Complicated Relationships And False Charges: How Your Criminal Defense May Proceed

Relationships are complicated enough without dealing with exes, blended families, stepchildren, and a host of other potential problems. However, when you have been accused by another parent of molesting or raping the children your current lover shares with a former partner, it is not going to go well for you. Family court takes such accusations very seriously, and if there is even a remote chance that it could be real, they have to investigate it. This puts you and your entire life under a microscope, and the ramifications of the accusations and charges could ruin your life. Here is how your criminal defense lawyer may proceed with your defense in a case like this. 

Dismiss or Dispel Accusations

First and foremost, your lawyer will look at the charges against you. He or she has to dismiss or dispel the charges in court, and where children are concerned, that will not be so easy. One approach is to match up the stories of the children and the other parent with your locations at the time of the supposed incidents. If all of the incidents supposedly took place in the same home where the non-custodial parent resides and you spend frequent nights, it will not look good for you. This is especially true if you were left alone with the children for any length of time, or your partner cannot honestly attest to your whereabouts when the incidents purportedly occurred. 

If that approach does not work, your lawyer will examine and match up the children's stories with anything they might have said to another adult outside their custodial parent's home. It may be possible to pair the children's stories with medical records that should have been created if the custodial parent took the children in to be examined or questioned on this matter. If nothing out of the ordinary was ever said to another adult, and no medical records exist, then it boils down to a "he/she said" scenario and trying to get to the heart of the truth. 

Personal Conduct Records, Psych Evaluations, and Prison Records

Lastly, there is a mountain of documents through which your lawyer needs to sift to see if there is even a grain of truth to the accusations against you. This includes personal conduct records at work, psych evaluations for the parents and for you, and delving into prison records if they exist. Many of these documents can establish issues that will either work for you or against you in this case, but your lawyer will sort out what to keep and use.