Have you ever been accused of child abuse? It can feel like a kick in the stomach. It has become one of the first lines of offense in divorce cases as several of my readers can attest. What can you do? What happens when it is proven that you aren’t guilty?
In a previous post on Child Abuse Accusation I mentioned a Georgia Kindergarten teacher who was up on charges of sexually abusing children including her own.
Since then she has been found not guilty of all charges. She was interviewed on Good Morning America this morning. She is struggling to get her life back after all of the accusations and the trial. Even though she is free there is still a pall hanging over her.
So many people have not forgiven her or still consider her guilty she has had to move out of town. She cannot get her job back. She is fighting to get her children returned to her; they have been gone for two years.
This is her aftermath: she has lost her name, job, and children. Where does she go from here? In this case she is suing to right not only what was done to her but also what has been done to the children and to other people that are falsely accused.
But you might say these children recounted horrific stories of sexual abuse. Were they lying? In this case and many others what are known as “false memories” have been implanted in these kids’ minds. What this means is that they are questioned repeatedly about situations and details until the child actually starts believing that they have happened. The story becomes real for them. They are now victims of abuse even if it didn’t happen.
In general the questioners are not out to get the accused. They honestly believe they are doing the right thing. But they have not been trained in correctly interviewing a child and this is the result.
Afterwards so many people believe the children’s stories that they cannot accept it if the accused goes free. If the defendant is found innocent he will have to work hard to repair his reputation.
The children, who are the victims through either the abuse or the system, must heal somehow in the aftermath.
The schoolteacher is trying to change the system so only trained people will interview children suspected of being abused. This should reduce the number of people being accused of abuse and protect the mental health of the children involved.
But not all accused abusers are innocent. A reader of my last post seemed to think I was implying that we were wasting our time going after these people. There are too many predators out there for us to waste time on the innocent ones.
Again this morning, on the Today Show was a story about a former suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. She was the 6 year old girl who was sexually assaulted and murdered years ago. Now he is being accused of trying to start a child sex cult. So far they haven’t found him to prove this.
Even though it is only an allegation right now, this must be investigated.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a close friend of mine who may be reading this. He works with abused and sexually molested children on a daily basis. As a result I’ve met a few of them. They are great kids but in the aftermath of their abuse they are struggling to put the pieces of their lives back together. They have to learn that there are adults they can trust and who can help them through the pain.
We have to get the predators off the streets. At the same time we must not allow innocent people to be victimized. Doing both of these things will go a long way in protecting our kids. And reducing the impact of the aftermath!
3 comments for this post
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends!
As someone who has tendered as an expert witness, been admitted, and testified in civil and criminal cases in the area of cognitive child development, I can tell you the problem is not so much the implantation of false memories, but the fact that young children are very susceptible to making reality monitoring errors (have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction), have no clue why and if child protective interviewers have conducted proper source monitoring, and fall victim to ultimate source misattribution errors committed by these same well-meaning, well-intentioned, but misinformed professionals.
If the National Institute for Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) forensic interview methodology is not utilized in a suspected case of child molestation, the interviewer runs the risk of unwittingly causing said child interviewee to report inaccurate information from the same.
Dean Tong, MSc.
abuse-excuse.com
Excellent information, thank you for contributing. You mention that “the interviewer runs the risk of unwittingly causing…inaccurate information.” I agree, I don’t think they do it on purpose but they certainly need the training so they don’t fall into this trap.
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