BLOG #14, September 5, 2021
The laws that have been enacted by state legislatures across the United States because of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, passed by the Nixon-Ford administration in 1974, resulted in a nationwide sexual child abuse hysteria.
The Act, sometimes called the Mondale Act after one of its sponsors, was implemented to fight a genuine problem. Up to 1974, sexual child abuse was rarely reported and frequently covered up. It was the good intent of Congress to try to rectify that deplorable situation, by providing incentives by means of federal funds for the states to set up programs for child abuse research for the identification of the abusers and for their prosecution and treatment. Thus, federal funding was made available to match the states’ funding. As a result, the states were motivated to eliminate, or to reduce, the laws that were in place to prevent false charges of sexual child abuse, to increase their rates of convictions, and thus qualify for the millions of dollars in federal funds gifts.
From the legal perspective, from its creation, the Act required some modifications, in that it reinforced the frequent occurrence of the over reporting phenomena that caused the national hysteria of sexual child abuse, while failing to provide for the enactment of the required laws to protect the legal rights and the freedom of the falsely accused as well as for laws to protect the tender brains of the children from inculcated false beliefs of having experienced molestation.
The national hysteria peaked somewhere between 1980 and 1990 and according to Mary Pride’s book: The Child Abuse Industry, it caused over one million false allegations of sexual child abuse throughout the United States in 1985 alone. My fabricated cases in 1981 and in 1984, took place, in part, as a direct result of that national hysteria. But, while the hysteria played a main role in paving the way for easy convictions in many cases, mine included, other factors also contributed to my two cases, such as the plaintiffs’ personal agendas and the political agenda of Miami Dade County State Attorney Janet Reno.
Although the national hysteria has diminished throughout the years, it’s still lingering and causing the illegal conviction of guiltfree defendants. It requires correction, which can come about through a dedicated campaign consisting of public education of petitions from the public to our law makers and from lobbying by those that have the authority and the moral duty to do so. In support thereof, statistics show that an estimated 76% of all the charges of sexual child abuse crimes are ultimately found to be unfounded. Most charges of sexual child abuse are based on allegations of sexual touching with the sexual organs or with the mouth or with the hands. It is impossible to defend oneself from those type of criminal touching charges that do not leave behind any physical damage or evidence. Culpability is established with the testimony of an easily pre-manipulated state child witness. Less than one percent (1%) of the unfounded charges involved allegations of actual vagina or rectal penetration. 82% of the unfounded charges were made by estranged spouses involved in custody battles for their children. 11% of the unfounded charges were found to have been malicious in origin often based on baseless claims from anonymous telephone calls to the hot line of the Human Resources Services Office, for the sole purpose of trying to ruin someone’s life. By the way, that is how my second case began. The remaining six percent (6%) represented actual crimes, most often, by a family member, or by an alleged friend of the child’s family.
There is also the human factor to be considered. Sexual child abuse charges are so horrible and shocking, that the instinctively reaction towards the accused is one of blind rage, while simultaneously reaching out in any possible way to the alleged child witness. Under blind rage no brain can think with mental sanity and good judgement. What is seldom considered is that both, the child who is subjected to grow up under the stigma and mental trauma caused by false inculcated beliefs of having been molested as a child and the falsely accused that must endure many years of torture in a prison or a lifetime of rejection by society or both, are victims of the broken judicial and legislative systems of our society. A society that incarcerates innocent persons, is devoid of the required human rights that the United Nations enacted into laws on December 10, 1948… the day of my birthday (How ironic). The traumas that are caused by the false charges of sexual child abuse are well documented by the national organization The False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
There is an urgent need to demand that our law makers reenact the laws that served to reduce the reliance on false charges of sexual child abuse to file frivolous civil actions or out of vindictiveness or for political reasons, as in my two cases, and in cases of custody litigations. Just to mention a few examples. The Child Abuse and Prevention Act erroneously caused the elimination of those preliminary procedures that were followed by the law enforcement officials and by the courts, which existed to prevent malicious allegations and prosecutions. Society must have those laws restored immediately. The bad legislation that was enacted to provide immunity to anyone that comes forward with allegations of sexual child abuse has been abused on daily basis by unscrupulous individuals seeking to benefit from someone’s conviction. Please read: ‘BLIND INJUSTICE‘, by Attorney Mark Godsey.
Until next time, Francisco Fuster Escalona.