How is this an "Access Violation"

[Ruby The Roobster]

On Wednesday, 28 October 2020 at 00:48:36 UTC, Ruby The Roobster 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, 27 October 2020 at 02:05:37 UTC, Ruby The Roobster 
> wrote:
>> Following function when called throws an access violation. I 
>> think it has to do with the assert statements, but I don't 
>> know why.
>>[...]
>
> Okay. I messed up here. It should be: this.base = new atom(...) 
> . I corrected that. The assert statements still don't work 
> though.

Turns out all attempts to access member variables of that class 
fail:
atom a = new atom(...);
a.valence = 5;

Output:

Object.Error@(0): Access Violation