Should I Go to Dragon*Con?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There’s an attempted boycott of DragonCon this year for ties with a cofounder who turned out to be a child molester, and is using his shares for legal maneuvering. DragonCon responded by saying they’ve attempted to sever ties with him. A friend of a friend alleges that Dragon*Con is lying, tells me on facebook that “They lied about their ties to kramer since 2000. they invited him back as a guest in 2008. now they use corporate law to say that they just cant stop paying him 34 percent of the profits. boo fucking hoo. also the people going to dragoncon are also financially supporting boy fucking by giving money to dragoncon. so its really not complicated at all.” Then again, I saw this link claiming it doesn’t appear approval for Kramer to appear as a guest was official on the program, but was an error of sorts.

I live in Atlanta. Is Dragon*Con telling the truth?

Should I stay or should I go?

2

If the rest of the people want to cut ties with and not pay profits to the guy, why don’t they fold DragonCon, or resign from it, and use their contacts and experience to start a new gig?

3

Because DragonCon is an existing goldmine, if they quit they would have to get real jobs.

4

I think it’s a matter of balancing how much you want to go and the pleasure you’d get out of going vs how much you don’t want a third of the ticket price going to the guy.

5

The pedophile origins of DragonCon have been very effectively hushed up in the mainstream media. Creative Loafing did an expose on it years ago, back when it had some pretense to being an alternative paper, but that’s all I’ve ever seen on the topic.
Here’s a link to the online version of Creative Loafing about Kramer’s issues. Seems he was recently caught in a hotel room with a 14 year old. Whoopsies!

6

As a “Should I. . .?” question, this really belongs in IMHO.

If it turns into a genuine debate on the responsibilities and obligations of corporations and their members, an IMHO Mod can send it back to GD.

[ /Moderating ]

7

There’s a lot of room here for questions. Here’s some of mine.

Question set 1) What did they know to start with?

Did the co-founders of D*con KNOW that Kramer was a pedo BEFORE they worked with him to found the con?

If no, were they already legally entangled with him when they found out?

If yes, WHY did they work with him despite that? (in other words, what did he bring to the table that made it worthwhile to them?)

Question set 2) What can they do about it now without behaving illegally, tanking the con, or shooting themselves in the foot?

Just how tangled IS the legal /financial situation now?

If he’s a founding member, can he be kicked out?

If not, can some creative paperwork be done to prevent supporting him financially?

If not, what barriers do the remaining founders and con staff face in trying to disentangle themselves?

Are there DoNotCompete clauses?

Does he have ties with the hotels and other convention spaces?

What about vendor and/or guest relations?

If the overall answer to set 1) ends up being: They didn’t know until after they were stuck with him, and the answer to set 2) ends up something like: we’re legally/financially bound to him unless we totally dissolve the con, or cripple it badly by having to move to a different holiday, or a different city or state - I’m going to be a little sympathetic.

8

If the guy owns 34% of a corporation, I don’t believe that the rest of the board can legally force him to sell his shares. They can freeze him out of operations, but that’s about it. I also don’t believe that they could legally prevent him from attending the con.

So as much as you or I wouldn’t want to support the guy, there really isn’t anything they can do about it and NO, they are not ‘hiding behind corporate law’.

9

  1. He hasn’t been found guilty of anything as far as I can see.

  2. He no longer has an active part in running the thing.

10

From the provided link, it sounds like the first stories about his molestation came out over a decade ago, with the latest incident in September 2011.

11

This probably seem overly dramatic, but nonetheless I think it’s an instructive thought exercise.

Kramer is using the money he gets from DragonCon to avoid prison. If one of the kids he molested was a kid you knew, would you go to DragonCon? If one of those kids was standing in front of you and asked, “Why are you giving him money so he can get away with what he did to me, and molest more boys?” how would you answer?

If you can think of a way to answer that (not really) hypothetical kid, and feel ok about that, then go. If you can’t, then don’t.

12

[QUOTE=miss elizabeth;16105972

Kramer is using the money he gets from DragonCon to avoid prison. If one of the kids he molested was a kid you knew, would you go to DragonCon? If one of those kids was standing in front of you and asked, “Why are you giving him money so he can get away with what he did to me, and molest more boys?” how would you answer?

.[/QUOTE]

Except that he hasn’t been found guilty. Thus, at least in America, we consider him “innocent until proven guilty”.

13

That’s the standard for the legal system. It is not a moral imperative for your average citizen to be required to uphold, especially when it’s merely a matter of where one spends one’s entertainment dollars and not the OP providing legal defense for this “gentleman.”

14

He’s already in prison.

15

If he’s already in prison, that means he has been found guilty, right?

16

Even that could be problematic. Corporate law is usually drafted with the possibility in mind that majority shareholders might try to freeze out minority holders, and usually there are remedies for the minority share-holders; see the wiki article on Shareholder oppression.

As well, in small corporations, there is often a unanimous shareholder agreement, which gives the shareholders contractual rights against each other, to provide another layer of protection for the individual shareholders. A “buyout clause” is a typical one: if some shareholders want out, they can’t automatically try to sell their shares on the open market, but are required to offer them to the other shareholders first. There may also be restrictions on changes of business, and non-compete clauses. Whether there is a U.S.A. in place here, and its contents, are a private issue for the shareholders, so there may not be any way to find out the details.

None of which is meant to be legal advice, of course, since I don’t know squat about corporate law in Georgia, but just to comment on an issue of public interest.

17

May not have made bail and is awaiting trial.

18

Ah - here’s a bit of info from an article in DeadlineHollywood: Behind The Boycott Of DragonCon Over Co-Founder Accused Of Child Molestation

So no, he’s not been found guilty of any charges. He’s in jail for breach of bail conditions.

And, further on, there’s this bit about the legal issues:

19

This. That’s why, when a guy punches me in the nose and says he’ll knife me unless I give him my wallet, I’m not frightened of him and take no defensive measures until the court system finds him guilty: until that point, he’s innocent. I never–because I subscribe to an idiotic misunderstanding of what that phrase means–let another person’s evil actions influence my own decisions until the courts have spoken.

20

You know, I likely wouldn’t let me 14 yo boy do a sleepover in his room either- but since i wouldn’t let my 14yo boy do a sleepover in any strange dudes room, that’s no biggie.

But saying you are going to deprive yourself of fun, and other good people of their hard-won profits and earnings due to the fact that this strange guy has a minority % share of something is another issue.

He is now only tangentially connected, has nothing to do with the management, and like i said- may be entirely innocent.

Besides- have the other shareholders- the ones that hold 66%- have they done anything wrong?