It Is Your Duty to Protect Your Child
Video Transcribed: What are your rights and duties if your child is contacted inappropriately by an adult or older child online? My name is Brian L. Jackson, I am a Tulsa fathers rights lawyer here with Dads.Law, and today I want to talk about this idea of online predators and what’s your right, and duties are, and then in a future video, I’m going to talk about remedies.
So your duty as a parent responsible for a minor child is you have a duty to protect them from harm, and specifically to protect them from child abuse. If you become aware that your child has been contacted inappropriately, either by an adult or by another child online, you would have a duty to put a stop to it. You also have a duty, arguably, to report this to DHS and report it to law enforcement because of mandatory reporting laws in Oklahoma.
Putting a stop to it would include things potentially like taking the child’s phone away, or taking away their access to social media. And they’re not probably going to be very happy with you for doing that, but you have a legal duty to do it.
If you should discover that the child is in possession of inappropriate images, either of themself or other children then you would probably want to consult with an attorney as to precisely what to do about that. And it’s very fact specific, so it’s not something I can discuss in a huge amount of detail for the purposes of this video, which is informational, but you definitely want to consult with an attorney about that and about how to handle that if you were to discover such a thing. But your duties would include reporting it and obviously putting a stop to it.
And if you are sharing custody with another parent or in a situation where you aren’t living together or you are custodial and there’s a non-custodial parent, you also have a duty to inform the other parent about what’s been going on. And that’s another situation that has to be handled delicately. This is where you might want to reach out to them through counsel to advise them, but you do have a duty to inform them of what’s been going on. And you’re better off letting them know upfront rather than allowing them to find out through the grapevine.
If you do suspect your child is been contacted inappropriately or has been engaged in inappropriate conduct online you really need a lawyer. There are both civil and criminal aspects to this that could come into play, and it’s really important that you navigate that process carefully. And so one place you can find a good Oklahoma family law attorney is at Dads.Law where fathers are not disposable.
