There have been a number of new comments recently to various articles here on Falsely Accused Dad. While I really love getting comments, I beg you to please not leave any personal information in your comments, this can include:
- Your full first name
- Your phone number
- Your email
- Your address
- Full names of people involved in your case
Why not? There are a number of reasons, but here’s just a few that immediately come to mind:
- If you have a legal case in progress, posting information about your case can seriously hurt your case and frankly you could be brought up on additional charges. I can be subpoenaed by the court and anything you put on this site could be used against you. BUT, this can only happen if you put personal information they can use to link the comment to you.
- This is the internet. People from all over the world both good and bad read this site. Leave your address, and some crazy person could show up at your door one night…not good. Leave your name, and they can find your address…again, not good.
- False Accusations especially when it comes to child sexual offenses really get people’s fur up. Some vigilantly just might decide to skip the “justice system” and serve justice themselves.
- This site is read by the press. How do I know? They’ve contacted me. By putting your personal information out there, you’re opening up yourselves the press. While in some cases this might be good, in general it’s not, especially if your case is pending.
There are of course many other very good reasons to not post your personal information here on Falsely Accused Dad. Now, don’t get me wrong, I want you to comment, add your stories, share your feelings, etc. Just exclude the personal details…if you must use a name, I’d suggest using a false name (and stating that you are)…I do, that’s why I go by Falsely Accused Dad (or fad in the forums).
Thanks everyone. I sincerely appreciate your comments, your emails of prayer and concern, and most of all your encouragement. Please keep the comments coming! Thanks so much for reading Falsely Accused Dad and helping me spread the word!
With my mandatory 8 weeks of “anger management” counseling complete all I had to do to get most of this behind me was complete my probation, which was still a long way out. Probation wasn’t too bad. I had to meet with my probation officer once a month and pay my monthly fee of $170. The one thing I didn’t like much is that the probation officer would just show up out of the blue. We could be in the middle of dinner and she would just show up and walk in. This was irritating, but tolerable, especially given everything else we had been through.
The big problem though wasn’t the probation, it was where we lived. I seldom went out of house without having neighbors glare at me. Most of our friends barely talked to us anymore and we often saw our neighbors bunched up together looking at us and talking. I felt like every eye was on us all the time. Some neighbors were bold enough to even say things to us. I could deal with it, what I couldn’t deal with was the impact it was having on our kids.
As surprising as this sounds, children and teachers at our kid’s schools knew about what happened. Their parents and in some cases teachers had told the kids in the school about it. As a result, my kids were getting harassed about it. My oldest had actually gotten in a few fights because other kids called me names or asked my kids if they “liked little kids” because of their Dad. How’s that for wrong?? I did nothing, yet my kids get verbally and physically harassed at school. My kids even lost friends because their parents said they didn’t want their kids hanging around mind. Geez and I wasn’t even guilty.
We decided to move
After a few weeks of this and given we really had no true friends we could trust in our neighborhood anyway, we decided it would be in the best interest of our family to move. I was fortunate enough to have the ability to work from home full-time if I wanted, and I took advantage of that.
I spoke to my probation officer and she confirmed that I could move my probation and that I just let her know when and where.
We fixed some issues with our house, freshly painted everything and put it up for sale. We started looking for homes in the area we wanted to live. Unfortunately our home didn’t sell, so we ended up renting it. We did find a really great home in the new town though and due to the declining real estate market, we got it for a steal.
Our new home
Now of course as things go with these types of cases, nothing could go perfectly smooth. I called my probation officer and gave her the date to transfer my probation. The date was the day we would be moving into our new home. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but a few days before our scheduled move date, our real-estate agent called. He said he had gone out to our new house to make sure everything was ready and all of the work by the previous owners was completed. He said on the phone: “I’m not really sure how to say this, so I’ll just say it: There was note on the door from the Department of Probation stating they had come by and that I should contact them immediately.” Great! So much for trying to keep anyone from finding out!
I immediately called the probation officer and explained to him that we hadn’t moved yet and that he was more than welcome to come anytime after our move date. I also asked him why he came early and explained that the note was found by my real estate agent. He didn’t care. Fortunately I’m pretty confident our agent is the kind that wouldn’t talk, or at least I hoped he wouldn’t. To this day, I am not aware of anyone outside of him even suspecting anything with me.
Light at the end of the tunnel
We love our new home. While I certainly wouldn’t have wished this whole situation on my worst enemy, there was some good coming out of it:
- My family was now closer together than we had ever been
- Our faith had grown significantly stronger. We are attending church more, reading our Bibles more and praying together as a family.
- We now live in a beautiful home in a really great small town. Had all of this not occurred, would have never moved here.
- Shortly after moving, we also found a church home that is the most wonderful church we’ve ever attended. We feel loved and like part of a bigger family.
If you’ve been falsely accused and suffering the same type of persecution myself and my family were going through, I would strongly advise moving. Looking back, moving really changed our lives and has let us move on. The move gave all of us a new start and the ability to put things behind us as much as we can.
