Who said video games would never offer real world experience?
Today’s human interest piece comes to us from a child custody case in the Eastern District of New York. The petitioner is the father of a child who had petitioned the court for the return of his son to Ecuador. The child, a nine year old, had been retained in the United States by the mother and without the consent of the father since mid-2018. The father (petitioner) owns a gun shop and warehouse in Ecuador and is a dealer of firearms and accessories (Editor’s note: It should be noted that the firearm business is legal/legitimate). During the custody hearing, the child testified to the father having guns in the house, on display, within the reach of a child. How did the child know the identity of the guns? Fortnite.
According to the testimony, the child was able to verify what he had seen in the house including a silencer and a shotgun because he had seen something similar in Fortnite.
The story does not have a great ending, as the court eventually ruled that the child would be returned to Ecuador under Hague Convention. Still, the court did not seem to have any reason to doubt the child’s game-based knowledge.
The full entry can be found at the link below. Content Warning: The document below has been included for those who wish to view it. It contains numerous detailed allegations of the repeated physical and verbal abuse of a child by a parental figure.
Source: Eastern District of New York