SULLIVAN COUNTY, Tenn. — An online petition pushing for legislation that would require parents to report a missing child to authorities within one week has more than 9,000 signatures.
The petition, called “Evelyn’s Law,” is addressed to the Tennessee Senate in response to the search for 15-month-old Evelyn Boswell, who was reportedly last seen in December but wasn’t reported missing until Feb. 18.
“The reason I didn’t report it or anything was I knew the person who had her and I didn’t want them to run away with her,” Maggie Boswell, Evelyn’s mother, told WCYB last week.
Sen. Rusty Crowe of Johnson City said he still needs more information about the case but said he is ready to re-examine Tennessee’s laws.
“When you’re in the mall and your child is gone for a minute, you freak out,” Crowe said. “We would really have to look and see what’s available legislatively and legally in Tennessee, we may already have laws that take care of that. It’s worth taking another look.”
Sen. Jon Lundberg of Bristol, on the other hand, believes an additional law on the books could potentially do more harm than good by implicating parents who didn’t know their child was missing.
“For most parents, if their child is missing for a few hours you have alarm bells going off, much less days,” Lundberg said. “I think this is an anomaly, thank God it’s an anomaly, so I don’t think we need reporting laws in place.”
You can see the petition for “Evelyn’s Law” here.