Posted on 12/20/2008 6:26:02 AM PST by RogerFGay
Last year, Agustin Uribes conviction for sexually abusing a 5-year-old girl was overturned by Californias Sixth Court of Appeals. Why? The San Jose Mercury News reports that the hospital at which the girl was examined maintained a videotape of the examination which showed that no abuse had occurred. Read the story here.
Now it develops that the hospital has some 3,000 videotapes of similar examinations in child abuse cases since 1991. As you might expect, defense attorneys in pending and closed cases are seeking access to those tapes.
So far we dont know what was on the tape in the Uribe case that caused his conviction to be overturned. We also dont know what, if anything, other tapes will reveal, but we should know soon. One defense attorney has already brought up the specter of the McMartin Pre-School case in which blatant fraud was used to accuse teachers of the most bizarre acts of child sexual and physical abuse. The methods used in that case to elicit false allegations from very young children have become the standard for what not to do in determining whether a child has been abused.
The Mercury News article suggests that Mary Ritter, coordinator of the Center for Child Protection at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center may be at the center of this controversy. An expert witness in a second case has said that his review of the videotape "clearly contradicts Mary Ritter's conclusion" that sexual abuse occurred.
These videotapes have the potential to overturn a great number of abuse convictions. Thats important enough, but they also may open a window on the ways the children in those cases are treated by authorities. Were they allowed to tell their stories honestly or were they manipulated into telling falsehoods by adults bent on the incarceration at all costs of the accused who are mostly men?
Stay tuned and find out.
Thanks to Kevin, a reader, for sending it.
ping
May justice be done.
Stories like this are the reason why I always have a healthy skepticism of child abuse cases, especially cases where there is NO physical evidence, NO adult witnesses and stories that seem unlikely. Its simply too easy for ambitious Child Protective Service agents and prosecutor’s to ruin lives based upon flimsy charges and docile juries. This is also another example of how CPS and prosecutors use absolute immunity as a shield to allow themselves to pursue blatantly unjust cases.
“There are so many utterly fabricated child sex abuse claims, especially in divorce cases, that any Freeper who gets on a jury involving such a claim should be very dubious before acceping it and voting guilty. Although true, that’s truly sad, because there are some genuine cases wher a real perv needs to go away.”
Yep, totally agree. It’s scary. One time my first kid got injured at home in a way that may have been perceived as child abuse...even though it wasn’t. Although not life-threatening, he was in a lot of pain and certainly could have used some medical attention. Too bad. In today’s society, you risk becoming a “case” and possibly losing your kid if you bring him in - in questionable circumstances (especially where I live), so we didn’t.
Had the pain persisted for another day or two, I would have split town and had the wife take him in, knowing that the mother is a lot less likely to be investigated than one of use abusing fathers. Luckily it went away and he was fine. He later got the same injury in school, but this time I could get him the needed medical attention and finally find out what the problem was.
It all worked out in the end, but it’s pretty nasty out there if you want to hang on to your kids, without having them become spoiled sexualized druggies learning philosophy in college (and then having a bunch of cats at age 40, if they’re girls).
I’m very familiar with this having worked with a group that defends parent rights against the abuses of the schools, CPS, etc. Here in Utah we now have a law that requires the CPS to apply for a warrant... case workers no longer can take kids on their own.
The abuses are staggering. Children have been taken for no other reason than to fill beds. At one time every child taken by the State was evaluated by a shrink and 100% of them were declared mentally ill and placed on drugs. I’s swear that some of these CPS case workers destroy families just for fun.
The worst case I can recall seeing was one where a family court judge took a newborn infant from a mother who had a past abuse “allegation”... not conviction. Then the judge took a leave of absence and adopted the baby herself!
Much of our data on CPS abuse came from people who had quit the agency in disgust. Case after case where a CPS worker found no abuse, but the higher ups overruled the worker and took the kids.
THE CPS gets thousands of dollars for every child they can adopt out. This explains why they do what they do, much like the school victimize boys with the ADHD scam so they can get more federal dollars. It’s a money machine and tailor made for some sociopath to use his/her govt office to wreak havoc on society.
While not a child abuse case, 10 years ago my youngest boy ran into something of that mindset in small-town Alabama. His 7-year-old son had a buddy over for the night. The kids go to bed about 9 p.m. At 10;30 p.m. thete's a knock on the door. It's the local cops with the two boys in tow. It seems the kids were playing detective, had sneaked out the bedroom window, and were caught walking along the street shining flashlights into store doorways "looking for criminals".
OK, no problem with the cops but the kids gets a chewing out. The next day a Child Protective Services guy shows up to "investigate". My boy tells the guy he put the kids to sleep and watched TV. The guy says "You ABANDONED those children. We'll have to look into this." and insinuated they would lose the kid. My boy said he wanted to deck the guy as he scared the beJesus out of the wife.
Luckily, she knew the mayor's wife and the incident was snuffed out straightaway. Had she not had a contact, one wonders what crap my son would have gone through. They left the state within months.
This can all happen because marriage and family law has been reclassified from civil law to social policy. Marriage and family themselves are now deemed components of government programs rather than sacred and constitutionally protected private institutions. It’s all quite unconstitutional in fact, but the federal government wanted to unconstitutionally take over marriage and family law and convert it into a multi-billion dollar pork barrel scheme. Because they were spreading so much money around, the federal courts reclassified to social policy to allow it rather than declaring the federal intrusion arbitrary and unconstitutional as they should have.
No tinfoil hat. One of the chief instigators of the child abuse legislation, IIRC, was Patsy Schroeder, who came in with the huge Dem surge in Congress following Watergate...
They should each be issued a toy steamroller (to represent what happens to families) with the words "Good Intentions Paving Company" on the side.
NO cheers, unfortunately.
Abuse charges, be they child or spousal, fall into the category - just as with IRS charges - where you are definitely guilty until proven innocent.
Great!
Now we’ll hae a field day for abusers.
ping
How so?
Personally I believe that someone that actually does molest a child should recive a death sentence if convicted at trial.
Seriously.
That said and having dealt with social workers and child abuse agency’s as Police Officer and while working at a large Hospital I believe that far too many of thee people are so agenda driven and their methods of investigation so flawed that many innocent people get caught up in their traps and many real perverts get away because they are wasting time on the innocents.
How so?
Well liberals have NO LOGIC. They prove this again and again. So now when someone is REALLY ABUSED, they’ll continue to ignore it.
Have you noticed when someone IS ABUSED they are typically ignored or the case worker NEVER sees them. Instead they concentrate on people who are NOT abusers.
Roger, it’s hard to get into LIBERAL LOGIC! Do you get what I’m trying to say? I could dig up some examples where the kids are NOT being abused and that is what these peole focus on. Those that ARE being abused fall by the wayside.
BTW, Merry Christmas and Have a Happy New Year too!!
If innocent people, mostly men, are exonerated then a grave injustice has been exposed. Wonder what the magnitude of this is nationwide?
Meanwhile the protected public skool educator class, where sexual abuse of children is running rampant, is all but ignored by the MSM and their sycophantic politicians.
In every other part of society if a charge of sexual abuse of a child or of rape is made against a male he is considered automatically guilty.
Mayhap the liberal weenie case workers are afraid of the real abuse perpetrators and prefer to terrorize those parents who would not ever consider violence against the system?
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