My Story

Innocent mans life being ruined, young girl ripped from her father... Mother knows truth.

Hopkins County Texas, an innocent man has recently been sentenced to 80 years prison time on charges of aggravated sexual assult of a minor. He has lost everything because his ex-girlfriend has falsly accused him of molesting his own daughter and sodomizing her son after finding out he's dating another woman. The sad truth is that these cases are all too common. In 1975, 35 percent of all child abuse reports were unsubstantiated, but by 1993, that percentage sky rocketed to 66 percent. In divorce, when allegations are made and the police conduct investigations, 97 percent of these claims are unable to be substantiated. It is obvious that many allegations of abuse which are reported in divorce situations are false and 95 percent of those accusers are women.

The mothers motivation? Low self-esteem, anger, and revenge. She and the accused had been together for five years. She kicked him out to move another man in but continued sexual relations with the accused. When she found out the accused was getting on with his life with a new girlfriend, jealousy and resentment came into play. She became outraged at being replaced. She was forced into the realization that the relationship she had with the accused was over. She is not only ruining the life of her ex-boyfriend, father of the little girl, but her own childrens mental well-being as well.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner first identified Parental Alienation Syndrome in the 1980's. He noticed a dramatic increase in the frequency of a disorder rarely observed before, that of the combination of a programming (brainwashing) of a parent's indoctrinations and the child's own contributions to the vilification of the targeted parent. Parental Alienation is emotional child abuse. The Health department has no clear definition of what emotional abuse is. This means that emotional child abuse is rarely, if ever, acted upon in spite of the evidence. When a sexual allegation of any kind is made, a very necessary beginning strategy for professionals is to regard their role as clincian investigators, not clinician therapists. Investigative behaviors demand objectivity, skepticism, and open-mindedness in gathering data from all sources involved in the situation. It is best that an interview with the child be done out of the vicinity of both parents, and better, in the company of each parent seperately. However, professionals are essentially trained to accept at face value allegations or statements made by children. The core of the issue begins with the belief that children never lie about abuse, and quite frankly most of the time they don't. But sometimes they do lie and sometimes the child is mistaken or deliberately misled, or even accidentally misled.

A problem that the defense must face in these cases is the close-mindedness of "the system" (pardon me using that term, but it is generic to cover prosecutors, law enforcement, and social workers). Medical nurses and employees whose livelihoods depend upon their contracts with child advocacy centers will give opinions that a child was abused. Failure to give the right opinion will mean the contract is not renewed. These opinions from medical "experts" will say the findings are "consistent with" sexual abuse. Of course, "consistent with" is not a true medical diagnosis. As the indicators that are used to determine abuse are actualy quite common behavior which even normal children sometimes exhibit, this testimony will reveal the findings given as "cosistant with abuse" are just as "inconsistent with abuse".

The report was made January 11, 2006, just weeks after the mother was told by a friend that the accused was seen with another woman. The accused was arrested in February after interviews with investigators. He was unaware at the time that talking to Child Protective Services, a police investigator, or anyone without an attorney present is the single worst thing a wrongfully accused person can do. He knew he was innocent so cooperated with them. Unfortunately, CPS and the police are not interested in conducting a fair and thorough investigatian. They arrested him on the spot. He was later released on a $50,000 bond. The DA changed the bond agreement four times within a few months for no reason until the accused was caught in violation (which included, but was not limited to not being allowed within 100 yards of any person under the age of 17). He was seen at the movie theater with his current fiance' and her sister at ten in the evening. He has been in county jail since June 2006.

We know that at a certain age the sexual identity (preference) is formed (this may not be a conscious development). That identity may be heterosexual, homosexual or it may be a mixture, or it may be one of the many paraphilias including pedophilia. Whatever the individual's sexual identity is from the point in time when it becomes defined, another factor science knows is that it becomes fixed, meaning it does not make an intrinsic change for the rest of that individual's lifetime. The accused has never molested a child in his life. He spent most of his teenage and adult life with children. He was involved with the childrens' groups at church. His sister's children were evaluated by CPS due to being in the accused's home at the time of the alleged abuse of his own daughter. They were cleared. The mother of the alleged "victims" has another child. An older daughter who denies ever being touched by the accused. The concept that sexuality is changeable is a rationalization used by the system to find an easy answer and to avoid having to confront their rigid close-minded beliefs about a case. They can't handle resolving the question; "If he has NO sexual interest in children, WHY would he have done what he is accused of?" That is a question that makes them dig their heels even deeper into concrete because they know that the resolution to the question in most cases is that it is because "he didn't do it!" In non-scientific terms, an individual does not wake up on Monday as a heterosexual, on Tuesday as a homosexual, and go to sleep on Saturday as a pedophile. The issue is, of course, more complex than that, but the point is valid. Human sexuality does not make major shifts.

This DA has lost only one sexual offense case. However, it's not necessarily the charges of sexual offense that he'll get a person convicted on. Our prisons are full of persons who have been convicted of child molestation without any physical evidence ever introduced against them at trial. Mass hysteria, the sensitivity or outrage, about child abuse makes it easy for prosecutors to secure convictions by manipulating the jury's fear of releasing a child molester back into the community.

This is exactly what he did in this case. The accused was indicted on 4 counts of aggravated sexual assault of and 4 counts of indecency with children under 17 years of age. The evidence brought up to the grand jury for indictment was only the reports from CPS and a private counselor. It went to trial January, 2007 where a jury was manipulated into finding him guilty. The evidence presented at the trial was in favor of the defense. The testimony from the CPS worker was of course that her findings were "consistant with abuse." The counselor testified that the boy had told her that the accused sodomized him over 30 times (yet never reported to authorities, a legal requirement). However, records from a state run psychiatric hospital indicated mild depression. The mother had had him committed due to "acting up" in school. When their reports were inconsistant with her own "diagnosis" that her son was suicidal, she removed him from there. She started taking him to another state run psychiatric center where again it was reported that the boy suffered from mild depression. Again, she removed him. This time she took him to a private counselor who would later report findings "consistant with abuse."

This moving the child from one place to another looking for someone who will agree that something had happened to the child is yet another symptom of parental alienation syndrome. The first thing the accused's daughter said to the CPS worker was, "I have a secret about my daddy my mom told me to tell you." Her testimony in court was that she didn't remember anything happened but her mother told her it did. During the interview with the CPS worker, the boy said that the accused had touched his penis only once for just a minute. The accused admits to this. He was checking it out due to the boy having gotten a sore from a Bodark thorn. In court, when asked specifically about the alleged abuse, the boy denied anything having ever happened. Physical evidence supported his testimony. There was no trauma to the genitelia nor anus of either child found.

The counselor also stated that the boy says he "loves and misses his daddy." His real father had commited suicide when he was only 7 months old. The accused on the other hand, lived with him from the time he was 2 years to 7 years of age. The councelor claims that she made sure he was referring to his biological father and not the accused whom he'd considered "daddy" for five years. The girl, at age 5, went from calling her father as "daddy" to considering him as "the man who messed with her tee-tee" within one years time.

They sentenced him to 40 years for each of the 4 aggravated sexual assault charges and 20 years on each of the 4 indecency charges. That would have given him 20 years before he'd be elegible for parole. However, the judge presiding over the case stacked two 40 year sentences giving him a total of 80 years. He will have to serve half of his sentence before being elegible for parole.

The defense will have a long list of needs. During the evaluation period, a therapist should have contact with both parents on an equal basis. Parent-child interactions, and observations of the entire family should be made. You'll need a good trial lawyer who knows child sex cases. You will need a jury consultant. You will need testing to prove you are not a pervert. The accused did not get any of this. There was a one sided investigation done. He was never seen by a therapist of any sort. He was unable to even see his daughter from the time that the charges were filed. The attorney who tried his case claimed to have experience with these sort of cases, but he didn't get any necessary evidence to help in the defense. There was no jury consultant which made manipulation easy for the prosecutor. No testing of any sort was done to prove or disprove his innocence.

"What about a polygraph test?" The polygraph can be a powerful tool, but never standing alone. By itself the polygraph will be discounted and ignored; this is most true in sex cases and domestic violence cases. The polygraph certainly is not foolproof. Even with prep and getting 85% of the folks to pass convincingly that is still not 100%. Many precautions in using the test should be taken to protect the client. The polygraph will show some individuals as deceptive who are telling the truth. Often this has more to do with physiology or psychological attributes of the person rather than deliberate deceit. The United States Supreme Court has ruled that it is not a violation of your rights for police officers to lie to you, and tell you that you failed a polygraph when, in fact, you did not. Most frequently, law enforcement polygraph examinations are used not as a tool to get at the truth, but as a psychological weapon to extort a confession from you, or some statement they can misconstrue as a confession. Remember that it is their job to "solve" crimes, not to behave as your defense counsel or protector of your Constitutional rights.

He's filing for an appeal. A criminal defense is expensive! How expensive? That depends on the individual case. However a good criminal defense lawyer will want a retainer of at least $20,000. Plan on spending another $20,000 to $60,000 or more on experts and other things. When you get a lawyer who starts with a $5,000 retainer, no matter where you are in the United States the real message is that the lawyer isn't planning on defending you. Well, needless to say the accused in this case went with the $5,000 lawyer and is now hoping for an appeal to go through. The appeal will have to be done by a court appointed attroney. These attorneys are usually underpaid, and overworked.

We don't have access to that kind of money. If anyone is willing to help (maybe an attorney willing to work the case pro bono, someone who can donate toward getting an attorney, someone who would be willing to donate their time on consultation, or just someone with information on what we can do for ourselves legally), please send an email to the given address.

Child sexual abuse is a horrible crime and it is important that we listen to children as the first step in preventing this. However, in many cases, it has been used as a weapon to alienate a child from a parent and this is unfortunate for it complicates our task of keeping our children safe. Childrens deaths at the hands of adults are unacceptable to anyone. One guaranteed way to reduce these deaths is to reduce the false-abuse caseload of Department of Children & Families workers. Not only are caseworkers overburdened by false claims, which keep them from doing what they should be doing, but we are wasting vast sums of scarce tax dollars that could better be spent on a host of worthy needs. One guaranteed way to reduce false-abuse claims is to prosecute those who file them. All fathers advocacy groups list among their highest concerns the escalating rate of false-abuse allegations filed by mothers and mothers lawyers against fathers before, during and after child-custody disputes as a means to win custody. This is a dirty little secret whose time for exposure has come. Guilty also are state attorneys who virtually never prosecute mothers or lawyers for these crimes. The costs are paid by society (in taxes), fathers and children. Children who go through the false-abuse inquisition are not the same afterward, nor is their relationship to their father the same. The emotional damage is severe and long lasting. To put this in perspective, 50 percent of first marriages end in divorce, another 17 percent end in permanent separation. It doesn't take a large percentage of malicious mothers and unscrupulous lawyers to generate a huge false-abuse complaint caseload and the deadly consequences.

Some History About The Accused