Abusive Stepfather

[am2118]

Let me preface this by saying that I am glad to have found this site when I needed answers the most. Having said that, let me continue on with my concerns.

I'm a 21 year old male living at home with my mother, stepfather, and my 15 year old brother. My mom has been married to her husband since 1999, though they have been together since 1996. At the beginning of this relationship, there were a great many problems, many fights, that would cause him to become increasingly verbally abusive to my mother in front of me. There were days when we would have to leave the house and go to a hotel at night because things were just not pleasant. On top of this, when we left, he would bring prostitutes and the like home, thus causing further problems.

A couple of years went by, and I learned of this boarding school by a friend of mine who was attending it. The school being in India, I decided to go to escape all of the aggression at home. I returned after four years to find that nothing had changed. They still fought, and we were constantly leaving the home or being told to leave. He would curse in front of us, hurling obscenities left and right. On top of that, there are days when out of nowhere he would call us in to "talk" with him, and these conversations would turn increasingly aggresive with him trying to pry into information that was personal. (I.E. he attempted to throw me out of the home when I refused to tell him how much I weigh, information that I did not feel comfortable sharing.)

Lately, things have worsened. He has become very commanding, very controlling. We have been completely restricted and must check in with him before we do anything, including doing the laundry or taking a shower at night or even opening the door to the garage. If we forget to turn off the porch light in the mornings, he becomes very verbally abusive. Things have escalated to such a point that we may leave the home in a few weeks.

There are a great many other similar incidents, but too many to even start listing.

My studies, my work, and my eating habits have all been affected by this, as has my ability to form any relationship with people.

My main concern and question is this: with the incidents stated above, along with the other incidents over the past eight years, is there any way I can sue this man for mental and/or emotional distress/abuse?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[NYClex]

You are 21, so you don't need to stay if you don't want to. As long as you are on his property, he can set certain rules. If you don't like them, you are free to go.

This I say just to make sure you understand the difficulty in maintaining a lawsuit against him. This would be his first line of defense.

Now, there is a tort called "intentional infliction of emotional distress:" "The tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress has four elements: (1) the defendant must act intentionally or recklessly; (2) the defendant's conduct must be extreme and outrageous; and (3) the conduct must be the cause (4) of severe emotional distress.

Although case law does not provide us with a precise definition of "extreme and outrageous," the test adopted by most courts for actionable conduct is that the conduct must be "so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community." The defendant's conduct must be more than malicious and intentional; and liability does not extend to mere insults, indignities, threats, annoyances, or petty oppressions.

Often, to recover you would have to show some serious emotional damage, like having consulted physicians, therapists or the like.

So you see, this is not easily proven. You would have to consult an attorney and have him go over all the details of what happened to find out if this qualifies as "outrageous."
Of course there could be other actionable causes, as well.

Then you need to think if there is anything to recover. If this guy does not have many assetts it might be a useless battle.