Wonju Child Abuse Attorney | Charge of Emotional Abuse Involving a Dog, Decision Not to Prosecute

The circumstances of the client's case, as identified by the attorney, are as follows.

The client had recently been in a deep conflict with the complainant over noise between floors.

The client kept a medium-sized dog and often went out for walks, and the complainant's child, in the lower grades of elementary school, frequently encountered them at the playground and the park.

The complainant's child, who was very mischievous, often threatened the client's dog and shot at it with a BB gun.

The client tried to dissuade the child gently, but the child's pranks grew steadily worse.

In the end, the client's dog came to assume a defensive posture, barking aggressively whenever it saw the complainant's child.

Seeing this, the complainant filed a complaint, claiming that the client had used the dog to threaten the child and had committed emotional child abuse.

🔗Child abuse refers to an adult inflicting physical, mental, or sexual violence or cruel treatment on a child under the age of 18 that may harm the child's health or welfare or impair normal development, or a guardian abandoning or neglecting a child.

In the case of physical or emotional abuse, the offender may be punished by imprisonment for up to five years or a fine of up to 50 million won.

Emotional abuse refers to verbal insults, emotional threats, confinement or restraint, and other sadistic acts committed by an adult, including a guardian, against a child, and it is also called verbal, mental, or psychological abuse.

Verbal violence, depriving a child of sleep, stripping a child and driving the child out, comparing, discriminating against, or favoring children, ostracizing a child within the family, having a child witness domestic violence, and forcing a child to abuse another child

As in the case above, there have been instances in which emotional child abuse through a dog was recognized.

A father in his forties who threatened to kill the family dog with a weapon in front of his teenage daughters was found guilty on a charge of child abuse.

The court determined that the act amounted to emotional abuse harmful to the mental health of the young daughters.

The attorney argued that the complainant's child had behaved aggressively toward the client's dog.

To prove this conduct, the attorney secured CCTV footage installed at the playground and the park and the dashcam footage of vehicles parked nearby.

The footage captured the fact that the child had behaved aggressively, throwing stones at the client's dog first.

The attorney submitted the footage as evidence and argued the reason the dog had no choice but to assume an aggressive posture.

The attorney argued that the conduct did not amount to emotional child abuse.

Emotional abuse refers to conduct that impairs, or may pose a significant risk to, the normal maintenance and growth of a child's mental disposition or attitude in feeling, thinking, and judging things.

In other words, it must be conduct comparable to causing harm to a child's body, or to abandonment or neglect.

In this case, however, the mere fact that the client's dog barked fiercely at the child can hardly be regarded as having inflicted such harm.

The attorney argued the following Supreme Court precedent and emphasized that the conduct did not amount to emotional abuse.