Ohio Mom Wants Teenagers’ Employers To Be Required To Notify Parents If Kid Doesn’t Show Up For Work

A grieving Ohio mother has started an online petition to require employers of teenagers to notify a parent if their child fails to show up for work, Cleveland’s WEWS-TV reports.

Last November, 17-year-old Damian Henning died in what police believe was a suicide. The Sandusky teenager had failed to show up for a shift at his job at a water park, and his body was later found underneath a bridge in Toledo, about 60 miles away.

His mother, Bonnilee Jackson, believes that his death could have been prevented had the lad’s employer contacted him when he didn’t show up for work.

On the day of his death, as Toledo’s WTVG reports, Damian was to work a split shift at the Kalahari Water Park in Sandusky. For the first half of his shift, nothing seemed amiss, according to his coworkers.

“He was there for half the day. He spoke to people. They said he was fine and then he just was missing in the middle, like that should have been a red flag,” said Jackson.

He didn’t show up for the second half of his shift. What’s more, because Jackson expected that her son was at work, precious moments — moments that could have been spent tracking down the missing teen — ticked away on the clock, while the boy’s mother had no idea he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. By the time she reported him missing, 12 hours had passed.

“Time is valuable and we need every minute that we can get to try to look for him and if they would have called me it would have been completely different, completely,” she said.

Jackson is trying to convince the Ohio legislature to pass a law that would require employers of teenagers to notify a parent, guardian, or family member if a teen fails to show up for work. The law would apply only to teens who need a work permit for their jobs.

In addition to her legislative efforts, she’s also started a petition on Change.org, in order to rally others to her cause. As of this writing, her petition has gathered just over 26,000 signatures.

“Schools are mandated to notify parents. Employers that employ minors NEED to be held to the same accountability,” the petition reads, in-part.

Unfortunately for Jackson, online petitions carry no real legislative weight. No body of legislators is tasked with reviewing or responding to them, and indeed, the best anyone can hope for when filling out such a petition is to hope that it gets noticed by someone in a position to respond.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. For readers outside the U.S., visit Suicide.org or Befrienders Worldwide for international resources you can use to find help.