Our client was a victim of parental alienation that led to his daughter falsely accusing him of both physical and sexual abuse.
We were retained to represent a father who was facing a series of false allegations made during a contentious divorce. We were referred this case by the client’s divorce attorney and, by that time, he had already been arrested twice on allegations of both physical and sexual abuse against his daughter.
We obtained thousands of pages of documents including years of text messages, emails, and phone records. We also collected information from social media accounts, police reports, therapy records, DFCS records, and records from the Georgia victim compensation program.
We uncovered evidence of what appeared to be classic parental alienation – our client’s ex-wife had slowly been turning their children against him ever since he confessed an infidelity to her a decade prior.
Records revealed how she brainwashed the children into fearing their father. She would tell them he had brain injuries and dementia and that he was a danger to them. One time, she actually took them to the police station where she stated she had “safety concerns for her and her family.”
Other times, she would call the police during our client’s visitations with the son and claim that he had taken the son without permission and that she believed the son was in danger.
Things became so bad between our client and his kids that he requested a Guardian ad litem (GAL) be appointed during their divorce so that a non-biased advocate could be involved. But we later found evidence that the GAL too became influenced by the mother. We uncovered emails and phone calls that clearly showed the GAL was overstepping her boundaries and ultimately working against our client.
The first false allegation was that our client slapped the daughter in the waiting room at their therapist’s office. It was very clear that all he did was take her cell phone away from her during an argument.
The mother submitted a photo to the police with an alleged “busted lip” purporting to be from the incident. This led to his arrest. However, our client knew that the daughter suffered from cold sores and compulsive lip picking. We then found several of her old Tik Tok posts from various time periods which showed her lip with the very same “injury.” The mother clearly fabricated this allegation and took advantage of a pre-existing injury.
After the first arrest, the daughter continued to see the therapist. Over time, she eventually started making allegations of a sexual nature. These allegations seemed to get worse as time went on. As a result, our client was then arrested again and charged with child molestation.
In speaking with a psychologist who had been appointed by the court in the divorce case, we learned that the daughter’s therapist was herself a victim of child molestation. It was believed that the therapist may have been encouraging or influencing these new allegations.
The evolution of the daughter’s statements was illogical and quite concerning. Her allegations went from her father simply rubbing her back and shoulders to saying she was “terrified that her father will rape or kill her” to her eventually saying that he actually raped her “from the ages of 6-12 years old.”
We also noticed a pattern of these allegations being made right before critical hearings in the divorce case. Then, while our client was out on bond, the mother frantically called the DA’s office claiming that he was stalking the daughter at school and at their church. This just happened to be days before another pivotal divorce hearing. We had ample evidence of our client’s whereabouts to prove that these allegations were false as well.
Eventually, we were able to present all of this evidence to the DA’s office. We showed them the systematic alienation that turned the kids against our client and we pieced together just how these false allegations got made.
The DA’s office dismissed all of the charges against our client and now he can begin the extremely difficult process of trying to reunite with his children.
Categories | Child Molestation Cases,