Dismissal prior to arrest in Gwinnett child molestation case

The case was assigned to a detective with the Gwinnett County Police Department and we had a short window to investigate and convince the detective of our client’s innocence. Right after being retained by the client, we pored through thousands of emails and text messages spanning several years and uncovered a gradual but systematic process by which our client became alienated from his children. This is what then allowed the children to believe that he was capable of abusing them.

This began with the ex-wife’s claims of illnesses which invoked sympathy from the kids and provided excuses for why they couldn’t leave her to go see their father. This progressed to her discreetly planning to move away with the kids to Florida so that she could eventually move in with an old boyfriend of hers. As soon as she actually did move the kids to Florida, the poisoning of the kids against their father escalated.

The kids started saying that they didn’t want to visit with their father anymore without giving any kind of explanation. They would say that they didn’t trust him and that he lied to them without providing any details. Then the ex-wife started to accuse our client of emotional abuse against the kids.

Meanwhile, the daughter began engaging in clear attention-seeking behavior. She was acting out and making threats of suicide – which never really appeared serious. As a result, she began taking a number of medications and was seeing various therapists. In the years preceding these allegations, she was caught shoplifting and later checked herself into a mental health facility. Once she was in the facility and realized it was like a “pseudo-jail,” she made an allegation against an orderly saying that he was watching her while she was undressing in order to secure her release.

In the months leading up to the allegation, our client’s daughter accumulated over 50 absences from school and was failing every single class. Meanwhile, the mother was covering all of this up so our client would not find out. It was clear that at the time these allegations were made, everything was so out of control that there was little doubt that our client would eventually learn what was happening. We believed that these allegations were an attempt to redirect blame in order to avoid the inevitable repercussions for the daughter’s destructive behavior and truancy. These false allegations against our client represented the final chapter in the mother’s systematic alienation of him from his children.

We were able to educate the detective about parental alienation and show that this case had all of the tell-tale signs of it. Many of the hallmarks of parental alienation, as described by experts, were evident here and include the following:

• Limiting contact of the child with the other parent;
• Lying to the child that the other parent no longer loves them;
• Brainwashing the child that the other parent could be dangerous;
• Not allowing the other parent to visit the child;
• Hiding the information of a child from the alienated parent;
• Interfering between the child and the other parent’s communications;
• Neglecting the academic needs of the child;
• Therapist shopping (not happy with a therapist who doesn’t tell them what they want to hear); and
• False allegations of abuse.

We presented the detective with all of our evidence and included a detailed analysis as to how all of these elements of parental alienation led to the false allegations against our client. We also sent our client for a polygraph which provided additional proof of his innocence.

After four months of work, we were able to convince the detective that our client was innocent and the charges against him were dismissed. Since he was never arrested or formally charged, this will have no impact on his record and he was able to avoid the life-altering consequences that typically accompany a child molestation arrest.

Categories   |   Child Molestation Cases,