Have you ever been falsely accused of child abuse?

[Kellykins1218]

Not by any agency but I've had other moms in a play group gossip about my son's bruises on his shins. The doctor told me it was normal from learning to walk and falling down so much. The kid was a clutz... They all had kids so knew what it from. They just wanted to be witches

Our pediatrician says it's the kids that don't have bruises on their shins that they worry about.

 

[DawnM]

No, but I defended someone in court who was.

 

[punkin]

Yes. Some people with grudges do horrible things.

 

[aprilchem]

Yes, twice. Once on the DIS I posted something about making my son go to school without a coat on in 50 degree weather, because he was continually losing his coat and I wanted him to experience the natural consequences of it. Another poster claimed to be a mandated reporter and said she should report me for child abuse.

And my sister threatened to call CPS on me because we allow my sons (ages 11 and 9) to walk 3 blocks down our sidewalk occasionally to buy milk from the corner store. We live in a small town with sidewalks and it is completely safe for them to do so, but in this age of sensational journalism she believes every child who is unsupervised for just a few seconds will be instantaneously abducted. It's an unfortunate consequence of the society we live in today that we are actually much safer than when we were kids, but many parents are lead to believe that the world is a much more dangerous place.

I have threatened to call CPS on a person once - when my children were small, my ILs were adamantly against car seats for some reason. Well, their actual reason was "we didn't have them when our kids were young and they didn't die, so they must not be necessary." I told them that I expected them to use car seats when my children were in the car, and if they did not then I would call CPS on them. I don't know if I would have actually done that or not - we ended up realizing we couldn't trust them and the kids don't stay with them unsupervised.

 

[Geoff_M]

No, but when my wife taught in a county north of us she knew a family that was almost ripped about by a false accusation. The couple had long been foster parents in the community, when a teen-aged girl that the were caring for claimed that the father had molested her. Needless to say, the usual events began to play out in the media and socially as the father was arrested and charged. My wife had gotten to know both parents through having their biological kids in her class and was totally floored by the whole thing. Things looked very grim for the dad, but luckily for him the girl recanted about a month after the arrest. It seems she hadn't been housed with the family for long when she decided they were too strict for her tastes, so she hatched a plan that would insure that the state would have to relocate her by making a false accusation against the father. Needless to say, she was the last child the family agreed to foster-parent.

 

[Kellykins1218]

A year ago, our autistic 10 year old fell backwards out of his 2nd story bedroom window. I fully expected a visit from Children's Services even though the doctor, and the police officers that just happened to be in the ER when we brought him in, acted like it really wasn't that big of a deal. I'm freaking out and they're trying to calm me down saying I wouldn't believe how many kids they get, that aren't autistic, that fall out of windows. We never heard a thing. Then a couple of weeks later, one of our county providers found out about the accident and reported us. She had no firsthand knowledge, and we had already talked to doctors and police who are mandated reporters, but she still stuck her nose in & then called to tell us that she had done it. I was furious but we STILL didn't get a visit.

 

[Geoff_M]

On a funnier note, we have a current neighbor who some years ago got a call from the worried teacher of her then elementary school-aged daughter. The teacher said "Um, I just wanted to followup with something your daughter said the other day. She told me your husband kicks your cat." My neighbor relieved that it was nothing serious, without thinking, said "Oh, we ALL kick the cat!" She then realized how that sounded. She then had to explain that what her daughter was referring to was the habit that their cat had of sleeping on the landing at the top of the stairs at night. Periodically, when someone got up in the middle of the night and walked out in the hallway by the stairs in the dark, they'd end up accidentally "Kicking the cat." After the expanded explanation, the teacher calmed down.

 

[jaybirdsmommy]

Yep, my 6 year old went to school last year and told his teacher this really awesome story about how his Daddy tried to kill him with a knife. What had really happened was the two kids were trying to kill each other in the living room fighting over the TV remote while my husband was fixing dinner. He ran into the living room to break them up, completely forgetting that he had a knife in his hand. No no one was stabbed or threatened in any way, but apparently our son thought it would make a cool story to tell at school. Teachers are mandated reporters, so needless to say we had to do the whole child services thing. Several interviews, had to ask our friends to give references for us, very embarrassing.

 

[Liberty Belle]

WOW just WOW. We had been friends for years. Yes they dropped it. I was/am innocent. They knew it. Grandma didn't know me at the time .

Now I'm even sorry I brought it up. I feel dirty, cheap and judged.

I don't think the poster was saying anything bad about you. It made me kind of wonder, too. I mean, if my child told me that our long time family friend abused him, I would definitely act as if I assumed he was telling the truth until I found out for sure otherwise. Plus, a child falsely accusing someone has got something going on that needs to be addressed.

 

[Liberty Belle]

Yep, my 6 year old went to school last year and told his teacher this really awesome story about how his Daddy tried to kill him with a knife. What had really happened was the two kids were trying to kill each other in the living room fighting over the TV remote while my husband was fixing dinner. He ran into the living room to break them up, completely forgetting that he had a knife in his hand. No no one was stabbed or threatened in any way, but apparently our son thought it would make a cool story to tell at school. Teachers are mandated reporters, so needless to say we had to do the whole child services thing. Several interviews, had to ask our friends to give references for us, very embarrassing.

Yikes, that reminds me. When my oldest was in second grade, my husband was drinking a beer and my son wanted to try it. My husband told him no, but let him touch the little bit on top of the can (you know that sometimes gets caught in the little well) and then lick his finger.

We get a note from his teacher the next day that he was telling the kids that we let him drink beer. The way she worded it made it sound like he downed a cold one every day after school. Nothing came of it, though.

 

[Magpie]

I don't think the poster was saying anything bad about you. It made me kind of wonder, too. I mean, if my child told me that our long time family friend abused him, I would definitely act as if I assumed he was telling the truth until I found out for sure otherwise. Plus, a child falsely accusing someone has got something going on that needs to be addressed.

Whether anything needs to be addressed depends entirely on the words the child used, and what the child actually intended to say.

Sometimes the child means to say something innocent, and it comes out all wrong. For example...

I was picking my daughter up after a preschool gymnastics class. As the coach (a young female college student) hands her off to me, my daughter says happily, "We played the Underwear Game today!"

Her coach goes sheet white and says, "We don't do anything with underwear!"

I smile reassuringly at her (since she looks about ready to faint) and ask my daughter, "What's the Underwear Game?"

My daughter starts to ramble on a bit, and it's getting worse as she's saying things like, "And then she puts her hands on my bum...", as the coach is simultaneously saying things like, "We're never alone with any of them, you know..."

But finally I manage to put two and two together and realize my daughter is talking about holding onto a bar and being lifted up into the air by the coach.

"Pull Ups!" I say, "You did pull ups today!"

"Yes," says my daughter happily, "The Underwear Game!"

Because, of course, "Pull Ups" is not just the name of a gymnastics move, it's also a brand of diapers.

My child was definitely not accusing anyone of abuse, but if you didn't know what she was talking about, it might have sounded like she was.

 

[Terapin]

Our pediatrician says it's the kids that don't have bruises on their shins that they worry about.

Mine said the same thing. She wanted to see the normal effects of playground playing, running and being kids. Kids that are neglected can be pristine. One of my kids had a huge curved mark on her bum that looked like she had gotten a whooping on the day she had a paeds appt. I explained that she was doing sensory play with a big mixing bowl of dried pasta and fell and sat hard on the rim. She thought about it for awhile and decided I sounded truthful. But I was worried for a moment as the mark looked horrible. She was a great paed in so many ways - checking in on social stuff as well as development and health.

 

[Minnesota!]

Yes, twice. Once on the DIS I posted something about making my son go to school without a coat on in 50 degree weather, because he was continually losing his coat and I wanted him to experience the natural consequences of it. Another poster claimed to be a mandated reporter and said she should report me for child abuse.

And my sister threatened to call CPS on me because we allow my sons (ages 11 and 9) to walk 3 blocks down our sidewalk occasionally to buy milk from the corner store. We live in a small town with sidewalks and it is completely safe for them to do so, but in this age of sensational journalism she believes every child who is unsupervised for just a few seconds will be instantaneously abducted. It's an unfortunate consequence of the society we live in today that we are actually much safer than when we were kids, but many parents are lead to believe that the world is a much more dangerous place.

Wow! We live in MN - my kids don't wear coats until it is in the teens. A sweatshirt will work until then. Today is around 50 and I know my kids went either in their short sleeves or maybe a hoodie. I don't wear a coat, EVER.

And, we live in a big city, and I let my kids walk to/from school, alone, and when he asks, I let my older son walk up to Walgreens and DQ to get a snack...he is 12 and it is just under a mile. Some people are way too up in others business...

 

[lifesavacation]

No, but during my parents divorce my mom alleged that my dad abused my sister (different dad from me). My mom was an unfit parent and my dad was my hero for getting me away from her. I still remember the CPS interview. And while the allegations were being investigated, they wouldn't let me see my dad.

My dad did get full custody of me and they found no basis to the charges. From that point forward, though, my dad had a really hard time showing affection. It's only now that I'm an adult that he feels comfortable giving hugs or a kiss goodbye on the cheek.

 

[jiminyC_fan]

I don't think the pp was assuming you were guilty. In your original post it made it sound like it was handled very nonchalantly and like the parents just totally dismissed their 3-5 year saying they were sexually abused (something very out of the ordinary for a child of that age especially to even know about etc., and something that most would think should be taken very seriously). I think the pp was just inquiring about why the parents would just automatically not give a second thought to a claim like that from their own child, but it sounds like there was more to it and that they did ask more questions etc.

I don't think the poster was saying anything bad about you. It made me kind of wonder, too. I mean, if my child told me that our long time family friend abused him, I would definitely act as if I assumed he was telling the truth until I found out for sure otherwise. Plus, a child falsely accusing someone has got something going on that needs to be addressed.

Lessoned learned. Give every little itty bitty detail or don't post what so ever.

 

[Magpie]

Lessoned learned. Give every little itty bitty detail or don't post what so ever.

Yes, that actually IS a really good lesson to take from this.

I've had my posts misinterpreted often enough that I now routinely take a moment to read over everything I post. I try to ask myself, "How would I read this, if I didn't know me?" "What's the worst possible interpretation a person could come up with, based on what I wrote?"

And even with that, I still sometimes find myself having to defend something I've written, because someone read it in a way I totally didn't intend. "Wow, how did they get THAT from what I wrote?"

By the way, I'd recommend you add an edit to your original comment. These threads have a way of hanging around, and weeks, months or even years from now a person might start reading, hit your post, and comment before even getting to your later explanation. It's a real pain.

 

[CarolAnn856]

Lessoned learned. Give every little itty bitty detail or don't post what so ever.

Wow, that's a tad over-dramatic. So, there's no middle ground between "give every little itty bitty detail" and leaving out a major component that any reasonable person would expect?

Why do you still seem so defensive, even after several posters nicely explained how your brief description of the incident left them wondering, too?

 

[Paula Sedley-Burke]

My mum was accused when I was a kid. I recall being interviewed I was really upset. I actually had a condition where I bruised easy.

 

[luvsJack]

Wow, that's a tad over-dramatic. So, there's no middle ground between "give every little itty bitty detail" and leaving out a major component that any reasonable person would expect?

Why do you still seem so defensive, even after several posters nicely explained how your brief description of the incident left them wondering, too?

Well it did sound a bit like the first pp thought the parents should have never not believed that their child was abused. So, I get the defensiveness. The poster said the parents didn't tell him/her about it until many years later, how were the details supposed to be known?



I have never been accused but I had a worker in my center that was. It was a high school girl that worked for a few hours in the afternoon--doing cleaning and a small amount of assisting with the kids, never without an adult present. We had a school aged child who came after school and hated it. He cried and screamed every day when we picked him up from school. So a teacher started questioning him about why he didn't like after school care. She determined that our worker had touched him. So the mom came to me, and we looked at the schedule and the timing of when her child was there in the afternoons and it was clear that the girl was never around her child. The child was only there for 45 minutes in the afternoon (I signed them in after picking up at school, mom signs them out at pick up), the girl came in 30 minutes in to that so there was only 15 minutes that they were both at the center. And that was the time that she was cleaning and mopping the kitchen and dining area.

Mom still reported it and I had to go down and talk to someone at CPS. That was the most unfriendly woman I have ever met in my life. Anyway, I took all the sign in sheets and work schedules and time cards and showed all of this to her. Her only comment was that I should not be leaving at any time and leaving the center with the Assistant Director (which is perfectly legal and she had the same credentials I had), which really had nothing to do with this. The last I heard of any of this was the mom admitted that her son was very manipulative and it was obvious when she got her mil to keep them again that he got exactly what he wanted. The teacher later apologized to me for starting the whole thing.


We had two parents accused while we had the center. One was a single Dad. I felt so bad for him. But it turned out fine. The child was never abused.

The other, the child was abused but the mother called it in herself before I saw the child. So when CPS came to see the child, they wouldn't talk to us only to him. Problem was the 4 year old didn't talk so it did them no good. When I tried to show them the burn marks on his fingers, they just said they could not talk to me about it. She lost custody and the child lived with his father for a long time, the father paid to put the mom in rehab and under the care of a psychologist and eventually they got back together.

 

[georgina]

We had trips to the emergency room with our kids a couple of times and they thoroughly question you several times to see if your story changes. Makes one very uncomfortable, as if they are going to charge you with hurting your child for an accident. That's as close as I have ever been to being accused and that was too close for me!