Have you ever been the subject or victim of a false accusation?
So, I was sitting in my grad adviser’s office one day. He also happened to the the department chair. Our conversation was interrupted by a phone call that he was told he had to take. Dr. A mostly listened, indicated engagement in the conversation with frequent “uh huhs,” “I sees,” and “yeses” interjections but wasn’t taking notes. I twiddled my thumbs and thought of a paper I was working on. At one point he said, “Dark hair and petite?” A few more “uh huhs,” and then he said, “She’s right here.” The caller continued talking and he continued listening. As I couldn’t imagine anyone knowing I was there – much less interested in where I was at that moment – concluded that he didn’t mean me but someone else that was in the office. When the call ended, he said that I needed to go see the Director of the Children’s Center about the police report I’d filed.
I said something like, “There must be some mistake. I’ve never filed a police report.”
He said that in that case I needed to go sort it out. I responded that I would do so later that afternoon. That wasn’t the response he wanted and in retrospect, he seemed not to want didn’t to say more. So, he asked if I’d been to the Children’s Center a few weeks ago. I had. To administer an IQ test for a course I was taking. Dr. A then asked if I’d filed a police report after that. I hadn’t. Why would I? You didn’t suspect parental sexual molestation of the child you tested? Good lord, no. It was an IQ test, not a psych eval.
Nevertheless, someone had filed a police report and the Director of the Children’s Center thought that someone was me. The report led to a full investigation of the parents by the authorities. They concluded that there was no evidence of probable cause. The parents had hired an attorney to sue the university. A very serious matter for all parties.
It was off to the Children’s Center right then for me. I was shaken and pondered the possibility that I couldn’t prove my innocence in this matter. Fortunately, the Director knew immediately after I arrived that I wasn’t the woman she needed to see. The problem was with the register. Part of a line had been skipped and it looked as if I’d tested two children. One of whom was the subject of the police report. The name of the person who tested that child was there on the subsequent line of the register.
How the lawsuit was resolved is unknown to me. The parents had been put through a nightmare, and an “oops” and an apology from the university hardly seems sufficient. However, it was the act of a single individual grad student and not any policy or employee of the university. A student that was dismissed from her grad program. It’s unsettling for me to consider that she could have gone on to one of the proprietary psych grad schools and ultimitately have secured a license in marriage and family counseling. Hypervigilence – yes, she had been molested as a child – in almost all areas of life, is rarely not cou nterproductive. It’s not only that it leads to too many false positives and destroys the lives of innocents, but also too often completely misses true positives. Hence, it was several people in the ordinary course of their non-national security jobs that observed squirrelly behaviors and/or characters to report them, and the NSA and FBI terrorist hunters not only didn’t see anything before 9/11 but also dismissed those reports from concerned citizens.
Yes. Former narcissistic son-in-law (a lawyer) used false accusations against my daughter and our family in divorce and custody battle. His mother was an ‘expert’ of 25 years in family matters before the court. It cost five years of litigation to (partially) reverse first court decision said to be preliminary at the time. If I had the chance, I would have done more than just break his legs. Look up most of the horrible deeds of men from paternalistic culture (orthodox religion whether Jewish, Dutch Reformed, Evangelical or Catholic) and how they treat their spouses: physical and mental abuse, coercive control. In the communities of Dutch Reformed, abuse and incest is above average and these people close ranks to avoid civil court. Similar how the Catholic Church, University of Pennsylvania, BBC management -Saville case- etc. hide perpetrators from justice. Men in such a culture consider the spouse and child as property, they own them and they decide how to dress, use make-up, friends to see and control their lives untill a break-down of personality and complete loss of self-confidence. When their wives are pregnant these men change their behavior drastically for the worse. Some murder their wives and in an elaborate manner try to hide their deeds. Unfortunately, the women these men choose are often kind and very loyal, inapt to confront these bastards until it’s too late. Because of the narcissistic nature, these men have two faces for their friends and in-laws.
No court should accept a relative of either party in a legal dispute as an “expert witness.”
Men in patriarchal societies (are there any that aren’t?) need not be clinically diagnosed as narcissists to consider spouses and children as property. (And the prevalence of narcissism may be very high among men that abandon their families.) OTOH, women that consider their spouses and children as property are possibly more likely to be narcissists.
His mother used her knowledge to manipulate GP doctor and nurse in the months after my daughter gave birth to her first child. The mother used all dirty tricks available and her son wrote “his evidence” in the legal papers for family court. My daughter was unaware of this treachery until she received court summons. Only parents and legal counsel are present before the judge during a single session lasting 30-45 minutes max. No appeal is possible until lower court makes final decision which took three years. In the meantime, my daughter went to court to extend visitation rights in which she succeeded. Very small steps, but first court decision is very important as Judge is not inclined to change circumstances of “father and son” family. Plenty of injustice.
Aren’t those my points that false accusations aren’t as uncommon as we’d like to think and are easier to make than defend against? And in your daughter’s situation, it wasn’t only a narcissistic man/husband but a woman/m-i-l that she was up against.
Courts and the public at large should be very cautious in collecting all the possible relevant information and carefully weighing all of it before making a determination as to guilt or innocence. Drives me nuts that both the right and the left in the US have politicized alleged criminal acts. Serious and competent investigations do err, but far less often than Nancy Grace and Al Sharpton do. Once an allegation against Sandusky was taken seriously, it didn’t take that much time to see the clear pattern of a pedophile.