Yes I am English and from the UK, if I use American terminology or something I say is muddled, it's only because I'm tired and can't be bothered to write it properly.
I write this as a parent to an autistic 16 year old. We are in scotland so I can only advise him.
He joined discord, a platform for gamers to chat, 2 years ago, and was able to join non-gaming related servers. A few months ago he joined a server for a city in England he's considering visiting, ran by adults, who considered a minor to be anyone under 18 no matter where they were, hence they considered my son to be a minor. They server accepted both minors as young as 13 and anyone above 18+, but a term was that members must be mature. My son was not, but then he almost never is. The adults in the server were no better. One of the things my son pointed out was that they could post random GIFS and change the subject of conversation, but he couldn't. They replied that they've been in the server longer so it's not weird and is acceptable. The adults in the server didn't like him and started bullying him, one example of this is making him feel uncomfortable. I advised him to leave, but he didn't because he wanted to be part of the community. It got worse. A certain adult, accused him of all sorts such as abuse and that they feel they're walking on eggshells (even I was moritifed to hear this as it was far from true). It surprised us how much shite a particular member kept spurting about him consecutively, he couldn't get a word in edgeways and was banned shortly afterwards. Someone from the server then got in touch to say that when they were a minor they were bullied but allowed to stay as they never retaliated, which stopped when they became adult, and that the reason no one could support my son was because the person who was bullying him was a 'nitro subscriber' which meant they had payed real money to support the server, and as they took a dislike to my son, and the server didn't want to lose their 'valued customer', they had to ban my son to the tastes of said person.
He's joined the server just the other day again but under a new persona, claiming to be an adult but acting the same. Surprise surprise, no one has been bullying him. According to the chat logs they've been talking about him up until a month ago as if he really was some sort of monster which is defamation of character. They still have photos of him in the server that he posted. Keep in mind that my son was only ever posting the same sorts of content as them and nothing racist, sexist, etc. And this all lasted up until someone worked out that it might be him and now they're 'investigating'.
Now you may think that this only on the internet, it doesn't matter, but my son can be identified and I'm considering taking some sort of action on this. Can anyone comment if police for example would take this seriously, if anyone has gone through similar before and what they've done?