One sentence in the OP is bothering me. The line where he talks about people being too paranoid to say they need to AFK for a bit. Could this mean his friend didn't announce they had to AFK? If so then the party was right here. If she did announce then she is in the right and THEN it's reportable as harassment.
I've never been kicked once for AFKing. If I knew I'd only be a little bit I'd say "brb rq". If I knew I'd be longer then 10 minutes I'd say something then leave accepting the 30 minute cooldown