Allegations of Sexual Abuse
	False Allegations
	"Michael"
	Sunday Star Times February 22, 1998 page 3 Freed man seeks $300,000 by Donna Chisholm A man who spent 14 months in jail wrongly branded the sex abuser of his own son is seeking more than $300,000 compensation for himself and his parents. The man -- freed when his son admitted he had lied after being nagged by a family counsellor -- is the first to seek compensation since Cabinet laid down new rules in the wake of the David Dougherty case. The Sunday Star-Times revealed in November that another man, former IHC caregiver Andrew Craig, had been jailed after it was discovered he, not the father, was the real abuser. The man's lawyer, barrister Rob Harrison, refused to confirm the size of the claim sent to Justice Minister Doug Graham on Friday, but it is understood it will cover actual loss and emotional harm. The man's parents almost bankrupted themselves to pay for their son's defence -- his 68-year-old mother last week returned to work in an apple packing shed in Nelson because the case took all their savings. Worse, his mother said, it destroyed their lives. "I don't know if you can measure the emotional cost of something like this," she said. "To know that your son, someone you love, has been accused and found guilty of something he didn't do -- I don't know words that can describe it." She remembered vividly her first visit to her son in Mt Eden prison. "My husband and I were just crying. To go into a place like that I just thought `How could this happen to us?' "They brought out my son and there was this perspex between us. I asked the guard, ‘Please let me hug my son' and he said `I'm sorry, I can't do that'. "So we did what you see on TV and I used to think it was corny: We held our hands up to the glass. He was crying and saying `Mum, get me out of here'. What could I do?" She and her husband, who had retired to a mortgage-free $150,000 home in Blenheim, sold it, traded down to a $100,000 home with a $30,000 mortgage, and spent $50,000 on his appeal. The Appeal Court quashed the convictions and refused to order a new trial. The judges noted the son had retracted the allegations against his father and had named Andrew Craig as his abuser before his father's trial. This information was given to the police -- before the trial -- but was never passed on. The son said he blamed his father because he had been disciplined for being naughty and because his counsellor "kept nagging me, asking the same questions over and over". The boy had been in counselling because of behaviour problems. The father, who now lives with both his sons and new partner, said he carried the stigma of being a paedophile for three years after he was charged. "Compensation would say that what they did to me was wrong." But he also wanted to repay his family and partner for their support. "Compensation will help me get my life back." Cabinet's new rules on compensation, released after the Government refused to pay David Dougherty for more than three years he spent in jail for a rape he did not commit, say, among other criteria, acquitted or pardoned people must prove their innocence to qualify.