Quote:
Originally Posted by highthief
What are you thoughts on this subject?
Can parents be held responsible for the criminal actions of their children in this fashion?
I'm conflicted over this. On the one hand, if my kid tossed a baseball through the neighbours window, I'd expect to have to cover the damages - that just seems normal to me. But I don't know - a parent can never be 100% responsible for what their kid does, especially once the child is getting near the age of majority like this kid was.
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | S Korea parents fined over rape |
I think that the topic heading here is misleading, which is no wonder since the original BBC said it as well. What appears to have happened here is that the girls parents were awarded a civil judgment against the parents of the perp. They were not "fined" by the court, as we usually understand that term.
This is just the usual practice of a lawyer "following the money" and apparently the boy's parents were well enough off to make it worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue civil damages.
This is almost exactly the same as what happened when Ronald Goldman's parents sued OJ Simpson and received a civil judgment of I forget how many millions of dollars.
Although the Korean boy was convicted and sent to prison, OJ managed to get a jury that just was not going to convict a black man for murdering a white woman and a Jew, no matter what.
The civil judgement found him responsible for the deaths, even though not "guilty" beyond a reasonable doubt in the minds (perhaps already made up minds) of the jury in the criminal trial.
Lindy