Once Again, Many Brits Think We’ve Overdone It

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, something pretty spooky and kooky happened to the Adam family.

Philip Adam spent his 35th birthday in a Florida jail. His wife, Jill, 33, also spent the night locked up.

Her father--who was on vacation with them--had to bail them out the next morning.

Now they’re all back home in England, where the press is in a tizzy. (The British press is regularly in a tizzy, but this is a pretty good one, as tizzies go.)

What happened to the Adam family was even expected to be addressed in the House of Commons this week by a Parliament member.

The furor there isn’t quite as big as the one over that notorious nanny, Louise Woodward, but this case does involve the neglect of young children. And not everyone will be on Philip and Jill Adam’s side.

Yet it is considered likely now that the felony charges against them will be dropped. And a Florida police captain says, “I hope this hasn’t permanently damaged our relationship with Great Britain.”

Keep that upper lip stiff, constable.

If perchance British tourists begin choosing California over Florida again, many thanks. Plenty of good rooms here still available.

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At approximately 9 o’clock on the night of May 30, a holiday fireworks show began, right outside the Tradewinds resort hotel in St. Petersburg Beach.

Maisie Adam, 5, and her baby brother, Daniel, 18 months, had been tucked in bed and gone to sleep.

This is when their parents and grandfather did something that most American mothers and fathers won’t condone.

They left the kids in their second-floor room and went downstairs to the swimming pool area to watch the fireworks.

But the fireworks woke up Maisie.

Getting out of bed, the little girl went to look for her parents out in the hallway. The door locked behind her.

A man found Maisie crying and clinging to the knob of the next door, her grandfather’s room.

He called the front desk. Hotel security called the St. Pete Beach police, who came to calm the two kids.

But the cops didn’t just buy Maisie an ice cream cone. They put her parents under arrest, charging them with felony child abuse.

Philip and Jill Adam appreciate that perhaps they made a poor parental decision. But felony child abuse?

Jill’s father didn’t have enough cash to bail them out that night, so he was unable to spring them from jail until the next morning, by which time their bond had been reduced.

“Felony child abuse, that carries up to five years in a Florida state prison,” says the Adam family’s attorney, John Trevena, from his office in Pinellas County.

“For leaving their hotel room?”

The case is reminiscent of one involving a Danish tourist who got arrested a couple of years ago for leaving her child in a stroller outside a New York restaurant, which is the way mothers did it back home. Poor parenting or cultural diversity?

Philip Adam told a reporter in England, “I am sure it would never have happened in this country. Obviously, they call child abuse one thing, we call it another.”

Brits are treating this as a front-page story. Reporters have been dispatched to Florida, where the attorney, Trevena, is receiving countless calls and faxes from TV programs of the “60 Minutes” ilk, as well as the “Hard Copy” type.

Why? Partly because some Brits see this as an overreaction typical of American police.

But also in part, the story is getting big headlines because Maisie’s grandfather is Sir Lawrence Byford, 73, one of the most famous police officials in England. He is formerly Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary--in other words, the country’s top cop.

The Adam family is a prominent one in England. Mark Byford, brother of Jill, is chief executive of BBC Worldwide television.

Paparazzi are camped outside the Adam and Byford houses as if they were royals, their attorney says.

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Florida keeps a lawyer busy. Trevena is the same one whose client was arrested in 1998 by a Pinellas County deputy on suspicion of impersonating a police officer--just for wearing an “LAPD” baseball cap in public.

Now a couple leaves a child unsupervised for 45 minutes or so and gets charged with felony abuse.

Even the man who found Maisie in the hallway told a Florida newspaper, “Charging them with a felony is a bit much.”

“We get some wild cases here in Florida, don’t we?” Trevena asks a Californian on the phone.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com