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Interesting. From that bit of the thread:
"The vast majority of accusations of child sexual abuse made during custody battles are false, unfounded or unsubstantiated."
That's probably true (if phrased in such a way that it implies that the answer is usually "false", which irks me), simply because substantiating any sort of sexual crime to the degree required by the courts is most often impossible (the incredibly low conviction rate for rape isn't just because the police don't behave quite as well as everyone would like), and it gets harder with children. A friend of mine split up from her bastard of an ex, with whom she had a four year old daughter. Not too long afterwards, the daughter told her that he had been abusing her (early stages, no touching yet, but still). Horrified, my friend sought to deny him access. The problem arose in proving the case: the child, who had also told some of her mother's friends, has to tell a figure of authority (teacher, social worker, police officer) of her own free will. You are allowed to set up meetings, I think, but you can't lead a four year old, and of course any child is highly unlikely to mention in a random conversation to one of the above figures that s/he is being abused. So access continues to be granted, though I believe she's managed to keep it at supervised access. She's ended up planning on moving to Canada in a few months; she should be able to manage it legally, her ex-husband, who is the father of her other child, lives there.
On the other hand, and going back to the idea of domestic violence accusations being "inflated", it would help if the courts didn't have such ludicrous requirements of proof. I knew someone who was kicked down a full flight of stairs by her abusive husband. The doctor took one look at her bruises and decided to photograph them. The lawyer looked at the photos and said that they wouldn't be any use as evidence, it wasn't considered bad enough. This was a while ago, but judging from my best friend, who's just started his first post-traineeship job as a family lawyer and is doing a lot of matrimonial law, it hasn't improved. He was telling me all about the huge numbers of devoted fathers who get unfounded allegations of abuse thrown at them during divorce proceedings. I'm sure it does happen sometimes, and I know that divorce is renowned for turning perfectly amicable people into scheming monsters, but I just hope he isn't being fed the same propaganda his police officer sister got when she was in the Family Protection Unit and was taught that the vast majority of rape accusations are false. It's a nightmare all round with such (largely) unprovable crimes, I just wish more people could tell the difference between "unsubstantiated" and "untrue". |
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