Comments:
I know how hard it must be for you, and it's very sad that you have been fasely accused of abuse, but I would like to point out why the system is that way. This is your ideal about it: "A foster child makes a serious allegation. The Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) looks at the child's record, sees they are a habitual liar, has a history of disrupting every home they've been in, and has some major mental illness or attachment issues. The foster parents have always worked closely with the agency and have an impeccable reputation. The children placed in their home have all thrived and excelled. The allegation is found to be unsubstantiated and, after a couple of days, your life returns to normal." I would like to point out many potentially bad things about that scenario. One thing is that abusers are often very good con men. Most of the signs of abuse are only in the victims and other people who are aware of the abuse, not in the abuser themselves. Another factor is that attachment problems or mental health problems actually make the child at higher risk for abuse. Kids who were previously abused are also at higher risk, especially with sexual abuse, as many(but not all) sexual abuse survivors can be very seductive. If they cleared families as quickly as in the 'ideal' scenario you wrote, not only would many innocent people's lives be easier, but many abusers would get away free. Abusers only rarely abuse every child they come in contact with. They are more likely to abuse teenage girls, kids with mental health problems, kids with low self esteem, and abuse survivors. Also, it is uncommon for kids to report abuse immediately after it occurs. Usually they feel as though it is their fault and hide it. Abusers also take steps to get them to keep it a secret, such as encouraging the child to believe it is their fault(for example saying: "You're so pretty I can't keep my hands off you.") and threatening the child of horrible things if they told(my cousins, who sexually abused me, claimed my pet cats would hate me if I told. Since I was very much younger then them, I believed them. Other abusers have claimed that they'd kill someone the child cares about or that God would punish them). They also try to confuse children into believing lies(I only hugged you, didn't I?). Children often have trouble with the concept of lies and it is common among abused kids who have heard their abuse denied to have difficulty distinguishing truth from lies, even as teenagers. They will also sometimes tell someone about the abuse they have suffered and then deny it later, replacing it with what they wish happened(one of my cousins told my parents about his dad beating him up when he was four and then a little while later changed the story to him beating his dad up). It is much better to err on the cautious side and let innocent people suffer from a false accusation then leave an abuse victim with their abuser, especially since one of the lies abusers often tell abuse victims is that no one will believe them. If this is proved true, the child will be very reluctant to tell again and will have even more severe trust issues than otherwise. Family members of abuse victims can sometimes not know about the abuse, but often do and are afraid to tell, or may in fact be helping the abuser. From the point of view of the agency, you could have falsified the records you kept, and the other children could have not known or been scared to tell. Parents are a child's way of learning how people relate to each other. When a child's parents are abusive, the child learns to expect abuse. If the only kind of love a child has had is sexual love, they often believe it's the only kind of love, and everyone wants to be loved, so if a child believes love=sex then they will be promiscous(sp?). I think it's obvious she was sexually abused at some point, because otherwise she wouldn't act the way she did. If a child is forced to question the truth of things they remember happening to them, they will often have trouble understanding what is true and what is a lie. My cousin lied and believed his own lies. She may actually believe your husband abused her by now, even though the lie started as a way to punish you. She really reminds me of my cousins, who lived in my home as foster children when they were teenagers and I was a pre-schooler and they abused me. I have recovered emotionally but I am no longer as innocent as the average kid my age, because I know personally how horrible people can be. I don't hate my cousins, I pity them because they were extremely messed up emotionally due to my uncle abusing them. You are actually in a very small minority as the vast majority of abuse allegations are true. With me, one of my cousins ran away from home and became a prostitute(poor girl), and the other sexually assaulted a classmate which awakened my parents to the danger he posed to me. They had him removed from their home and a short while later he admitted to abusing me and I confirmed the story. I'll tell you this one story about him. My parents found out he'd been sneaking into my room at night and installed a door alarm on my door. One night, he went in my room, took me out, abused me and left me crying in the living room and my parents thought I'd had a nightmare and wandered out by myself. My parents once told him this one story about this one person tricking their spouse into thinking this one celebrity was dead and after that my cousin thought that celebrity actually was dead. He couldn't understand lies and was a constant liar. He'd listen to a news report and when asked to repeat the facts back he'd lie about it.