Pleading guilty? My story.

[DAGS]

Hi everyone.

I have been reading through this forum for some time but this is the first time I have joined and posted.

My story is very similar to most of the stories on here.

An accusation came at me from absolutely nowhere, my 17 and 19 year old nieces both came forward to the police and claimed that I had raped them multiple times over a 3 or 4 year period when they were children. They claim this started when they were 3 and 5 years old and I was 20 years old.

Now before I go any further, let me make this very clear, I never laid a finger on either child at anytime.

When this accusation was made I was engaged to be married to a Woman I loved very much, I had a large and loving family and a number of friends.

My first reaction was one of complete shock. My second reaction was that as this never happened, the whole thing would be cleared up very quickly.

As you can probably guess, my second reaction was very wrong indeed. I was arrested, charged and eventually found myself in Crown Court.

Despite the fact that there was no evidence at all against me, despite the fact that my lawyer was able point out numerous flaws in my accusers stories and despite the fact that the girls changed their stories no less than 4 times during the Police 'investigation'. I was found guilty and sentenced to 4 years in prison.

The real punishment for me however had nothing to do with the courts. the real punishment as far as I am concerned is the fact that I lost everyone I ever loved.

My family (with the exception of my Mother) completely disowned me within days of the allegations from my nieces. They believed the girls, they could not believe the girls would lie about "something like this". My fiance stood by me for a few months but then needed "time away from the stress". She never came back. My one supporter, My old Mum, died while I was in prison. I was not allowed to go to the funeral because my family objected. I have been out of prison for a few years now. I have appealed a number of times against my sentence, everyone has been rejected. I have had to move to a different part of the country for my own safety. I no longer have a family, I have no-one.

Members of my family told me that if I "owned up" and spared the girls the "horror of testifying in court" they would try to find it in their hearts to forgive me, I refused. I was offered the chance to plead guilty in court, in fact my lawyer DEMANDED I plead guilty but I refused. I was offered time off from my sentence if I accepted guilt, I refused. I was in and out of prison for a bit because I refused to accept guilt and take part in a SOTP. I was determined to right this wrong, I was determined to be vindicated.

I know I did not do this but I have accepted that unless my accusers come clean - which after all this time is nothing more than a dream - I will forever be guilty in the eyes of law and in the eyes of the public.

I am not going to ever encourage innocent people to plead guilty, as I have already said I did not plead guilty. I refused to accept guilt because I was not guilty but in reality what difference does that make.

I am a registered Sex Offender with everything that entails.
Everyone from my past believes I am a monster.
Probation and the Police treat me like I am a danger to the public because I show no remorse for my 'crime'.

I often lay awake at night and wonder if things could have been any worse if I had plead guilty.

[RFLH]

Hi Dags, thank you for putting your experiences up and welcome to the forum.

I don't think anything would be different for you if you had have plea-bargained at the time - you'd still be on the register and people would still believe that there's no smoke without fire.

[LS]

Thanks Dags, that's exactly the same experience I've had. Sadly the emotions don't dissipate with time, and I feel the same anger every day I felt at my accuser in court, and the same anger and despair with the system for letting her and hers make a mockery of justice.

You would have been lying to yourself if you had pleaded guilty to something you didn't do.
That's the comfort I take from the same situation - no matter what anyone else thinks, I didn't do it, and I have a totally clear conscience.

I haven't found a way to have a nice clear day yet; counselling didn't work because no counsellor has any idea of what this trauma is like, antidepressants don't work, and so my last resort is mental health and psychology/psychotherapy.

My answer to police, courts and all the rest who treat you one way because "they have to" is suck em.
And that's a typo.

[Rights Fighter]

DAGS, had you taken the plea you would now be a self-confessed child abuser.

You did not take the plea so you can still maintain your innocence with your head held high.

You said you attempted to appeal the sentence - what about the conviction?

[blowngasket]

dags
well done for standing your ground when a few through fear give in and your sentance could have been worse and you held your head up high.

iam going through a similar thing at the moment and will always maintain my innocence regardless your story has give me strenght to stand my ground whatever the outcome what has been your experiance been with the probation on release dont give up apealing you will get support on here good luck

[DAGS]

Sorry, I meant to say I appealed the conviction and the sentence.

It was no go on either.

The last lawyer I spoke to basically summed up my problem. The actual procedures of the trial were fine. As per usual in these types of cases it simply came down to who the jury believed.

There were two of them on the stand telling an awful story about me, going into great details about their 'suffering'. The defence brought up the fact that they changed their stories a number of times and pointed out other flaws in their final version of the 'truth'. They claimed that it was so hard to think about the details because they were so upsetting to them. The jury went with them completely.

All I could do was stand there and deny it. I was asked why they would lie. I could only give an honest answer. I do not know. I did not know then, I do not know now.

[blowngasket]

are you still on probation i hope by moving and in time make new freinds good luck

[DAGS]

Hey blowngasket.

I finished my probation earlier this year.

To be honest it was not much fun at the start. I can still remember clearly the first lines in my first conversation with my PO.

Me: I'm not guilty of this.
Her: (smiling) Yes, well it is not uncommon for people to find it hard to accept what they did. Hopefully after we work together for a while it will become easier to face what you did and then we can begin to make sure it never happens again.
Me: It can't happen again, it never happened in the first place.

The conversation continued on these lines for a while. She told me I had to attend a SOTP, I said I would not because I never did anything. I ended up back inside to finish more of my sentence.

My PO when I got out for the second and (hopefully) last time ever was a bit better. She still refused to accept I was remotely innocent though.

Have not really made any new friends though. I find it really hard to trust people. I know I have to work on it but it is very hard to let anyone in anymore.

[blowngasket]

yes i can imagine for a while you will be looking over your shoulder iam not sure if it works with a false allegation but time may help to heal i thought the law had changed and yo could not be recalled for not doing sotp on the outside.

i hope you do find some peace and manage to move on have you had any luck finding work

[largactyl1]

Hi Dags, thankyou for sharing your story. I thoroughly believe that you did the right thing by defending your innocence of this crime and not give in for a shorter sentence. I'm so sad that you have lost loved ones, in their defence it is very difficult to doubt what people say about child abuse - but tragic obviously that you have been cast out and not believed.

What was in it for the girls who accused you? Have you investigated a child-psychologist who can put forward the difficulty of memories from childhood - how they are constructed - and how memories can be falsified - not deliberately but simply hearing of something and somehow it gets stored away as your own memory. Also questioning styles of the police and psych's can be accidentally leading.

Kind regards
Jen

[DAGS]

As you can imagine, I have thought long and hard about why they did this. I actually find it easier to believe that they really do think this happened. I find it easier to think that, as you said, they 'remember' this as fact even though it isn't.

I have done a bit of research on the area of recovered memory, actually a LOT of research on recovered memories and you would not believe how easy it is for an idea to be planted in someones head. Once the idea is there, it festers and the person thinks about it over and over again and it becomes more and more real. Once they are convinced that one memory of something is real they begin to try and 'remember' more memories to back up the first memory.

Of course the other possibility is that they simply did it for attention and/or money.

As I said, I prefer the false memory option. They destroyed my life, it is easier to think they did that by mistake than to think they did it simply for gain or malice.

[blowngasket]

very intresting thought where did you do your research i feel the same in mycase i know the accuser i beleive she has mental scars from her childhood i beleive she for many years convinced herself that her mother does not like her which is not true.
did you do much studying in prison

[DAGS]

A bit of study in prison but mostly afterwards.

I simply went into a library and read as much as I could, both online and in books.

The problem of course is that once the person has convinced themselves that the memory is real and once the police and other people have, by supporting their claims, given them further belief in their memories, it becomes almost impossible to get the person to start disbelieving in those memories.

This will be especially true in a court case where the accuser will have been prepared by the CPS to be ready for any tricks the 'evil' accused will try to pull on them.

[blowngasket]

very intresting i wonder if anybodyelse in these type of cases has come accros this before

[largactyl1]

I posted the title and author of a book - I think it was on False Allegations in the news section (I'm not at home so can't remember author) called "My Lie" about a woman who had a falsely recovered memory and realised it wasn't true sometime later.

One problem with recovered meories is "confabulation" basically where a bit of a memory comes up, then another (often unrelated) but the middle bit of the memory is missing and so this is filled in by the brain with something that made sense but is not necessarily true (confabulation happens to everyone to a degree with lost memories from the past - or a heavy night on the pop. It affects people with severe MH problems to a very large degree. E.G:

I felt sad when it was my birthday, I was 5 . I sat on Uncle Eric's knee. Afterwards I cried.

Fast forward 10 years: memory resurfaces: "What made me cry?" not remembering that it was due to losing a party game, the person may think and rethink and start feeling anxious - eventually thinking that something bad must have happened and then coming up with a story that may make sense but is in fact not really true at all.