Upstream. A Mohawk Valley Blogzine.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Are You In Danger Of Being Falsely Accused? Risk Factors.

Are you in danger of being falsely accused of sexual abuse, child abuse or neglect? If you find yourself in any of the situations below, your chances of being a victim are increased. I wrote these down as they came to mind, and did not list them in any order of priority.

1. You are in the midst of a bitter divorce with a vengeful spouse.

2. You work with children--day care, school, church, boy scouts, etc.

3. You have a child who does not want to follow your rules, wants out of your house and knows what he or she has to say in order to get out.

4. You belong to a religious minority--Mormons, Amish, Wiccans, etc.

5. You homeschool your children.

6. Your child has a mental illness.

7. Your child's therapist believes strongly in pseudo-science: repressed memories and other forms of spectral evidence, dreams, body language, and Freudian psychology.

8. Your children have a medical condition in which they bruise easily.

9. Your child skips school regularly. (It doesn't matter that you may drop him off everyday and watch him go through the front door).

10. You are the foster parent of a troubled child.

11. You allow yourself to be in situations where you are alone with children, especially troubled children.

12. Your local D.A. and Child Protective Workers are radical feminists and radical child advocates.

13. You believe in firm but loving discipline (I am not even talking about corporate punishment here.)

14. You dare challenge your local Social Services Department when they start an investigation.

16. The prevailing attitude among social workers and public officials where you live is that children belong to the state not the parent.

17. You have made an enemy somewhere, who knows how the anonymous hot-line and follow-up investigation works.

18. You live in a county where the D.A. is trying to advance his or her career by being tough on crime, loves media attention, has a flair for the histrionic and will do anything to get ahead, even if it means running roughshod over the rights of accused people.

19. You question your child's therapist about a proposed plan of treatment.

20. You switch doctors and therapists often, instead of staying with ones who have come to know you and your family over many years.

Undoubtedly there are more risk factors than these. I will expand on some of these in later posts.

1 Comments:

  • I personally know of four instances in recent years of people who have been falsely accused of abuse and/or neglect. Each of them had several factors from your list.

    We must remember that if DSS were successful in keeping families together, they wouldn't have jobs -- or promotions.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:56 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home