False accusations

Brad, Dicken, Accusers - He didn't do it; The Chronicle, July 19, 2007
Joel Covender was convicted of molesting his stepchildren and spent 11 years in prison. But the two accusers now say it was all made up. Now they say he never touched them [...] [...] she does remember "that I felt pressure from grown-ups involved to say what they wanted me to say."

Daily Mail, Woman who falsely accused her father of rape reveals 'doctors hijacked my mind'; 26th October 2007
Eleven years ago, Katrina, now 37, accused the father [ ... ...]
It would be several tortured months before it finally emerged that these unfolding memories were pure fantasy - the drug-induced ramblings of a woman pushed to the brink of sanity by a controversial form of psychotherapy known as recovered memory syndrome.

Davis, Nick, The end of digging; As the Jersey case shows, the modern media never lets the pursuit of fact get in the way of a good story; The Guardian 08-11-14
When the Jersey police this week confessed that - contrary to so many ghoulish news stories - they have, in truth, no evidence of children being murdered and buried in an old children's home on the island, they laid the blame at their own door. That tells only part of the story. [...]
The guilty party who escaped unnamed from Warcup's account was the press. This should be no secret. In May, in Media Guardian, I analysed three months of stories about secret graves and torture chambers, all of which were provably false. Any journalist with their brain engaged could see that the stories were unsound. And yet everybody published them.

Father's horror in child sex scandal; 20th February 2007
A father has spoken for the first time of the horror of having his three daughters and two foster children removed when they were wrongly diagnosed as sex abuse victims.
It is the 20th anniversary of what became known as the Cleveland Child Sex Abuse Scandal - but many of those innocently accused still live with the pain of having their families torn apart.

Nathan, Debby & Zirpolo, Kyne:
Zirpolo, Kyle, McMartin Pre-Schooler: 'I Lied' - A long-delayed apology from one of the accusers in the notorious McMartin Pre-School molestation case - Kyle Zirpolo, as told to Debbie Nathan - LA Times, 30 Oktober 2005

Followed by: How and Why Kyle Came Forward; by Debbie Nathan

including a condensed transcript of an interview interview with Kyle Sapp, now known as Kyle Zirpolo

I remember thinking to myself, "I'm not going to get out of here unless I tell them what they want to hear."
Anytime I would give them an answer that they didn't like, they would ask again and encourage me to give them the answer they were looking for. It was really obvious what they wanted.
Maybe some got scared that the teachers would get their families because they were lying. But I never forgot I was lying.
I never mixed up reality and fantasy and always knew I was lying.
I remember finally telling her [mother], "Nothing happened! Nothing ever happened to me at that school." - She didn't believe me.

Kilgannon, Corey, Hypnosis Rigged Sex Case Against Him, Man Says; [Capturing the Friedmans]; New York Times, October 20, 2007
"You have a group of kids who initially said they were not abused, wrangled by a group of therapists who utilized highly suggestive methods like hypnosis until the kids emerged from the sessions with the most lurid and highly unbelievable examples of sexual abuse and going directly to the grand jury," he said. "There is no more inherently unreliable form of testimony than that."

Pidd, Helen, Jersey abuse investigation; Police rule out any murder at care home, The Guardian 08-11-13
Jersey's most senior police officer was suspended yesterday as detectives concluded that no children had been murdered in the former care home at the centre of a Ł4.5m investigation into child abuse.

Piper, August; Lillevik, Linda; Kritzer, Roxanne - What's wrong with believing in repression? A review for legal professionals; Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. Vol 14 (3), Aug 2008, 223-242. - Abstract
"Repressed- and recovered-memory theory is not supported by science."

Religioustolerance.org, 42 MVMO [*] Court cases with allegations of multiple sexual & physical abuse [* Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender]
We have studied over 40 Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender (MVMO) cases at 24 locations, mostly involving allegations of ritual abuse, since 1995. [... W]ith these ritual abuse cases, it seemed obvious to us that grave injustices had been done. [...] Hundreds of adults were convicted of ritual abuse of children, mostly during the 1980s and early 1990s. Almost all have had their cases revisited. Most convictions have been overturned because of what we now know [...].

Saltzman, Jonathan, Curley family drops case against NAMBLA; The Boston Globe, April 23, 2008
"There was never any evidence that NAMBLA was connected to the death of Jeffrey Curley,'' said Wunsch. "It's been our view that for the last eight years, it's been the First Amendment that's been the defendant in this case. In America, there's freedom to publish unpopular ideas, and that's what this case was about."

Smith, Jordan

	The Satanic Abuse Scare; The Austin Chronicle, March 27, 2009 The sensational charges against Fran and Danny Keller and their home day care were not unique. By 1992, the year the Kellers were tried, about 100 child-care workers across the country had been charged with ritual sex abuse of children, and 20 day care workers had been convicted in similar cases. The most notorious concerned the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, Calif. There, more than 300 children would eventually make statements accusing their teachers not only of sexually violating them but also of subjecting them to bizarre, ritualistic abuse.
	Believing the Children; The Austin Chronicle, March 27, 2009 It's likely Fran and Danny Keller were innocent of charges of child sexual abuse, but they're still in prison after 17 years. When the little girl on the witness stand said, "No, it didn't happen," Frances Keller put her head in her hands and began to sob. [...] [...] there is a growing body of psychological research reflecting that, essentially, the opposite is true – that children can easily be led to make up stories and even come to believe those stories – often with the help of inexperienced or credulous interviewers. Moreover, experts on the forensic interviewing of children say that the recorded Keller case interviews are prime examples of poor technique and manufactured testimony – effectively useless as evidence.
	Children and Testimony; The Austin Chronicle, March 27, 2009 There is a growing body of psychological research reflecting that children can easily be led to make up stories, often with the help of inexperienced or credulous interviewers.

Thorstad, David, Statement on Dismissal of Anti-Free-Speech Suit, 2008, Ipce Newsletter E25, July 2008.
The case ought to have been dismissed years ago, because it
was clear from the start that it lacked all merit. The plaintiffs never even took a single deposition, despite the judge's granting them that privilege. Their harassment of innocent individuals with no connection to their loss of their son (...) and their misguided effort to destroy a legal organization have now ground to a halt. The case was
dismissed 'with prejudice,' which means that it cannot be filed again.
But what does it say about American 'democracy' that such a worthless case was allowed to continue for nearly eight years'