Preface: I must concede that working, albeit pro bono, with cases of allegedly abused children has been heartbreaking for me. After a number of years, I was too drained to continue. That, and the fact that I believed that all lawyers were mean and unscrupulous individuals.
Fast forward a decade, I returned to assist (again, pro bono) the cause of these hapless children. This second stint taught me a few lessons I, hitherto, did not know.Among the lessons were that: (a) The legal profession (like most professions) is like a rose bush. Among the many thorns, are a few roses. These roses do not shout out from the roof tops and do not violate the privacy of their clients. They do not take the law in the their own hands and they definitely are not disordeiros. On the contrary, they are individuals who are truly concerned about the welfare of the abused. These lawyers are true to their professional calling. (b) NOT all who accuse others of having molested them, are telling the truth. Some even are put up to tell the 'manufactured truth'. The power of suggestion is indeed very powerful. After month and years of 'suggestion', the Gobbelian phenomenon takes control. (c) On the other side are molestors who deny having molested the child or children. The challenge is to determine (1) who is telling the truth and who not, and (2) what can be proved in court beyond a reasonable doubt. The risks of doing otherwise are enormous. After having studied this topic, I have come to realise two basic points: (a) One can never really reverse the effects of the abuse a child has suffered (b) One can also never undo the damage done by a false allegation against an innocent individual. In both scenarios, statements which cause the public identification of an allegedly molested child will ALWAYS destroy the child's future. ...especially when the child lives in small societies. It matters not whether the child was molested or not, the child will almost always suffer.....especially at the hands of her future spouse; that is, if she ever finds one I believe that we should all work to prevent child abuse, which BTW occurs in 4 formats: (a) Sexual Abuse (b) Physical Abuse (c) Emotional Abuse and (d) neglect. Some among may not realise that nagging children, behaving drunkenly and otherwise badly in the presence of children and abandoning children is also child abuse. But I digressed. My position: Let us judge others fairly. If the person is rightfully convicted of a crime in a court of law, let him be punished according to what the law provides. But, let's not 'convict' others in the press and blogs, over and over again - and re-expose the hapless young lady in the bargain. Attached herewith is an article which we might wish to review. It relates to "confessions": jc Confessing to a crime one did not commit Coercive psychological interrogation tactics can lead to false confessions By Steven Drizin Legal Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Northwestern University Most people can’t imagine any set of circumstances, other than perhaps torture, under which they would confess to a crime they did not commit. And even fewer can imagine ever falsely confessing to a murder, a crime that can lead to a death sentence or life without parole. Only in the past few years has the phenomenon of false confessions begun to be accepted in our society. Yet today, false confessions still occur with alarming frequency and most documented false confessions occur in murder cases. According to the most recent data from the Innocence Project at Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School, 198 wrongfully convicted persons have been exonerated by DNA evidence. Of these 198, false confessions played a role in approximately 25 percent of the cases. Of those who have been wrongfully convicted of murders, the percentage of false confessors is even higher. Of the first 37 DNA exonerations in the U.S. for crimes involving murder, two-thirds of the suspects had been convicted at least partly based on incriminating statements or confessions made during interrogations. A study of 125 “proven false confessions” that I prepared with Professor Richard Leo in 2004 found that 81 percent of these confessions involved murders, leading us to surmise that murder suspects are most at risk of falsely confessing because it is in these cases where the pressure on the police to solve crimes is the greatest and police are most likely to employ the full range of coercive psychological interrogation tactics. The primary cause of most false confessions is the interrogator’s use of coercive psychological interrogation techniques, techniques that are so powerful that they not only induce false confessions from the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, juveniles and other vulnerable suspects, but can lead persons with high intelligence, who are in full possession of their mental faculties, to confess to crimes they did not commit. In order to understand why false confessions occur, therefore, one must understand what it’s like to be subjected to today’s relentless psychological interrogation techniques.......( more at http://tinyurl.com/avocado6 )
