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Child Molester - but - not realy

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akaba

Junior Member
re: plea bargains

I am not an attorney but i can say that from personal experience that my family has gone through something likes this where my sister got upset iwth my father and because her friends had parents that were divorced and could do whatever they wanted to, she was advised to accuse my father of several things incluidng child abuse. Yes, I will agree, my father hit us when we did wrong and we misbehave but i cannot say that he hit us whenever he wanted to. unfortunatelly, my father slap my sister age 16 at the time for calling him disrespectful names because he asked her to wash the dishes, she went to school the next day and accused him of sexual abuse. My parents were drag into DFCS and questioned. my mother was told she was unfit, my father was told that he got off on molesting kids. All this by an overzealous detective who obviously believes that everyone is guilty until proven innocent. My sister was taken to a foster home. She called my mother everyday and told her that she was told if my mother divorced my dad she could come and live with her. Anyway, a whole year in and out of court, my parents humiliated everytime they showed up. Finally, my sister changed her story, so the DA offered my dad a deal if he plead guilty to cruelty to children that he would drop the sexual abuse charge. IF we had known that for 10 years, accepting that plea would have cause so much turmoil we would have fight it, unfortunately, my father saw how bad the family was suffering and decided to take the plead. So yes innocent people can take plea bargains even though they are not guilty because there are other factors that force us to look at. I used to be one of those that said, that if you had done nothing wrong then the police should not be looking for you, nor should you be afraid to stand up to them, but through what my family went through, I was only 17, I can understand. By the way I am from Georgia.
 


Kane

Member
CdwJava said:
Must be different in your state than mine ... we can rarely get these cases IN to court. We can often get them to the preliminary hearing, and then we can try to compel a deal, but they very rarely ever go to trial. The burden of proof is simply not usually there - too much doubt.

While a jury may not want to let a child molester go, unless the victim is already Charles Mansion they similarly do not want to convict an innocent man, either. Unfortunately for the accused, the accusation is enough to lose your livelihood. A local daycare provider here (one of the few good ones) went under because of a false allegation from a 5-year-old. The police investigation affirmed the alibi of the suspect (the provider's husband) and the 'victim' later recanted her story to mom and the therapist - and then to the court. However, the business was ruined, they were in debt, and the state revoked their daycare license anyway citing that the affirmation of the original allegation by a psychologist was sufficient to close them down.

It's a brutal path to go down. And at least out here we see the allegation frequently in cases of child custody disputes. Maybe 1 in 4 have SOME demonstrable validity to them, and maybe 25% of those can get in to court.

- Carl

I don't know anything about the ones that don't make it to court. As far as plea bargains are concerned, it works both ways. Prosecutors worry about acquittals in one-witness cases; defendants worry about turning down probation deals and winding up in prison for the rest of their lives. It's brutal no matter which way you look at it.
 
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