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The thing about many sex cases is that, in the truly solid ones, a careful prosecutor can develop strong corroborating evidence with a little effort. For example, in this case medical evidence of genital injuries to the children or other evidence consistent with their stories would have been sufficient to corroborate their stories, while th lack of it was sufficient to refute those stories. In others, like the Paula Jones and first Michael Jackson cases, the complaining witnesses’ accurate descriptions of the defendants’ privates could easily be sufficient evidence. Indeed, lack of any such corroborating evidence is strong evidence that the alleged abuse did not occur.

Unfortunately, things don’t ever get simple in these cases. Memory is surprisingly changeable. If a overeager prosecutor gets you to identify the perpertrator of a crime by using inappropriate ID techniques, you will “remember” your indentification even though it may not match the original perp. That’s why many witnesses in death row cases have proven to be inaccurate, when their ID is tested by DNA methods.

High profile, “important” cases put pressure on prosecutors for convictions. Investigators stretch the ID rules. Witnesses are lead by the investigators. By the time its all over, the witness has a firm, but incorrect, recollection of the crime.

Children are even more vulnerable to these distortions. Many of these kids, lead by overeager investigators, have quite clear and damaging memories of abuse that never occurred in reality.

Don’t blame the kids. A corrupt and determined investigator can get about any kid to testify to about anything. In many cases, the investigator can get them to “remember” facts to support their testimony as well.

The ugly truth is that there are thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of innocent people in jail because our memories are not as firm as we would like to believe them to be.

Indeed, lack of any such corroborating evidence is strong evidence that the alleged abuse did not occur.

Wrong! Lack of evidence "proves" nothing. This logical error is becoming more and more common these days but it is still a fallacy. In formal logic it is called the "fallacy of the negative premise".

In the syllogism above the lack of evidence may just as well be due to care taken by the accused to eliminate such evidence. You can argue till you're blue in the face but you cannot make a solid case either way.

Putting it another way is that "lack of evidence" is just that, a lack of evidence, which proves nothing at all, inferring anything else from that is a jump from solid ground into the darkness. Conclusions drawn with the aid of logic are built up piece by piece of demonstrable evidence and held in place by rigid rules making the conclusions drawn irrefutably correct. There is no place for intuition, common sense, or unsupported assertion.

Regards,
GtG

I don’t disagree with you. I am just saying that cases like this end up hurting real abuse cases. And not ALL true cases have corrocorating evidence. The father who masterbates on a child is but one example. I won’t bother with overly detailed examples just to say that the idea that if there isn’t ‘corroborating’ evidence ( and how many young children can describe a penius when they are most likely closing their eyes tight against the abuse?)proves a lack of guilt is not always true.