Is this assault?

meritaten

What is your take on this Jane? for a trivial family row over 'picking up chicken with fingers'? you have seen more than your share of family disputes I would say - is this assault? really? would you make an arrest?

robpw2

*max* wrote: »

:huh: How has his brother assaulted him? By tapping his arm when he went to stick his fingers in the food dish? Was he "berating him" when he said "don't do that"? Wait....should we consider this mental cruelty maybe? Sure...Poor little boy, being told off for bad manners - no wonder he reacted like he did! He probably should have tipped the whole table over and thrown his plate at the wall too, that would have shown them awful people, with their rigid table manners and cruel arm-tapping! Forget the police, he should be calling Childline.:cool:

since when is it a "childs" job to punish their sibling ?

robpw2

Janepig wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

There we are then. I'll get right on to it. :rotfl:

Where did I say my children assault each other? They are just normal children who carry tales about each other to annoy me.

Or did you mean the OP? Which isn't quite as amusing.

Jx

im not sure why you find assualt funny , i wasnt commenting on your children i was talking about the ops children who are supposed to be adults and should not be hitting eachother

*max*

robpw2 wrote: »

since when is it a "childs" job to punish their sibling ?

Are you for real? He wasn't "punishing" him, he tapped him on the arm and said "don't do that". Oh, and they are 20 and 22 years old, hardly children...I'm starting to get seriously weirded out by some people's responses on here!

minimoneysaver

Hootie19 wrote: »

Clearing out - yes he is ALWAYS this short tempered. He does this kind of thing all the time. He threw a drink over his sister at the weekend. She was sitting next to her 15 month old baby.

I know he has a lot going at the moment, and I could list hundreds of occasions when he has behaved inappropriately. And the ONLY reason I hold back from calling the police is for the reasons you mentioned above. He was arrested and cautioned when he was about 17 after he hit his dad with a baseball bat, and we called the police again earlier this year when he was having the mother of all tantrums and trashing his bedroom (after not doing well on an XBox game, of all things). I didn't have him arrested on that occasion - just asked the police to have a word, to try and get him to understand how unacceptable his behaviour was.

As always, as soon as he has had his tantrum, it's over and done with and he is very contrite and apologetic. But I know it will happen again, and in all truth I just don't think I can take much more of it.

Even worse when my husband just sits there and does nothing.

I haven't had time to read the whole thread, but I think you need to ask your GP for a mental health referal. He sounds like he has many anger management problems and it needs getting to the bottom of before he ends up being arrested and finds himself sitting in prison. Hopefully you have a sympathetic GP who is familiar with mental health problems, as a strong dose of anti depresants isn't enough.

paddy's_mum

Hootie19 wrote: »

I say it's assault, he says that throwing a drink over someone is not assault.

Who is correct?

You know what ... the question above is laughable except it's so very, very serious! :eek:

As he chokes, or baseball bats, the life out of you during one of his tantrums, shall you debate whether it's murder, self defence or manslaughter?

As the pathologist cuts you open in order to prepare the forensic evidence, does it actually matter to anyone on this earth exactly who is correct?

You simply don't appear to realise that you have a monster in your midst. Tell me .. what do your other children have to say about all this?

marleyboy

Akin to spitting on somebody, throwing any liquid on them can also be classed as an assault.

Broadwood

Macca83 wrote: »

You need to put an ultimatum in place. Either he goes to the doctor - follows whatever course of treatment suggested or he leaves.

Short, sweet and simple.

This whole thread is ringing alarm bells for the future. The young man in question needs help urgently before he kills somebody or many people. The writing is on the wall.

Yorkie1

Hootie19 wrote: »

After a stupid argument at the dinner table, my almost 22 year old son threw a temper tantrum, threw a drink over me, smashed the glass on the floor and then stood swearing and shouting for about 15 minutes.

I say it's assault, he says that throwing a drink of water/squash over someone is not assault.

Who is correct?

And if I was to call the police, what would their actions likely be?

Hootie19 wrote: »

Clearing out - yes he is ALWAYS this short tempered. He does this kind of thing all the time. He threw a drink over his sister at the weekend. She was sitting next to her 15 month old baby.

I know he has a lot going at the moment, and I could list hundreds of occasions when he has behaved inappropriately.

He was arrested and cautioned when he was about 17 after he hit his dad with a baseball bat

we called the police again earlier this year when he was having the mother of all tantrums and trashing his bedroom .

Hootie19 wrote: »

He has promised time and again that he will attend anger management. We have been through family therapy when he was a mid-teenager, and he was given individual counselling after this. He used to leave school early to go to the counsellor. Only it turned out that he never actually went.

Earlier this year, after he hit his girlfriend, he went to the GP and asked to be referred for anger management. His girlfriend went with him and said that he was remarkably open with the GP as to the issues he had. He was given an appointment with a counsellor, but said that they rang to cancel on the morning of the appointment, and he has never made another appointment.

I know he has problems. He knows he has problems. But he just seems to lack the motivation to sort them out.

Hootie19 wrote: »

(our house is trashed from front to back from where he has smashed things while in a tantrum) and

OP, your son has repeatedly lost his temper with most of your family. He has assaulted his father, his sister (and put a baby at risk), you, and his GF. He has also trashed your house.

This is domestic violence. Short and simple. On average it takes a person 30 incidents before they report it to the police and follow through with a prosecution. Did you also know that on average 2 women a week are killed in this country through domestic violence?

It is a massive hidden problem because families can't or won't report it to the police for a range of reasons.

Your son is completely wrong to say what he did is not assault. It is. The simple act of throwing water over [edit: someone] does constitute common assault by battery. The constant abuse, if it made you fear you might be further assaulted, is also common assault albeit not by beating.

Your son has repeatedly shown himself unwilling or unable to address his anger management issues. Instead he continues to abuse his family and trash your house.

Please stop condoning this. Clearly, nothing you have done in the past has made any substantive or lasting change, despite your best of intentions.

The police will take this seriously. You can simply report it without further action but at some point, when this continues happening, you will need to decide whether the protection of other members of your family - particularly those who are far too young to protect themselves - is more important than condoning your adult son's behaviour.

In my view, it is time to follow through where previously you have not done so. Your son has up until now received the indirect message that he can do what he likes without consequences. He is out of control and in my view only proper police involvement will have any chance of the desired effect.

Contact your local police, report the incident and be prepared to follow through. This will mean, as another poster already correctly said, he will be arrested and you will all be asked to provide witness statements. If charged by the police, he would probably be released on bail and you can ask for him not to be bailed to your home.

He will appear at court within a few days and then be asked to enter a plea. If he denies it then a trial will be listed a few weeks hence. If convicted, he can be required to undertake a specific anger management programme or DV awareness programme by the court - with sanctions if he fails to comply.

This all sounds really heavy, and I don't mean to be harsh, but when you read back what he's done previously, it's time for him to realise that his behaviour is unacceptable and has consequences.

I saw many DV cases in a previous job and they don't ever end nicely where there is repeat offending, without some form of intervention.

Janepig wrote: »

I meant to say also, there is a charge of threatening unlawful violence, or putting someone in fear of violence - not sure what the exact wording would be. It may be felt that it would be more appropriate to charge him with something of that nature as opposed to assault.
Jx

Firstly, the charge you refer to is not available in the house. Secondly, what he's done is domestic assault, pure and simple. Don't dilute the impact both now and in the future by calling it something more 'socially acceptable'.

Tiddlywinks

[text removed by MSE Forum Team]

Hootie19 wrote: »

I am 100% sure that he would not be involved in drugs.

I said to him tonight that I have had enough of this behaviour (our house is trashed from front to back from where he has smashed things while in a tantrum) and that I thought he should leave the home and live somewhere else.

However, on his part time wages, he just cant' see how he can afford to live anywhere else.

I wish he could find somewhere else to live. I fear that if we continue to try and live in this house, we will end up with such a broken relationship that it will never be mended.

Firstly, you can NEVER be 100% sure about addiction... addicts are very good at covering their tracks.

Your son is not reacting rationally and there must be a reason for that - when he calms down after these 'episodes' does he ever tell you why he thinks it happens?

He won't change unless he is forced to face up to the reality of his violence - you have to be cruel to be kind and ask him to leave. You owe it to the rest of your family to keep them away from this type of behaviour.