Child abuse in regards to Dungeons and Dragons IRL, how should such things be handled.

[S'mon]

Where are people getting the idea that the property of kids is the property of the parents? Because I'm not so sure...

Do Parents Own Their Children's Property? - FindLaw

All children under the age of 18 have the same rights with respect to owning property. They cannot enter into a contract without a parent co-signing, unless they are emancipated minors. But assuming that a minor came into the possession of the item without having entered into a contract, as is...

blogs.findlaw.com

Well that blog post is discussing it in the case of two divorced parents fighting over their rights over the child! Which messes it up especially as the courts may tend to see the mother as the 'real owner' of the child.

There are circumstances where children can legally truly own property, but that doesn't mean a child who buys an RPG book with their pocket money 'owns' that book vs the parent. In English Law (which US Contract Law derives from, except in Louisiana I think) a child cannot enter into a Contract for non-necessaries, so technically when a 12 year old buys a book from the FLGS, they're not 'really' buying it! So who owns the book? 'Ownership' can be a fuzzy concept.

Anyway in practice a court is not going to stop a parent taking books away from their child.

 

[S'mon]

The incident DOES highly bother me though. Perhaps I am wrong, but it really sounded and feels like abuse to me. How can a parent simply take something someone has worked that hard for for months, destroy it for no good reason without returning any money or recompense of any kind, isolate them from some friends, and we call it good?

Pretty sure everyone here is calling it bad. Bad =/= illegal. Parents have wide latitude to be bad parents. Because, to paraphrase Churchill on democracy, parents are the worst possible people to raise a child - except for all the others.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Whether or not a child can have property rights- and at what age- probably varies from state to state. However, one should not assume that just because a kid possesses something that they actually own it. It could be the legal property of the parents, who then give the child conditional permission to use it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The language the parents used and tossed at us and others could be considered abusive, and even towards adults would probably be considered harassment and enough for charges in and of themselves.

This part really stands out to me even more than the rest. Are you arguing that someone who says something you don't like or are offended by is grounds for arrest? Even between adults? Seriously?

You might have a problem running into a thing called the 1st amendment with having a government official arrest someone for calling you a sinner/loser/bad person/whatever. With what you described, there is nothing remotely coming close to being illegal there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Are you arguing that someone who says something you don't like or are offended by is grounds for arrest? Even between adults? Seriously?

It can happen, but it’s a high, high hurdle.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It can happen, but it’s a high, high hurdle.

I know not every type of speech is protected, but what he's arguing would essentially remove the right for people to protest, as literally every protest would be grounds for charges because things said at every protest, someone finds offensive. And things said during protests are much worse than what he described in the OP.

There's a big difference between sustained harassment, and having different views on the world. Even if the other person is wrong. Being wrong isn't a crime.

 

[Umbran]

I know not every type of speech is protected, but what he's arguing would essentially remove the right for people to protest, as literally every protest would be grounds for charges because things said at every protest, someone finds offensive. And things said during protests are much worse than what he described in the OP.

With respect, we don't actually know what was said. If it contained threats, for example, it could be actionable.

And, let us not overstate things - some countries in Europe have Hate Speech laws, for example, where some offensive statements are legally actionable, but people there still have effective protests.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I know not every type of speech is protected, but what he's arguing would essentially remove the right for people to protest, as literally every protest would be grounds for charges because things said at every protest, someone finds offensive. And things said during protests are much worse than what he described in the OP.

There's a big difference between sustained harassment, and having different views on the world. Even if the other person is wrong. Being wrong isn't a crime.

Context & details matter.

Right now, there’s a guy in jail for making terroristic threats. He made a shooting a gun gesture at someone during a heated discussion.

We’ll find out how this shakes out if/when it goes to court.

Calling someone a satanist might not seem like much, but in certain places, that might be akin to putting them in someone’s crosshairs. The hosts of Top Gear got run out of a town it the USA’s Deep South for having cars painted with pro-Hillary and pro-LGBT slogans.

An accused satanist in a similar region might be at a greatly increased risk of bodily harm.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Context & details matter.

Right now, there’s a guy in jail for making terroristic threats. He made a shooting a gun gesture at someone during a heated discussion.

We’ll find out how this shakes out if/when it goes to court.

Calling someone a satanist might not seem like much, but in certain places, that might be akin to putting them in someone’s crosshairs. The hosts of Top Gear got run out of a town it the USA’s Deep South for having cars painted with pro-Hillary and pro-LGBT slogans.

An accused satanist in a similar region might be at a greatly increased risk of bodily harm.

They didn't get run out of town. The producers edited that to make it much worse than it was. They were driving around all day before finally someone at a gas station confronted them. Also, risking confrontation doesn't mean you can be arrested for it. In order for the analogy to be apt to what he's been arguing, the police would have arrested Jeremy and Co. They did not.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I wasn’t comparing the Top Gear crew to the Americans. I was comparing the folks at the gas station to the people who called the OP a satanist.

In that TG episode, the gas station manager “calls the boys” on the TG presenters in response to their jokey slogans. That call was “incitement to riot”, unprotected speech publicly calling for someone to harm another.

(See also the South American special where the crew was pelted by eggs, rocks and bricks over a perception they were being provocative about the Falklands conflict.)

Similarly, publicly calling someone a satanist in certain communities could be an incitement to riot*. We can’t know for sure, of course, not having been given a location. But neither can we dismiss this in an offhand way as “merely offensive”. Nor can we hyperbolically expand the tension here between free speech and safety beyond the confines of this encounter. We simply don’t have enough to go on.



* not probable, but possible