Parents Destroy 40-Year-Old Son’s Porn Stash, He Sues for $87K

A 40-year-old man who had to move back in with his parents after getting a divorce is now suing them because, when he finally moved out again after 10 months, they trashed his entire porn collection, the Detroit Free Press reports. And quite a collection it was. The man—whose name is being withheld by the court—listed items that he says were valued at $29,000. According to the Free Press report, his collection included, “over 400 VHS tapes, more than 1,600 DVDs (including multiple copies of some titles), 160-plus CDs, and 70 sex toys.” Among the videos, according to a report by The Guardian, were such titles as Frisky Business and Big Bad Grannys. The man, who moved to Muncie, Indiana, from his parents home in Grand Haven, Michigan, says that he had his possessions delivered to Muncie, but when they showed up, his 12 boxes filled with his porn and sex toy collection were missing. When he confronted his parents about it, in an email exchange reproduced in the lawsuit, his father told him that he destroyed the porn for his son’s own good, comparing porn to “crack cocaine.” “Believe it or not, one reason for why I destroyed your porn was for your own mental and emotional health,’ the dad wrote. “I would have done the same if I had found a kilo of crack cocaine. Someday, I hope you will understand.” But the 40-year-old son did not “understand.” In fact, he is suing his parents—whose names are also redacted from the lawsuit—for “treble damages,” that is, $87,000. The son said he simply wished that his parents had told him that they had a problem with his porn stash, rather than taking it upon themselves to destroy the collection without telling him. But the dad replied that he had previously warned his son, “if I ever found pornography in my house again, I would destroy it,” noting that as a teen, the son was—according to the dad—expelled from both his high school and college for peddling porn to his fellow students. Whether the father's allegation is correct remains unclear. The dad also said that it took “quite a while” to trash the massive collection of porn. The man had previously attempted to press criminal charges against his parents for trashing his porn, but the Ottawa County prosecutors Michigan refused to pursue the case. Photo by German Federal Archive / Wikimedia Commons