.gov and Rep. Timothy Hill at 615-741-2050 or email at rep.timothy.hill@capitol.tn.gov.

Steve Stevenson
Roan Mountain