Day care sexual abuse hysteria.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why haven't people (as in, the people who contributed to the hysteria not the falsely accused) gone to jail over this shit?

I mean, really.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

If I recall correctly, there are laws in place that protect people that accuse others of sexual misconduct in order to encourage them to come forward, which protects them from both criminal and civil retaliation if they are proven wrong.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and if one of the law-oriented people here contradict any of what I said, take their word for it.

[Kaelik]

I cannot specifically comment on the actual situation, because I have no fucking clue what daycare abuse you are talking about, but Count's hypothetical laws do sound like laws that are in place.

Also, at least in the US, we have a long tradition of screaming really loudly about stuff and then sweeping it under the rug when it turns out to be false.

See: Autism is caused by sexual abuse as determined by readers.

[Koumei]

I thought it was vaccination that apparently caused autism. And by apparently, I mean "according to some people who are wrong".

But yeah, I also have heard nothing about this, but people always seem to be able to cause hysteria without so much as a slap on the wrist for the problems created.

[Kaelik]

I thought it was vaccination that apparently caused autism. And by apparently, I mean "according to some people who are wrong".

That's the current bullshit, but not too long ago, there were special autism readers who claimed to be able to communicate with autistic kids.

But then, the'r idiocy and confirmation bias lead to them "discovering" that the parents had sexually abused them.

And this happened more and more, and there was an actual court case with parents being tried for sexual abuse of their children on the testimony of someone holding hands with their child and claiming to know what the kid wanted to say.

Eventually, the defense lawyer stumbled upon the brilliant strategy of hiring some totally random autism handler who didn't know about the case to hold hands and talk about what the kid felt about his parents.

And like all made up bullshit, it had basically nothing to do with what the other readers said. So yay. The judge dismissed the case.

[Crissa]

Abuse happens. We should not be afraid to investigate it. We shouldn't give the victims benefits for this happening, else you get witch trials. But it does happen, and does have sometimes little physical evidence.

-Crissa

[Neeeek]

If I recall correctly, there are laws in place that protect people that accuse others of sexual misconduct in order to encourage them to come forward, which protects them from both criminal and civil retaliation if they are proven wrong.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and if one of the law-oriented people here contradict any of what I said, take their word for it.

I know of no such laws, though criminal charges for this sort of thing would be pretty hard to make stick, as you'd be trying for perjury (the crime that is very common but insanely hard to prove). Civil slander or libel charges are certainly plausible.

The laws you are probably thinking of are rape shield and child molestation evidence exceptions. The former prevents rape victims sexual behavior to be evidence unless it could prove the sex was consensual, the latter allows evidence of prior child molestation charges to be introduced as evidence in further child molestation cases. Ordinarily, evidence of prior convictions is not admissible evidence unless the defendant allows it (and I'm using "allows" pretty broadly here) or it is an element of the crime.

[Crissa]

...And those laws aren't everywhere. There have been cases recently that in trials for rape that the victim and witnesses weren't allowed to use words like 'rape' to describe force penetration or whatnot.

While there are witch-hunts out there - like those in the past - the field is still badly tilted toward the perpetrators of these particular crimes.

-Crissa