Don't Blame ME, Daddy

Mary’s Story

An alleged victim of child sexual abuse, whose father successfully fought the allegations and was awarded sole custody of his children, made several telling statements in an interview she granted me for this book.

Mary was five years old when her mother used false allegations of child sexual abuse, citing instances of oral sex involving Mary and her sisters, to block her father’s motion for a change of custody.

Now sixteen, Mary has been living with her father for eight years and, in the interest of other children who are or may be potential victims of false allegations brought during a custody battle, she agreed to speak out about her feelings. We asked Mary, more or less as an expert witness speaking in the true best interest of the children, for her feelings, her opinions, her thoughts on the issue of false allegations of child sexual abuse and its effect on the children involved.

Mary’s messages to mothers, fathers, social workers, and mental health care professionals are probably more valid and more valuable than the most learned dissertation on this subject from a degree-bearing specialist.

In Mary’s case, not only did the allegations cause questions and, in fact, fear of her father, but Mary truly dislikes her mother because of the lies that involved her entire family. There is a rift between Mary and her sisters, and Mary doesn’t know if it will ever be healed. She doesn’t trust women in general although, fortunately, she is close to her step-mom who has, over the past eight years, proven herself to be a person deserving of trust and respect. Mary’s trust in authority figures has been seriously undermined, partly by the fact that the counselors and therapists — people with authority — worked with her mother to perpetuate the lies.

As a result of the lengthy, consistent, and intense attempts to substantiate her mother’s accusations, Mary knows a permanent seed of doubt has been planted. Although she sincerely loves and trusts her father, Mary admits that a doubt will always be there. She doesn’t think the question of whether it happened or didn’t happen will ever go away, and is learning to accept that this is something she may always have to deal with in her life.

Today, Mary says she’s very careful who she is friendly with, let alone who she dates. Lying is totally abhorrent to Mary, and what a person is like “inside” is critical to her. Because of her mother’s allegations and the actions of primarily female social and mental health care workers, Mary readily admits that she doesn’t hold women in very high regard and frequently wishes she was a man. With a maturity unusual at the age of sixteen, Mary candidly admits that it may be wrong for her to feel that way, but right now she can’t help it — it is the way she feels.

In Mary’s case, she says she felt like it was her against the world — against her mother who was, in fact, physically and emotionally abusive to the girls; against her father, whom she hadn’t seen for four and a half years and couldn’t remember; against the social workers and therapists, who kept asking the same questions, repeating the same accusations, raising the same issues, and questioning her dad’s actions.

In Mary’s case, even though life was abusive with her mother, the children were truly scared of their father. They hadn’t seen him for four years; Mary had been a year old when he left home and the girls had heard nothing good about him. They were the spoils of war, going to a victor about whom they knew nothing except what their mother had told them.

Mary’s mother fought to regain custody of the children after they moved in with their dad. Mary’s recollection of that period is that she and her sisters felt their parents were still fighting each other and that they, the kids, were simply the rope in an ongoing tug of war.

The Child as Pawn

Unfortunately, Mary’s situation is no more unique or unusual than the four case studies presented at the beginning of this book.

Because of their age and vulnerability, the children find themselves being manipulated by a number of different, and often unfamiliar, adults. The accuser often brings in a host of supporting witnesses from agencies, hospitals, and schools and uses various means to substantiate the claim.

Children can be taught to say various things, which may or may not be true, as a result of either direct teaching or subtle teaching through reinforcement such as verbal responses and encouragement, body movement, and facial expressions. Discussions of the incident between the child and mother, the child and friends or other family members can serve as an effective learning process, reinforcing the child’s knowledge and recital of a contrived event.

As a general rule, children seek to give the answers they think are desired, rather than deal with facts that may get negative reactions. Through the use of facial expression, body movement, or verbal responses, an interviewer can make it plain what type of answer gains approval and what gains disapproval. A strongly-biased interviewer can shape a child’s response by reinforcing the child with smiles, hugs, and “good girl” statements when the answers are what the interviewer wants to hear.

A false allegation of child sexual abuse places a child in an intolerable situation: They don’t want to hurt Daddy; they don’t want to lie; they don’t want to disappoint Mommy or make her angry. Placing a child in this position is itself child abuse at its worst.

Children are easily coached and easily manipulated, especially when they are emotionally and physically dependent upon the accusing parent for all their needs. During the course of an investigation of child sexual abuse, the child is expected to go through the same questions and exercises, time after time, to satisfy everyone’s requirements for testimony. By the time the child has been exposed to the same round of questions and the same round of coaching over a period of weeks, it is not difficult to convince the child that the incident actually occurred — giving the responses that people want to hear and receiving the praise they’ve come to expect for being “a good girl.”

We are routinely asked to believe that children do not lie. Research has indicated that, in cases of divorce and custody disputes, the child is often affected by the psychological functioning of the accusing adult and adult agendas, which impose their ideas upon the children, making the children pawns and victims of the directive adult.

A child usually reflects the emotional responses of the adult with whom the child resides. A child’s ambivalent feelings for the non-custodial parent may well be the result of the influence of the custodial parent, or the child’s emotional perception of that parent’s feeling for the non-custodial parent. Rarely is testimony of the mother, child, or social services people carefully reviewed to determine the extent, if any, of the mother’s bias, interests, or anger.

A. Matthew Miller, in an article in the Family Law Commentator, made the following observation: “Too often the child is the innocent victim of the failure of the marriage and becomes a mere pawn between parents competing for the love and loyalty of the child… Unfortunately, a custodial/residential mother with vengeful attitudes may perceive the child’s relationship with the father as the only means of getting even.”

System Failures

The Connecticut Bar Association’s Guidelines for Courts and Counsel states, in connection with custody cases: “… counsel should act to move the proceedings toward conclusion as speedily as possible, since undue delay in the resolution of the custody or visitation dispute is rarely in the best interest of the child. The minor will suffer more than any of the adults as a consequence of the anxiety of uncertainty.”

Unfortunately, it seems that few social service workers, prosecutors, or family court judges appreciate the validity and importance of this directive.

Too many social workers and mental health care workers approach an interview with the belief that, if the child said it or the mother said the child said it, then it must be true. The child is given positive feedback when he or she provides the sought-for answers. Negative feedback and contradictions result from denial of any abuse. If a child says he was abused, he’s telling the truth. If he says he wasn’t, he’s lying — this seems to be the theory practiced by many social workers, a belief clearly documented in The Real World of Child Interrogations (Underwager and Wakefield, 1990).

Social workers and mental health workers can “train” a child to believe he or she was molested. If the child continues to maintain nothing happened, they may say that other children say it did. They may attempt conjecture: “Do you think it might have happened?” They may use anatomically correct dolls and ask the child to pretend something happened and to show them how it happened.

In January of 1978, the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect stated in the Federal Register: “Sexual abuse of children, especially in cases of incest, is perhaps one of the least understood and, consequently most mishandled forms of child mistreatment… There is often as much harm done to the child by the system’s handling of the case as the trauma associated with the abuse… care must be exercised, lest the very social intervention employed produce the very outcomes that are feared.”

The theory that children don’t lie about sexual abuse, because they haven’t the knowledge or experience to create such claims, totally ignores the fact that children can be taught to parrot almost anything and coached to relate stories both true and false.

The prosecutor in Larry Spiegel’s case made the following statement regarding the validity of his daughter’s statement: “If you ask a child the right questions, you get the truth.” More accurately, in cases of false allegations involving young children, if you ask the “right” questions — leading questions, closed-end questions — you can get the answers you want.

Case Studies

In the Colorado case, all three of Rick’s children were placed in therapy and “treated” for sexual and physical abuse, starting as soon as Marsha made the allegation. These children became victims of the system and victims of their mother’s vengeance, not victims of child sexual abuse. They were separated from their father, denied any contact at all, and are now having to learn to know him again. They have a stepfather whom they are required to call “Dad,” while instructed to refer to Rick by his first name.

In the case of Mark Doe in Texas, one of the conditions of his divorce settlement was that his son be placed in a state-approved institution for intensive evaluation and therapy. Mark had a choice: agree to the hospitalization of his son, or have all three of his children placed in foster homes. The child, at the age of three, became an extreme victim of the system — placed in an institution designed to treat disturbed adolescent or prepubescent children.

In reviewing Mark Doe’s case, Dr. Underwager and Wakefield made the following comment: “When a non-abused child is treated by adults as if the child had been abused and adult pressure and influence is used to produce statements from a child about events that did not happen, this is an assault upon the child’s ability to distinguish reality from unreality.”

In the William Smith case, the victimization of the children is ongoing. Both children are totally baffled by the fact that they must live with their mother and are not allowed to see their father. They are confused by the fact that their mother is lying, they have told everyone that their mother is lying and how she told them to lie, yet no one listens to these two small voices.

Dr. Janice Hill of Ross Associates included the following in her psychological review of the children:

A psychological evaluation was done at the University of Michigan Family and Law Program, involving Bernie, his ex-wife, and their three-year-old daughter. At the end of over five hours of evaluation, the psychologist made the following observation: “This ‘therapy,’ although meant to be helpful, has been continually sexually stimulating to her. Each of these charges is the product of continuing interviews and therapy and who knows what. This evaluator sincerely doubts any of the acts took place, let alone all of them.” He also noted: “It is important to remember that children are curious. Children are suggestible and compliant, especially with a parent and those adults whom they seek to please and protect.”

What happens when the allegation is proven false? The child has probably still been subjected to endless interrogation and often sexual abuse therapy that is confusing and probably emotionally damaging. He or she may have been taught the role of victim. A young child has probably learned a great deal about explicit and deviant sexual behavior long before they would normally have had that type of exposure.

Long-Term Effects on Children

The physical and emotional effects upon a true victim of sexual abuse are enormous. We have yet to fully comprehend the emotional, mental, and sociological effects upon a child who is coerced into playing the victim of a false allegation of child sexual abuse.

A child who is being used by a parent as a pawn in the game of custody and child support is daily and hourly subjected to the obsessions and attitudes of that parent as well as to the questions and attitudes of the therapist, who will generally operate from the assumption that the child has been abused. Over a period of time, this type of exposure results in the child either becoming convinced that he or she was, in fact, abused — or carrying forever the question, the doubt, about what really did or didn’t happen, as we have seen with Mary.

Forcing a child to lie, or to accuse a parent whom they love, may well cause permanent and irreparable harm to the child who is, in all probability, unable to cope with the situation. We recognize that the adult who has been accused has tremendous difficulty accepting and adjusting to the accusation. Why can’t we recognize what the situation is doing to the young child?

Conclusion

The preceding evaluations indicate that there may be long-term ramifications for children as a result of being involved in the allegations, the investigation, and the almost automatic therapy process. Mary can tell us clearly that these fears are well founded.

Can we, as parents, social workers, mental health care professionals, attorneys, judges, legislators, and caring adults in the general population justify continuing experimentation with our children to find the answers?

Mary’s comments clearly illustrate that it is the children who are the true victims of false allegations of child sexual abuse. The agencies and mental health workers win; the attorneys win; one of the parents wins.