Having just discussed Munchausen by Proxy and how doctors and hospital officials can sometimes use this as a tool to manipulate and control parents who aren’t compliant. In other words, if a parent doesn’t agree with a doctor’s diagnosis or assessment, they may choose to seek out another medical opinion. However, some doctors, in order…
Category: False Allegations
Thanks for joining us again, as we unpack the complex and controversial subject of facilitated communication, and the role it has played in false allegations of child abuse. If you’re only joining us now, we recommend that you spend a few minutes catching up on our previous articles in this series. For those of you…
It has been almost a decade since Julian and Thal Wendrow were arrested and charged with Rape of a Minor and Child Abuse. According to court records, it all began when their autistic daughter, Aislinn, typed up a statement using facilitated communication, describing how her father sexually assaulted her. In the 2007 statement made by…
Welcome back to our discussion on facilitated communication, and the role it has played in child abuse and neglect cases in the past. In the introductory article in this series we discussed exactly what this questionable method of communication is, and how it has been discredited by experts. Facilitated communication, which is still considered to…
Facilitated communication is a widely controversial method of communication. It claims to allow non-verbal individuals to communicate by typing on a keyboard, while a facilitator guides their fingers over the keys. It has been heralded by some as revolutionary, and by others as a complete farce. Not sure why we would choose to cover this…
One of the hardest things a person can do is prove a negative. How on earth do you provide evidence of the fact that you DIDN’T do something? (After all, there’s no evidence because it didn’t happen!) Definitely a catch 22. Yet, all over the country, people are accused of things they didn’t…
Certain sexual abuse allegations can be very hard to prove. Lack of physical evidence and witnesses, along with victim testimonies that don’t match the accounts provided by those accused of the crime, can make it very hard to prove that anything ever happened. This however, doesn’t stop most prosecutors. Also because jurors often…
Thank you for joining us in this difficult but necessary discussion. In this two part series on avoiding abuse and false accusations, we are looking at ways that a parent can minimize the opportunity for their children to be harmed, while also working to keep themselves safe from false allegations of abuse. It’s a…
As defense attorneys we deal with a lot of clients who have been falsely accused of abusing a child. However, we also see a great deal of the flip side of that coin – parents whose children actually have been abused, and it’s not a pretty situation. So we would like to take a…
We recently shared with you some very interesting information about recovered memory therapy, and whether or not it was possible to plant memories of abuse in a person’s mind during therapy. The current case in which this question has been a central issue, is Kathryn Salmi vs. Lale and Joan Roberts. In this article, we are…