Allegations
of Sexual Abuse in NZ |
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It is the "nuclear
option" in divorce and custody cases. It is the nightmare scenario for
foster parents. It can be the end of a teaching or child-care career. What is
it? It is a false allegation of child abuse. This is not only a particularly
vicious form of fraud; it is one of the few lies that the legal system makes
no effort to punish. There is, for all practical purposes, no penalty for
making a false accusation of child abuse. Many different
characters can have a motive for making a false allegation. Sometimes a birth
parent will accuse the foster parents of harming the child. The birth parents
may believe that they can improve their chances of reunifying with their
child by discrediting the foster parents. Or the birth parents may simply be
vindictive. Sometimes the foster
children themselves invent stories, for reasons of their own. The kids might
want to get out of a foster home, because the rules are too tough, or they
don’t like the food. Inventing a story of sexual molestation or physical
abuse can be a foster child’s tactic for getting himself or herself thrown out
of a foster home. Kids who have been in The System for a while compare notes
with one another about how to get themselves thrown out of a foster home.
False allegations are so common, that our local foster parent association has
a policy of assisting families through their first experience of being
investigated. But of course, it isn’t
just people already in the child welfare system who have motives for making
false allegations. Some parents in custody disputes make accusations against
their spouses as a tactic for keeping the parent out of the child’s life.
Others have no practical reason for inventing a charge: they do it simply for
spite. One study, however, found that some 70% of child abuse charges in
custody cases, proved to be unfounded. Now a little thought
will bring to mind the cost to the victims of a false allegation. The
divorced father loses his reputation, his livelihood and all contact with his
children. The foster parents go through a long investigative procedure, which
may cost them money and will certainly cost them sleep. But let’s not dwell
on the obvious costs to the obvious victims. There are many hidden costs of
indiscriminate charges of child abuse. The prospect of having
a false allegation made against you, is surely something that dissuades good
people from becoming foster parents in the first place. The more scrupulous
the person is, the more the prospect of being humiliated by an investigation
is likely to bother them. We don’t know how many perfectly decent potential
foster parents have been frightened away. The cost of aggressively
prosecuting each and every child abuse claim, no matter how far fetched, is
that the system has trouble attracting and retaining foster parents. This is
costly for all the kids who come through the foster care system. There are costs for the
particular kids who make false claims. A child with a history of making up
stories about authority figures really can not be in a foster home, since,
most families are reluctant to take a child with this kind of history. The
social workers could place such a child with an unsuspecting foster family,
but they really shouldn’t. So if the social workers play it straight, the kid
will have trouble getting a home. That child is no longer "family
material." He or she will end up in a group home, because he or she
poses a serious risk to a family. The worst consequence
of undetected false claims is that children who get away with lying become
more and more disturbed. Nancy Thomas, therapeutic foster mom, has spent her
adult life helping seriously disturbed children. In her book, Dandilion on my
pillow, butcher knife underneath, she reports on the sad consequences of
serial lying. One child had come into foster care after accusing his mother
of subjecting him to a child prostitution ring. His mother and another adult
went to prison. Another accused person committed suicide. His social worker
lost her license. But as the story unfolded, Nancy found out that there was
no child prostitution ring: the child’s father had coached the child to make
these charges, as a way of hurting his ex-wife. Of all Nancy’s troubled
children, this was the one who never really recovered. Think about it from the
perspective of a mildly troubled child: "I got my stepdad sent to jail.
I broke up my mom’s second marriage. I got my foster parents’ license taken
away." Getting an adult in trouble empowers the child, and they become
drunk on that power. Every time they get away with a lie, they get more
disturbed and more difficult to treat. That is the greatest hidden cost of
allowing false allegations to go undetected and unpunished. If you or I pulled the
fire alarm because we liked to see all the excitement of the fire trucks, we’d
be in big trouble. The public safety officers in this country take a dim view
of people who harm the public good in this way. False or frivolous charges of
child abuse play the same kind of havoc with the family court system, and in
the lives of many innocent people. At the very least, society needs to impose
some penalty for inflicting those kinds of costs on others. The first step is
recognizing the problem. People get away with making false allegations every
day. Innocent people suffer from being falsely accused. It is high time we
notice. |