http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/m-n/morse/2005/morse030205.htm

March 2, 2005
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

It is the "nuclear option" in divorce and custody cases. It is
the nightmare
scenario for foster parents. It can be the end of a teaching or child-care
career. What is it? It is a false allegation of child abuse. This is not
only a particularly vicious form of fraud; it is one of the few lies that
the legal system makes no effort to punish. There is, for all practical
purposes, no penalty for making a false accusation of child abuse.

Many different characters can have a motive for making a false allegation.
Sometimes a birth parent will accuse the foster parents of harming the
child. The birth parents may believe that they can improve their chances of
reunifying with their child by discrediting the foster parents. Or the birth
parents may simply be vindictive.

Sometimes the foster children themselves invent stories, for reasons of
their own. The kids might want to get out of a foster home, because the
rules are too tough, or they don't like the food. Inventing a story of
sexual molestation or physical abuse can be a foster child's tactic for
getting himself or herself thrown out of a foster home. Kids who have been
in The System for a while compare notes with one another about how to get
themselves thrown out of a foster home. False allegations are so common,
that our local foster parent association has a policy of assisting families
through their first experience of being investigated.

But of course, it isn't just people already in the child welfare system who
have motives for making false allegations. Some parents in custody disputes
make accusations against their spouses as a tactic for keeping the parent
out of the child's life. Others have no practical reason for inventing a
charge: they do it simply for spite. One study, however, found that some 70%
of child abuse charges in custody cases, proved to be unfounded.

Now a little thought will bring to mind the cost to the victims of a false
allegation. The divorced father loses his reputation, his livelihood and all
contact with his children. The foster parents go through a long
investigative procedure, which may cost them money and will certainly cost
them sleep. But let's not dwell on the obvious costs to the obvious victims.
There are many hidden costs of indiscriminate charges of child abuse.

The prospect of having a false allegation made against you, is surely
something that dissuades good people from becoming foster parents in the
first place. The more scrupulous the person is, the more the prospect of
being humiliated by an investigation is likely to bother them. We don't know
how many perfectly decent potential foster parents have been frightened
away. The cost of aggressively prosecuting each and every child abuse claim,
no matter how far fetched, is that the system has trouble attracting and
retaining foster parents. This is costly for all the kids who come through
the foster care system.

There are costs for the particular kids who make false claims. A child with
a history of making up stories about authority figures really can not be in
a foster home, since, most families are reluctant to take a child with this
kind of history. The social workers could place such a child with an
unsuspecting foster family, but they really shouldn't. So if the social
workers play it straight, the kid will have trouble getting a home. That
child is no longer "family material." He or she will end up in a
group home,
because he or she poses a serious risk to a family.

The worst consequence of undetected false claims is that children who get
away with lying become more and more disturbed. Nancy Thomas, therapeutic
foster mom, has spent her adult life helping seriously disturbed children.
In her book, Dandilion on my pillow, butcher knife underneath, she reports
on the sad consequences of serial lying. One child had come into foster care
after accusing his mother of subjecting him to a child prostitution ring.
His mother and another adult went to prison. Another accused person
committed suicide. His social worker lost her license. But as the story
unfolded, Nancy found out that there was no child prostitution ring: the
child's father had coached the child to make these charges, as a way of
hurting his ex-wife. Of all Nancy's troubled children, this was the one who
never really recovered.

Think about it from the perspective of a mildly troubled child: "I got my
stepdad sent to jail. I broke up my mom's second marriage. I got my foster
parents' license taken away." Getting an adult in trouble empowers the
child, and they become drunk on that power. Every time they get away with a
lie, they get more disturbed and more difficult to treat. That is the
greatest hidden cost of allowing false allegations to go undetected and
unpunished.

If you or I pulled the fire alarm because we liked to see all the excitement
of the fire trucks, we'd be in big trouble. The public safety officers in
this country take a dim view of people who harm the public good in this way.
False or frivolous charges of child abuse play the same kind of havoc with
the family court system, and in the lives of many innocent people. At the
very least, society needs to impose some penalty for inflicting those kinds
of costs on others. The first step is recognizing the problem. People get
away with making false allegations every day. Innocent people suffer from
being falsely accused. It is high time we notice.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse


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