So sense Danny has been open, I'll talk about this as best as I can.
I come from a background most of you would identify as very conservative, although those terms are in my opinion increasingly meaningless except as slurs and are not very descriptive. My parents had introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons because they perceived, quite rightly, that from what they understood of the game that I was just the sort of highly precocious youth that would take to it like an otter to water. For a few years, things were fine and I was left to my own devices. On my own initiative there were things in the game that I felt rather unwholesome and tended to stay clear of as I could, which was rather easy since by 12 I was the DM for a bunch of 'Stranger Things' type nerds - many of whom had deeply troubled backgrounds of the like that makes the actual 'Stranger Things' show seem a light hearted fairy tale and which I won't go into here.
Sometime in this period, the Occult Scare got going full swing, and various media personalities and various figures within the religious community began to voice skepticism regarding Dungeons & Dragons. Some of that skepticism was in my judgement as a young teenager reasonably well founded. Much of that skepticism on the other hand was in my opinion based on gross misconceptions, superstition, bad theology, and what I refer to as "giving glory to Satan". Eventually, totally unrelated to my gaming, my parents happened on some art work produced by my younger brother which excited in them much alarm, and unable to explain the source of his inspiration, hit upon his sometimes association with my gaming as the likely culprit. Combined with there increasing misgivings about Dungeons and Dragons, they decided it was time to confront me about my game with the end of forbidding me to continue playing and with the specific strategy of confronting me about the spiritual damage that I was inflicting on my younger brother.
Now, there is one thing that is absolutely critical to understand about this story and that my family raised me to place a very high value in Reason, and that as a 13 year old with above normal adult cognitive ability and knowledge (if not experience), they were not going to just simply order me not to play D&D. I always get a bit of a laugh out of people who aren't part of a religious background claiming Faith is the opposite of Reason. In my house, they were treated as more or less the exact same thing and inseparable. So while they unquestioningly had the authority to just tell me to stop, they weren't going to do so without acquiring my agreement in the matter.
Unlike pretty much everything they'd ever told me to do before, this did not go very well. The result was the first real fight I can ever remember having with my parents, and four hours of rational debate that became increasingly emotional on all sides as my parents pitted their formidable intellects against a 13 year old that had decided not to budge and was prepared to argue the point. There was shouting. There was tears. There was some really underhanded emotional appeals. In the end, I had to give - a child is ultimately not in an equal contest with his parents, but in my mind I had yielded only on one point - that my younger brother was obviously not intellectually and emotionally equipped to process this content.
As a result my gaming material was burned. This despite the fact that they had had a very hard time proving from my trove that the artwork was demonic, because I had very pointedly not bought anything that I thought had problematic artwork. And as a result, I began a very prolonged campaign of disobeying my parents in a very calculated manner, which is as far as I can remember the first I disobeyed my parents over anything since being a toddler and the only thing of any gravity that I disobeyed them over. The exact methodology in question was to immediately switch to Gamma World, and then introduce them to the fact that I was playing Gamma World sometime later as a fait accompli. Then, a bit later I went back to D&D, and could always say I was playing Gamma World if questioned (which my mother, being no fool, pointedly never asked). Larcenous, yes, but while I'm not proud at having deceived and disobeyed my parents, I've never conceded that I lost the argument regarding the spiritual merits and dangers of RPGs. (Although, the fact that I was disobeying them does sort of complicate that discussion.)
Was any of this abuse?
Not in the slightest. This was highly concerned and involved parenting that if it can be faulted at all, was not involved enough. Had my parents been more engaged in my gaming, this probably would have never happened. But that's not abuse, nor is a parent being seriously concerned for a child's well being abuse.
And in particular, even if I obviously disagreed, I was also highly sympathetic to their fears and concerns. Because I had an older cousin who was far more troubled than I was and he was obviously in danger. I maintain that for him gaming had been one of his lifelines, and when that weak reed failed him at the same time a lot of other things were failing him, he took his own life. When that happened, they burned his books as well. And while I disagree, I can hardly fault the family for seeing the gaming as being related to his death in the middle of their grief and in the context.
So again, the situation here you describe is one I recognize, and I don't agree with the parents handling of the situation, and it's entirely possible that the parents involved aren't as wise as mine.
BUT THIS IS NOT ABUSE.
The abusive thing here would be to call up a social worker or the police and allow your anger to escalate this situation into a place that has absolutely no good outcomes for anyone.
