[VOA]

I was hired to work on a criminal appeal for an innocent man who had been wrongfully convicted
of sodomizing his own three-year-old son with a screwdriver.

I'll never forget seeing an interview of a journalist (from Detroit) who recounted how
his estranged wife accussed him of sexually abusing their child.
The judge in the case eventually tossed all the allegations and reached the
conclusion the wife's accuassations were groundless...but gave her custody
(or the king's share of it, IIRC).

This was on CNN maybe 15 years ago and I remember having shudders.
Little did I suspect this was just the leading edge of the tidal wave of sex-abuse
accuasations being used in divorce cases for leverage...

[Bryan]

You've struck upon a subject that really deserves a thread of its own.

Actually, the leading edge of the tidal wave was about 30 years ago. Our office also handles family law and domestic battery cases. We have represented both men and women in family court, and both the victims and the alleged abusers in domestic violence cases.

There has been a lot of attention paid by the left-wing media to deadbeat ex-husbands; but for every deadbeat ex-husband, there is a shrewish ex-wife. She will use the children as ammunition in the war against her ex-husband. She will obstruct visitation in a multitude of different ways because it hurts her ex-husband -- never giving a thought to what it's doing to the kids.

She will lie under oath to get exclusive title to the car, the house, and any other marital assets, plus alimony and child support checks, for as many dollars and as many years as she can get. Frequently, her ex-husband is even forced to pay the fees for her attorney -- who is, often enough, a professional shrew on her own merits.

All of these concessions can be obtained under the threat of a false accusation of domestic violence or molesting the children. Because when such an accusation is made, the man is guilty until proven innocent.

Of course, none of what I've written in this post is intended to accuse any of the millions of women (and men) who act responsibly in family court, and have only the best interests of the children at heart. Nor is it intended to take anything away from the thousands of women (and men) who must deal with the very real dangers of domestic violence and the sexual abuse of their children.

But false accusations are a problem that is equally real, and extremely damaging. The man whose case I mentioned, who had been falsely accused of sodomizing his three-year-old son with a screwdriver, went through a terrible ordeal. His career was destroyed. He was a deacon in his church; they threw him out. He sold his home to pay his attorney fees.

And he was one of the lucky ones because the false charges didn't stick. Prosecutors point to his case and claim that the system works. Every year, innocent men's lives are ruined by such false charges. But the worst damage, in my opinion, is done to women and children who face very real abusers; because false accusations made by unscrupulous women erode their credibility.