Suggestions When Falsely Accused

Bruce G. Gould^*

ABSTRACT: A false allegation of child sexual abuse requires a monumental response to overcome it.  Suggestions are given for the innocent person who is accused.  A recommended solution to the problem of false allegations is to require videotaping of all therapy sessions with children whenever the issue of sexual abuse arises and to change the immunity laws which protect incompetent therapists and social workers in these cases.
  

My former wife filed for dissolution of our marriage on September 1, 1989, the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II.  I was out of town salmon fishing in the Queen Charlotte Islands of Canada when she filed and I was as surprised as the Polish were in 1939.  On October 31, 1991, 26 months later, the superior court judge awarded me primary residential status for our minor children, then ages 5 and 7.  These children had been 3 and 4 when the divorce began.  Primary residential status in the state of Washington is equivalent to full custody.  My former wife was granted weekend visitation on every other weekend plus holiday visitation and alternate two-week visitation periods during the summers.

I am now 49 years old and this had been my first and only marriage.  I am an attorney although I do not practice law now but rather write and I am active in business.  My former wife, who had been married before, is now 39.  These were the only children ever born to either of us.  Both children are loved dearly by both parents.  The children live with me as a single parent-father and attend kindergarten and the first grade in the small town of 2,000 people where I live.  My former wife lives approximately 150 miles away.  During the exchange of the children we each drive halfway and meet at midpoints between the two towns, depending on whether it is winter or summer and whether we are able to drive over certain mountain passes due to snow.

My thoughts here deal not so much with the particulars of our case as they do with how to handle a false sexual abuse allegation raised in the midst of a bitter divorce by a spouse who wants full custody of minor children and sees this tactic as the best means for reaching that goal.  It is inconceivable to me that matrimonial lawyers and the family court system have allowed this issue of sexual abuse to advance as far as it has so that an accusation alone, often with no evidentiary hearing of any sort, immediately produces court-ordered denial of visitation or access to the parent accused.  Then the accused parent faces months of agony and confusing, frustrating efforts just to see the children, and drawn out, convoluted procedures to get some final disposition.

Why are there so many false allegations?  The answer is quite simple.  Since most falsely accused persons cannot fight the accusation, all the reinforcements are delivered as soon as accusations are made.  The hated spouse is severely punished.  Possession of children is secured.  There is free legal advice, welfare assistance, and emotional support from affirming professionals, friends, and family.  After all, the Gulag existed for years in Soviet Russia and how many of those prison inmates were ever guilty of anything?  Most were totally innocent.  In child abuse, it is the same.  There is such a Gulag built up in our child abuse system that bodies need to be found and if you run out of real criminals, then a false allegation will suffice.  This is an empire-building opportunity for many people in the system who have about as much incentive for finding non-abuse as a dentist has for finding no cavities.

I believe what needs to be done is a voice must rise up and say it is not enough to claim to do good.  Truth is also essential.  And if you violate truth while trying to do good, you have not done good at all.  If child abuse occurs, it should be stopped.  But sentencing a person to a longer term in prison for "touching" a child than that person would get for murdering someone is ridiculous.  It has opened the door to false plea bargaining where innocent people are being forced to plea bargain left and right to nonexistent crimes for fear of getting 150 years in prison if they do not plea bargain.  (See the two articles on plea bargaining and sentencing in this issue.)

One of Stalin's closest advisors pled guilty in the show trials of Soviet Russia.  He said "Yes, I am guilty."  And the prosecutor asked him for the record, "And what is it you are guilty of?"  The accused turned to the do-gooder next to him and said, "What is it I am guilty of?", and learned that it was Section 54 of Code 394 on page 18 the book of records.  Everyone was happy and the accused was shuffled off to the Gulag so he could help to build the canals from Finland to Soviet Russia.  It was bodies that were needed to stock the Gulag, it was not a question really of crimes or criminals.  It was a question of bodies.  Only today it is the falsely accused child abuser who pays the price and the child who is deprived of a parent who pays the price demanded by the maintenance of the system.

Most of the divorce-related false sexual abuse allegations could be quickly resolved if the simple requirement of videotaping all therapy sessions of the children were in place.  Some matrimonial lawyers have a standard motion that they make whenever their client is involved in a divorce with small children and when they represent the father.  The motion says in effect:

The minor children of the parties to this divorce may not be taken to any therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, counselor or other mental health professional without (a) prior notice to the court (b) prior notice to all parties to this divorce (c) all sessions with such mental health professionals being videotaped from start to finish with the non-taking party paying the costs of such videotaping if necessary.

This type of motion would drastically cut down on the fabricated allegations of sexual abuse that are raised in the environment of a divorce and custody conflict.  I believe the law should require that all sessions with children in which the issues of sexual abuse are raised should be videotaped from start to finish.  The video camera should be standard office equipment before anyone could enter into any counseling or therapy of minor children.  If the therapists, counselors, or mental health professionals cannot afford a video camera, they should not be in the therapy business when it may involve a forensic setting and contact with the legal system.

When one is accused of sexually abusing a child, the effort to meet this accusation and overcome it is monumental.  It can be compared to having HIV antibodies.  Until convicted, or until you lose your children, you do not have full-blown AIDS, but you have HIV just by the accusation.  Once you are accused of sexual abuse your life, like Magic Johnson's, will never be the same.  If you are successful in meeting the attack on you, you may survive and you may even gain custody of your children, but you will never be the same.  The accusation itself will never leave you.  The accusation requires you to marshal all your mental, financial, emotional support, and energy resources to overcome it.  You have to commit everything to fighting the allegation or the allegation will eventually kill you, in one form or another.  You must be clear that this is total warfare.  Half-hearted efforts will not prevail.

My first surprise was how easily therapists can label someone a child abuser.  Suppose you went into a lawyer's office and said, "I have a business dispute with Joe.  Joe smokes dope.  He cheats on his wife.  He is an ex-felon.  He dresses in female clothes.  He makes obscene phone calls at night to strangers."  Do you think your lawyer would take your word for this?  Do you think your lawyer would write a letter to state authorities stating, "Joe smokes dope, cheats on his wife, is an ex-felon, dresses in female clothes and makes obscene phone calls at night."?  Absolutely not.  Any lawyer who did this would soon be out of business.  He would be sued by Joe's lawyer, lose, and no longer able to get malpractice insurance.  But in the therapy profession, this type of nonsense seems to go on with regularity.  A spouse comes to a therapist, accuses the other spouse of being a bum or a rat and of molesting the small children, and the therapist writes up a report for the court stating almost verbatim what the complaining spouse has just said.

Therapists who never see the father, never interview the father, never see the father with the children, or never interview anyone who has seen the father with the children, will still write reports for the court stating that the father is a "child abuser" and should not be given custody.  They may also recommend that there be no visitation or that any visitation be limited to supervised contacts.  Often these reports will include slanderous material about the father which came directly from the mother.  That was probably the biggest surprise of my divorce — that a therapist would put such allegations on paper without having interviewed anyone except those persons friendly to the mother.

I suggest the solution to this is to file malpractice lawsuits against such therapists and to have states remove the immunity laws protecting such slander in the name of protecting children and "doing good."  Depriving children of their father is not "doing good" if the allegation is false.  There is no reason any social worker, therapist, or mental health professional should be immune from suit for malpractice any more than a dentist, physician, or attorney.  Opening the doors to malpractice lawsuits and requiring all child interviewing sessions involving sexual abuse allegations to be videotaped would greatly cut down on the number of false allegations.

I also suggest filing formal complaints with the appropriate state regulatory boards and the appropriate professional associations against therapists who act contrary to ethical codes and professional standards.  Each state has a regulatory board for psychiatrists and psychologists.  Most have similar boards for social workers and some have laws licensing other kinds of professionals as well.  Each state will have professional associations and there are national professional associations as well.  Get the ethical codes and professional standards from each group and examine them in light of your experience.

My case involved three therapists hired and paid for by my former wife, two social workers, two guardians ad litem, a court-appointed child psychiatrist, a court-appointed adult-child psychiatrist, and an evaluation team of husband and wife who evaluate people for sexual deviancy.  I tried to cooperate so I went the whole gamut.  Polygraph exams.  Penile erection exams.  MMPI.  Sexual deviancy tests.  Etc., etc. etc.  Cooperating with child protection and satisfying the demands and requirements of the various professionals in this area is a complex and lengthy procedure.  The simple thing, for them to videotape all sessions with the children so others can determine if the children are really saying what appears in the reports, just does not happen.  If this procedure were followed such cases could probably be resolved fairly quickly.  In contrast, my case from start to finish took 26 months.  It should have been over in four, and that includes all the financial matters of the divorce.

It would have been far better for the children if such had been the case.  The research evidence supports the view that the most difficult and damaging factor in a sexual abuse allegation is the length of time between an allegation and the final adjudication of the matter.  For the most part the lengthy delays are caused by the child protection and legal system rather than the parents.

The notes of the therapists are absolutely essential for an accused parent to attempt an effective response to an allegation.  We obtained the notes of both therapists and the social workers.  When the time for trial came, it was these notes and our pretrial depositions which exposed this farce for what it was.  Competency does not appear to be a requirement for licensing in the therapy profession.  Prior to my introduction to this world of Orwell, I thought that competent investigations were actually made and competent persons were in charge of such investigations.  What I found reminded me of the story of the man in the Gulag who approached the prison warden stating, "I have been convicted of nothing, l am just a suspect, I had no trial, there was no evidence, l am simply suspected of being anti-soviet."  The warden turned to the man and said, "No, son, you have it all wrong.  If you are in the Gulag you are guilty.  It is the people walking around free on the streets who are the suspects."  In the child abuse system, those accused often are considered by the therapists as the "guilty" ones and those not yet accused are the "suspects."

My advice to someone who is falsely accused of child sexual abuse is:

1. You will probably never convince your accusers that you are innocent.  The accusation itself means permanent guilt to them.  Do not waste your efforts by trying to persuade them you did not do it.  They will not become your friends.

2. Don't overestimate the intelligence of your accusers.  Someone who has the answer before knowing the question is bound to make a few mistakes in procedures along the way.  Look for those mistakes.  By all means look.  Check all applicable procedural rules and regulations governing the various investigators and the investigation processes.  Check all applicable standards of care.  Check the educational backgrounds of professionals and find out the status of the degree granting institution.  Some have been found to have degrees from diploma mills and to be essentially impostors.  Others may be exceeding their competency in areas where they have had no training.

3. Take depositions of your accusers.  Many have reasons for being in the profession — financial or their own background which may involve an abusive situation.  Make sure that these reasons are not why you have been found to be an abuser.

4. Get the financial records of your accusers.  Run credit checks.  Find out what the financial interest is, what payments have been received, whether your accusers have filed any false financial claims with the state or anywhere else, such as double dipping with their medical insurance and the spouse who hired them.  Get copies of insurance forms and check what diagnosis was used to get payment from a medical insurance policy.  It may be different than that which is found in reports to the court.

5. Get the written publications authored by your accusers.  It is possible that the professional accusing you is published in a journal.  Look for brochures describing the sexual abuse assessment program or the facility.  Look for local newspaper accounts of any speeches or addresses given to local groups.  Use this information to establish whether the professional is biased or has a preconceived notion about guilt or the abilities of children in this area.

6. Don't let your accusers get away with claiming children never lie about sexual abuse."  Focusing on this fallacy plays into your accusers' hands.  A child who eventually complies with repeated suggestive and coercive questioning cannot be said to be lying.  If a false allegation is the result of a deliberate fabrication in a custody dispute, it is not going to be the young child who is lying, but an adult.  If the therapist knowingly goes along with this, it is the therapist who is being deceptive.  If the therapist distorts what the child said because he or she is convinced that abuse really did take place but the child is reluctant to tell, the therapist still is lying.

In my case, my wife's attorney hired a therapist and left these incriminating words on the telephone message taken by the secretary: "Keep interview with child confidential unless abuse can be found."  This is an open invitation for a therapist to find abuse.  Some therapists may find what is wanted for a variety of reasons, including financial gain, future referrals, or a belief that sexual abuse is rampant and probably happened in this case, regardless of what the child may say.  Therefore, the issue is not whether a child is lying, it is whether the therapist is being deceptive, or telling half truths, or drawing unjustified conclusions.  Be very suspicious of a therapist who resists taping the therapy sessions.

7. The falsely accused spouse, normally the father, should not wait for his lawyer to do all the work.  Draw up a chronology of all events leading up to and following the accusation.  Make a file on all the persons involved in the situation and get all the information you can on everybody.  The key to an adequate and effective response is organization.  So keep everything organized, tabulated, cross-indexed, and readily available for your use and your attorney's use.  If you have a little money, hire a private detective to find out some background information on any of your accusers, such as how many marriages, whether your accuser has custody of minor children, whether the accuser in a divorce action gave testimony which was anti-male, anti-father, or showed a bias toward the mother in custody disputes.

8. My own lawyer doesn't agree with this approach, but I recommend filing an immediate malpractice lawsuit against any accusing therapist who has not conducted himself or herself in a professional manner.  My lawyer believes this does not look good for the father.  However, you must fight a false sexual abuse allegation immediately with all the strength you have.  Making therapists nervous by being defendants as well as accusers is one way of making them behave more cautiously.

9. Don't trust your guardians ad litem.  It is possible for one side in a divorce to try to influence guardians ad litem by providing names of "neutral therapists" when that side clearly knows such parties are not neutral.  I do not trust the guardians ad litem to act to safeguard the best interest of the accused spouse and would only reluctantly accept any persons as authorities recommended by the guardians without having independent confirmation of the therapists' credentials.

10. Always remember that the child abuse industry is an industry and many of the people working in it are closely connected and know each other.  Professionals most often refer clients to other professionals they at least know.  It is possible for your children to be taken to therapist A, and therapist B, and therapist C, and therapist D, all of whom have professional, social, and economic ties to each other.  Also, in many areas there may well be a formal or informal approved list of professionals established by the county or child protection system or the prosecutors.  Most often this approved list includes those professionals who agree with the system and are most likely not sympathetic to the situation of a person accused of sexual abuse.

Work up a poster board and connect the therapists hired by the opposing spouse to each other in terms of professional, social, fraternal, ideological, or economic ties.  You may well be surprised in most cases.  For those of you who remember the movie, Rosemary's Baby ()()()(), recall that Mia Farrow tried to turn to husband, friend, another friend, and another friend for advice only to eventually find out that all were connected to each other within the same witches' coven.  If your spouse proposes that the children go to see therapists A, B, C, and D, assume that these therapists all know each other, have ties with each other, and will all give the same answer — that the father should not have custody of the children.

11. Prepare some material on false allegations to show to the court or jury.  Stack up books and articles on false allegations in front of each therapist who attacks you in court and ask how many of these books that therapist has read.  Most of these therapists only read pro-mother and pro-conviction literature.  Try to drag it out of them that they are truly biased and do not read any of the pro-father and false-abuse-allegation materials.  There is a lot around now and you can use it effectively to show the bias of the accusers.

12. When searching for the truth, the court will trust persons with medical degrees or advanced graduate degrees more than it will trust therapists or social workers with simple B.A. degrees in related and nonrelated fields.  Those persons who are medically trained, including clinical psychologists, appear to be more hesitant to draw life-changing conclusions than are some mental health workers.  In my case, our children were seen by six medical doctors at one time or another during the course of our two-year divorce.  Not one medical doctor ever concluded that there was or had ever been any sexual abuse of either child by either parent.

However, the therapists retained by my former wife reached opposite conclusions without having interviewed me or anyone associated with me.  As far as the state social workers were concerned they were even less reliable than the therapists.  One social worker concluded that abuse was going on after a 10-minute interview with the children.  In court, this social worker, who had a degree in political science, admitted that he had only seen one child and only for 10 minutes in his entire lifetime.  Yet he was able to reach a conclusion with regard to abuse in a single 10-minute session.  Another social worker took 30 minutes, part of the time spent with the child on the mother's lap.

When the case eventually reached court, the opinions of the therapists and the social workers were given virtually no weight by the trial court judge due to their non-credible testimony and methods of operation and diagnosis.  The conclusions of medically educated persons, including two psychiatrists, were carefully considered by the court and given more weight in the court's final determination.  Therefore avoid social workers and therapists and find intelligent physicians and clinical psychologists whose opinions will be respected by the court.  If you search out therapists then search for those who are qualified and will come into court with a well-defined protocol and without any historical bias clearly favoring one side or the other in dissolution actions.  If the interviews with our children by the social workers and the therapists had been videotaped for the court to review, the testimony of these persons would probably have received even less weight than it did.  Have your own experts videotape their sessions with your children.  That way the court will be able to see the child say "No" when asked if the parent does "bad touching" without having to interview the child directly, which most judges will not do.

13. Hire a good attorney and be truthful with him from start to finish.  When my divorce began, and I had to respond to my former wife's petition, I was in a strange court in a strange town 150 miles away from where I lived.  My former wife had selected the forum and she selected it 150 miles away from where our primary residence was at the time of the divorce.  With some phone calls I located a highly respected attorney who agreed to represent me.  At the first meeting I gave him a retainer and told him two things: (1) I will never lie to you and (2) there are no skeletons in my closet.  I also told him that he would be in charge of the case and I would follow his advice, even though I might have my own opinions from time to time.  Twenty-six months later, after I had been through the worst experience of my lifetime, my attorney and I were able to hear the judge's words awarding me custody of the children.  During the course of those 26 months my attorney had to stick his neck out many times and had to go before the judge on many motions, but he did so knowing that I was not lying.  I felt vindicated and I believe my attorney felt proud.  In these same 26 months my former wife had four different attorneys.  My total legal fees were less than my former wife's.  Find a good attorney by asking around, don't tell any lies or conceal any facts, and follow your attorney's advice.  In my case, my attorney was all that a client could ever hope for; he represented me like I was his brother.
  

Conclusions

Being accused of sexually abusing your children is an overwhelming experience and requires full commitment of your resources to fight it.  Some changes in the way these cases are handled would go a long way towards reducing the number of false allegations.  We need to have all sessions with children videotaped from start to finish whenever the issue of sexual abuse arises and we should remove immunity laws and encourage malpractice lawsuits against the do-gooders who have done bad.  All of the people accusing you will claim to do so "in the name of the children and their best interest" and in the name of "doing good."  I think Will Rogers said it best when he said, "Dear Lord, protect me from the do-gooders."  Trying to "do good" is no good if one is not also looking for the truth.