Should persons accused of child sex abuse be presumed guilty?

Bail is often denied to those deemed to be a danger to the community. This necessitates, obviously, an examination of the defendant's prior record, the current charges, and the strength of the evidence against them.

Bail laws vary from state to state in the US. The Federal bail law pertaining to the detention of a defendant pending trial is contained in U.S.C. Title 18, Sec. 3141.

As the Federal law says: "Nothing in this section shall be construed as modifying or limiting the presumption of innocence."

Odd, that Rydinearth comes at this from two opposite poles

a) advocating no presumption of innocence for anyone accused of child molestation, then
b) outlining the consequences of miscarriage of justice for the falsely accused

Are we helping with some law homework assignment here?

Of course they should! What kind of question is that?

Cycloptichorn

Give yourself two quibble points. My only point to Boom is that people who are considered innocent until proven guilty are not necessarily suffering an assumption of guilt in enduring pre-trial incarceration.

And some are locked up (pre-trial) for their own protection.

If that was your only point then you shouldn't have stated as fact that "we" only lock up: (1) those with no money, or (2) those who are flight risks.

You seem to bitch frequently about others spreading misinformation or disinformation at this site, yet there you go again ...

Such as what? Living in the same house?
What do you do if one of your children is very angry at you, perhaps because you grounded them, and one of their friends tells them that so and so had their dad sent away to prison by saying he touched her. And they, being a child, don't think about the long term consequences, or perhaps underestimate the effect their words will have, and go to their teacher and make up a story about you.
Is that the kind of "compromising position" you're thinking of?

That's exactly the point I was trying to make in asking the question.

At what point did I say I advocated no presumption of innocence? I said nothing of the kind. I merely posed a question.
In fact, the very question was intended as a sort of rhetorical hyperbole. ie, I posed the question precisely because it is offensive even to ask it in the first place. That is the point I was trying to make.

And by that I mean, the question about whether we should presume innocence or basically throw the constitution out the window. The answer is obvious. And that is my whole point.
The reality however, is that in these type of cases, the constitution IS essentially thrown out the window. ie, once the ball is rolling, it's not a matter of the prosecutors, and the legal system proving convincingly that you did something. Quite the opposite. The burden is upon YOU to prove your innocence. And there almost nothing under the sun that is considered sufficient to do so. That is my point.
And no, I am not a law student.

Yes. Men should not be within forty feet of a child, because children can make people disappear.

Ask somebody who's been through it, and see what they ipse dixit.

What a dickhead . . . but we already knew that. I was merely making an observation, i was neither offering a comprehensive view of incarceration policies, nor offering legal advice. But you're so obsessed with making personal attacks on me and what i post, that i doubt that you'll let it go. Why don't you make some more invidious comments about my appearance? That's about your speed, and indicative of just how deeply in the slime your character is lodged.

Anecdotal evidence--i've not denied that's the case, i've just pointed out that you haven't established that as a universal case.

That's an interesting contention--can you provide an example?

Now THAT is very wise advice. However, it doesn't work very well if the accuser happens to be your own child.

And please don't kid yourself by thinking that children don't falsely accuse their parents. That would be a fatal mistake. There are many innocent men languishing in prison right this very minute who thought the same thing. They may also have thought that the legal system would presume them innocent, or that their innocence would eventually be proven out. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

I can't provide a concrete example from memory, but I was thinking for example of the arrests made during the troubles in Northern Ireland, when to let a suspect out after (say) a murder charge would have meant that his life was in danger from those who felt wronged by the crime, in revenge attack.

Where does this stuff come from?

Is it actually true in the US?

Here, you have almost no chance of ever being convicted if you sexually abuse kids...the littler the better, by the way.

The system doesn't even begin to get involved unless the alleged disclosure by the child meets certain criteria for credibility and lack of contamination.

IF the child is interviewed, the system is heavily weighted so as to exclude false positives.....this means that there is way more chance an abused child will not make what is considered to be a sound disclosure than that they will make an unsound one.


Then there's the judicial system. Children's evidence has less credibility than adults' (and adults alleging rape almost never get a conviction, either, unless there is is corroborating evidence, and often not then) and many children are excluded from trial because the prosecution judge they will not cope with the trial.

Even if they get to trial, since most child abuse occurs over time, there are often many instances. The chances of a child remembering any one incident in enough detail to pass cross examination is small.

I would likely, if a young child of mine were abused, think very carefully about whether to allow a trial, even if it got to that, because of how traumatising the system is for kids, and how small the chance of conviction.

Ditto if I get raped.

Truly, the sort of stuff that gets written on A2k about prisons full of falsely accused men strikes me as utter crap.

I know that the US can be very different in terms of how you do things...but is there credible evidence of these gross claims?


This is not to deny that there ARE false claims....or kids so influenced by parents, for example, who hate each other, that they come to believe something has happened.

Their stories, in such cases, for instance, are often not hard to pull apart and identify as coaching.

But the magnitude that gets talked about here?

I'd want some real evidence..and not just alleged perps saying they didn't do it.


Re the presumed innocence.

It ain't all black and white, you know.

I can likely counter every anecdote anyone can throw at me of innocent adults kept from their kids, with stories of innocent kids abused for years by guilty adults because courts insisted that the alleged offender have unsupervised access.

If someone working for you gets credibly accused of embeszzling at a previous job, and stealing millions, and is awaiting trial, are you still going to have them as your accountant and working unsupervised?

What is fair?

Of course they are innocent until proven guilty...but what about your duty of care?

If a carer at your child's day care has been accused of sexually abusing a number of kids, is it right that they continue to have access to your kid?

It's a damn tough area, but it's not a simple binomial decision as to how to react to accusations.

I agree with you. And I also agree that the legal system should not put up unreasonable barriers to a child proving abuse. I can understand why the system in this country has swung so far to the extreme as it has. Please understand, I don't for a moment underestimate the dire affects of abuse on children. I had a dear friend who had been systematically abused as as child. She suffered from constant psychotic breaks where she relived the abuse and thought her abusive father was there in the room with her and wanted to kill her. She could not maintain a normal relationship, a normal job or anything like a normal life. It broke my heart to see what her father's abuse had done to her. I know what a horrible thing this is. But I have also seen it from the other side; the way it is now. And the fact of the matter is, it has gotten to the point where the merest accusation, without any corroborating evidence whatsoever, is enough to send a decent, law abiding father to a hellish prison sentence for the rest of his life. And the fact is, in our society of free exchange of information, kids KNOW and tell each other about the power in these accusations. If they spend anytime talking to their friends, they KNOW the awesome POWER of an accusation such as this. They know that if push comes to shove, they have an absolutely invincible ACE up their sleeve. Parents pissed you off? Just play the sex abuse card. They will NEVER see the light of day again. You cannot begin to understand how draconian this system is until you actually get caught up in it.
The reason I opened this thread the way I did, was to demonstrate that I do NOT in any way condone the sexual abuse of children. I think these monsters should have their balls nailed to the wall!! But my point is, that our zeal to prevent this kind of abuse has resulted in an absolute travesty of the American constitutional rule of law. And the self styled "child saviours" (CPS) have been given a level of unquestioned power that a 3rd world dictator would envy. If you have never dealt with these people, month after month, year after year, you could not possibly understand the trauma that they put you and your family through. This agency, whose purpose is ostensibly to protect children and families, has left a trail of ruined lives and families as far as the eye can see. They know that if they don't continue to supply a continuous train of scapegoats, they will lose their funding. They are never questioned or brought to task, because society views them as "the saviours of our children". And the worst thing is, most people who have lived through this nightmare are too frightened to say anything about it, because they've been cowed into submission by the constant abuse, coersion and threats of the child protective system. I, however, am not cowed. I WILL speak out.

Why the HELL would a perp who actually did it, voluntarily get on a forum like this, (an anonymous forum, mind you, where even if they convince the whole world they are correct, it won't affect their fate in the least), and announce their views to the whole world?
Can you think of any possible benefit they might get from that?
On the other hand, if you were an innocent father, falsely accused by a child or step child, of a crime you did not commit, would never even THINK of commiting, which accusation could easily have RUINED your life forever, which, as it is, nearly ruined your life, and put you and your family through unimaginable hell for months and months on end, would your anger not motivate you to speak out in a forum such as this, if for no other reason than to vent your anger, and prevent this travesty from happening to another innocent person?