From: noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer)
Subject: False allegations (Was Re: What can we expect from President Hillary Clinton?)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 05:54:59 GMT

In article <1993Jan3.024529.1581@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>In article <C07Kqz.H65@ddsw1.mcs.com> karl@ddsw1.mcs.com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>| In article <1i26fpINNesa@gw.home.vix.com> shedevil@vix.com (Anne P. Mitchell JD) writes:
>| >In a recent missive james g keegan jr <keegan@crd.ge.com> tells us:
>| >*dennissteve really is frightened of women, isn't he?
>| >
>| >And he has every reason to be.  I work with men on a *daily* basis who
>| >are the victims of *completely* unfounded allegations of sexual abuse
>| >[although in my case it is in the context of false allegations of
>| >sexual abuse of their children in a divorce/custody context].
>| >
>| >We in the biz call this the "nuclear bomb" of the divorce/custody
>| >war.  It's quick, it's easy, and it achieves the desired result:
>| >immediate, and often permanent, removal of the 'enemy'.  Women love it.
>| 
>| Yep, and those false accusations ought to be a Class "X" (as in just as bad
>| as selling cocaine to a 5-year old) felony.
>
>Lying under oath if proven is called perjury and is a
>felony.  News to you guys?

Gordon (who often calls for "evidence"), how many women have been
convicted of making false allegations of sexual abuse during divorce
custody/visitation disputes?  Even when the court writes in "findings
of fact"....  It is the opinion of this court that the allegations made
by the mother are, in fact, not true and that they were made solely to
ensure a better position in her quest for sole custody.... even when
they are SURE that the allegations are false and malicious, they WILL
NOT seek prosecution against "dear ol' Mom" for making false
allegations.  Most of the time it is because they WOULDN'T have a
case.  How do you prove that this woman made false allegations unless
you have a whole flock of people to whom she admitted making false
allegations lined up to testify against her?  Any good defense attorney
working for her would claim that the child made statements to her that
she regarded as indicative of some form of sexual abuse, and she came
forward with the allegations, not out of a sense of malice, but out of
concern for the children.  She just over-reacted to something the child
said.  She was "hysterical" and who could blame her.  She just coached
the children to clarify their statements, to make sure that this evil
father would get the severe psychological help she believed he needed.
See, she was trying to do GOOD.

No, the only ones who get burned are the ones who are naive enough to
ADMIT to someone willing to testify against them that they made
malicious, false allegations.  The worse that happens is that they lose
custody--but only after a man has spent sometimes hundreds of thousands
of dollars in fighting the allegations.  How many have the dough laying
around to do that?

As a man who was falsely and maliciously accused of sexually abusing
his children--fourteen months into a disputed divorce, nine days after
she threatened me when I told her that the previous charges that she
had filed against me for spanking my sons were going to be dismissed
(You just fucked up, Mister!!!  You're going to get it now!!!), four
days before we were to meet with a Guardian Ad Litem who was to put
together a new visitation schedule and rules that we BOTH would have to
abide by or be screwed by him in court, yet who did NOT have the money
to press for a lengthy trial that surely would have completely
exonerated me and completely condemned by ex-wife (the trial would have
ONLY cost $25,000), as a man who has helped eight men and one woman
directly in defending themselves against false allegations of such
abuse just in the last four months, but a man who was able, via
utilization of resources such as this, to obtain physical and legal
shared parenting anyway, I am as aware of the reality of this issue as
anyone in the US.

These allegations come up more and more often in divorce custody and
visitation disputes, and are made with more and more acrimony than ever
before.  Why?

Well, the portrayal of Dr. Elizabeth Morgan--a woman who photographed
her daughter with spoons and crayons stuck up inside her to show
everyone what her evil ex-husband had done, a woman who wrote a book a
year before she accused her ex-husband of sexually abusing their
daughter that stated unequivocably that men should never have custody
(entitled, _Custody_), a woman who hired a publicity agent soon after
she accused her ex-husband, a woman who sat in jail for almost two
years because she refused to abide by a judge's orders of habeas corpus
(presentation of the daughter for ordered visitation), a woman who had
her parents kidnap her daughter and steal her off to New Zealand, one
of the few English speaking countries in the world that is NOT a Hague
Convention country and therefore, REFUSES to recognize the jurisdiction
of American courts, a woman who has an arrest warrant out in her name
should she ever step foot inside this country again, a woman who is as
malicious and unethical and vindictive as any that ever walked the
planet--that portrayal has been quite POSITIVE by the American media.
Why is that?  Why is this woman, one of the most conniving,
manipulative, misandrist psychopaths to ever roam the planet,
considered a national hero?  Well, she was lying to a destroy a MAN.
All MEN are rapists, or potential rapists, so you must always accuse
them of what they are capable of.  See, it's quite simple.  If someone
had accused Ted Bundy BEFORE he had ever done anything, then he NEVER
would have been ABLE to do anything (except in prison, and only to
other men, and that's OK).

What other reasons are there that women are making more and more
allegations of child sexual abuse during divorce/custody and visitation
disputes?  Well, it's quite simple.  They make them because they work.
The women who make them typically know how the game is played.  Only
accuse those men that don't have enough money to defend themselves.
Only accuse those men that care enough for their children to seek at
least JOINT custody, in what they consider are the children's best
interests, because there is NO NEED to accuse a father that
acknowledges the mother's superior right to custody and therefore child
support (and alimony so that she can live the life that SHE was
accustomed to).

Only in those rare cases where men are able to obtain the money
necessary to defend themsleves, when they are able to persuade
uninformed attorneys, court officials, social workers, psychologists,
and doctors, when they are able to hold out through months and months,
sometimes years of being presumed guilty by a legal system that
abandons the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights because, after
all, there are children involved and all men are rapists--only in those
rare, rare, rare instances where falsely accused men are rightly
exonerated and malicious women lose custody for making false
allegations is anything approaching justice done.  But is merely losing
custody sufficient punishment for making allegations that could have
resulted in multiple life sentences if her ex-husband had been
convicted?  I have not heard of one woman being prosecuted for making
false allegations of child abuse during divorce custody and visitation
disputes, yet Drs. Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager have noted
that they and many other national experts emphatically believe that 75
to 80% of the allegations are manufactured, malicious--in a
nutshell--false.

Gordon, if you could just see the reality of this issue, if you could
just be presented with the deluge of cases wherein these allegations
arise, hear the testimony, become God for a minute and have all the
facts, you would be dismayed at the reality.  And you would be severely
disheartened.  And then, Gordon, you would understand why your perjury
statement is naive.

Aaron L. Hoffmeyer
TR@CBNEA.ATT.COM

P.S.  Last year, the Franklin County prosecutor tried to prosecute a
number of rape and date-rape accusations but lost in court.
Apparently, the prosector's office told the police investigators to be
a little more pernicious in obtaining evidence and a little more
confrontational about possible false allegations.  In the first two
months of school for `92-`93, there were five reported campus rapes.
However, two of the women reporting these rapes, while being confronted
with inconsistencies in their stories, admitted that their accusations
were inflated and false and were made in an attempt to "get at" former
boyfriends.  These women are being prosecuted for making false
allegations.

When the police, social workers, psychologists and doctors start
confronting women making false allegations of sexual abuse of children
made during divorce custody and visitation disputes, when they start
tape recording confessions from these women, and when they start
prosecuting these women to the fullest extent of the law for making
them, then they will cease to increase, and they may even stop.

You see, for what my ex-wife accused me of, I could have been sentenced
to life in prison.  How much time could she get for perjury?  What were
the odds that she would be prosecuted?  As long as she never confessed,
she was considered innocent, and I was presumed guilty.

Several weeks ago, I was having dinner with my sons.  My youngest son,
age four, while staring off into space, said, "My daddy can't go over
to my house because he touched my privates."  Immediately, I said,
"Adam, who said that to you?"  Without hesitation he said, "My Mom."
(That was about two hours after my ex-wife had told me that Dr. Elizabeth
Morgan is a national hero.)

Amazingly, during the entire investigation of her allegations, NO ONE,
NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON, asked my children if someone (like their mother)
had told them to say the things that she coached them to say.  I wonder
why.  Well, no, I know why.  Because if they HAD asked, they would have
received an answer they didn't like, an answer they didn't want to
hear, "My Mom told me to say it."  And that would have upset the cart.
It would have knocked over their cozy house of cards.  After all, all
men are rapists.  The social workers and the doctor at Children's
Hospital who exclusively investigates allegations of sexual abuse--all
their jobs depend on "SUBSTANTIATING" allegations, no matter what the
truth.  That a few men get wrongfully hurt in the process....  Well, all
the better.

Gordon, I truly wish that you weren't so intent on the degradation of
men's experiences.  You see, I have high hopes for forums such as
these.  Unlike TV, they can impart oodles and oodles of wisdom.  Maybe
I'm naive, but I wish these forums were about union, and not divorce,
about clarification of problem statements, and not about disregarding
and blindly refuting that with which we do not agree.

I apologize to anyone who thinks my use of gender in the above is
representative of misogyny.  I know men make the allegations, but women
make the allegations in the vast majority of cases.  I know one woman
who was accused by her 17-year-old son.  When I told my father, his
initial reaction was, "Well, you know with a 17-year-old son, she did
it, then, don't you?"

And I did everything I could to keep my cool and tell him something to
this effect:  "No, in fact, I'm just about 100% sure she didn't do it.
You see, her son convinced one social worker that his mother had abused
him by `describing, in detail, various sexual acts.'  Imagine that, a
17-year-old with a knowledge of sex.  That's all he told his story to.
One social worker.  He knew to march into Children's Services, sit down
and tell his story and then leave.  The state substantiated the
allegations against his mother and he got to move in with his
15-year-old girlfriend, whose mother, a perpetual `student of the state
and welfare Mom for 15 years' became his new foster parent.  You see,
the big beef this 17-year-old boy had with his mother was that she
wouldn't let him go live with his girlfriend.  And the accusations got
him just what he wanted.  But they got him even more than that.  Behind
door #2, the state gave him a full-tuition scholarship to the state
school of his choice.  Behind door #3, he got a stipend of close to
$500 spending money per month for his foster mom.

"But why do I believe this woman innocent.  Well, that she went on Phil
Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, Inside Edition, Geraldo Rivera,
Jerry Springer and Sally Jesse Raphael to tell her side of the story,
might convince some.  That she quit her job and fought the state
registry of child abusers and the "substantiation" claim made by the
state in her case might convince others.  That she now works full-time
helping others falsely accused for minimal return while foregoing a
career in designing furniture that was netting her close to a
hundred-thou a year before the accusations were made might convince
still others.  But not me.  

"No, what convinced me was talking to her.  Everything about her told
me she was sincere.  When she described the pain of being falsely
accused, it was real.  When she described the depression, it was real.
When she described the furor over a system that treated her like a
criminal while REWARDING her son for telling the most underhanded and
vicious of lies, it was real.  How did I know it was real?  Because it
was EXACTLY what *I* was feeling."
Xref: sparky soc.women:22154 soc.men:22169 alt.feminism:6828 talk.abortion:54173