The Trauma of Being Falsely Accused

In the preface to Ros Burnett’s book Wrongful Allegations, she says the book concerns “innocent people who have been vilified and criminalized by untrue accusations, and who, as a result and to varying degrees, have had their own and their families’ lives damaged because of those allegations.” She also later says she initially planned for the title of the book to be “The Lowest Circle of Hell”, in describing the experiences of those wrongfully accused.

This hellish damage to reputations, lives, psychological well-being — against perhaps public misconceptions and “believe only the victim” type of social deafness and media bias — is hard to vocalise for those who have been through it. Some may write books or give media interviews, but the majority of stories remain untold.

What is important therefore is the communication of these stories, exploring the emotion and real trauma involved, including the stories of those volunteering to assist those falsely accused.

Margaret Gardener is one of them. At the time of this talk she was director of the False Allegations Support Organisation (FASO), which runs an unfunded helpline for people facing false allegations of sexual abuse.

The talk was given on 28 February 2019 at University College London, to the Male Psychology Network, and published by the Centre for Male Psychology, which introduced it as follows:

Margaret Gardener, Director of False Allegations Support Organisation (FASO), gives a talk on the psychological aspects of false allegations of sexual abuse. The talk focuses on the psychological / emotional impact on the person falsely accused, rather than the accuser. This event took place on 28th Feb 2019 at University College London (UCL).

About the speaker: Margaret Gardener has a background in voluntary emergency nursing and prior to this a career in the civil service, serving abroad during this time, which helped to improve her communication skills. She was a registered foster carer for special needs teenagers and was catapulted through a family experience, as a volunteer, into the False Allegations Support Organisation in 2001. Her first role at FASO was Secretarial, she then progressed to the helpline (using her empathy skills, and supporting callers in their distress). As the Director of FASO (UK) she addresses parliament and agencies both criminal and family through the medium of consultations and meetings, whilst liaising with academia and like-minded groups. She addresses in part the issues of the hidden victims, both children/vulnerable adults and the accused parent/individual on safeguarding issues.

The talk is republished here in part, and is well worth watching in full.

The transcript follows. The words below are Margaret Gardener’s, transcribed from the recording and lightly punctuated for reading; the introduction above is ours.

“I’m no psychologist”

Well, I’m no psychologist, unfortunately. I just sit — and John has just told you, and you can read it there, about my background. So, being a nurse of different descriptions, especially an emergency nurse, I am able to deal with the helpline for whoever phones up with whatever problem of false allegations of a sexual nature. And of course we deal with child protection issues as well, but here we won’t talk too much about the child protection issues, we’ll just talk about the sex allegations.

To just give you an overall picture of what we deal with: we’ve got our helpline, which is not funded, and so people call us knowing that it’s expensive to call us, and it’s the only way for them to have actual information to try and put them on the path of what is happening now and what the next steps are. We make sure that they only get factual information. It’s both male and female. It’s parents that phone, it’s girlfriends, it’s wives and adult children, and occasionally I’ve had a youngster phone us.

Firstly, people may not know they’re being investigated by the police, and the first thing that they find out is they’re either arrested at work or at home. But before I do that, I want to put you in the place of somebody that is possibly going to be falsely accused. Now just think what that means. And as I read this — I’m sorry, it’s the only bit I’m going to read, well, apart from some stories that are anonymous.

“When you haven’t done anything”

Have you ever considered the possibility that you are arrested in your own home, in front of your family and full view of your friends and neighbours, held in a police cell, interviewed and cautioned, charged and bailed, when you haven’t done anything. Have you ever considered the possibility that your photograph, name and address might appear in the local national press and on TV insinuating what an evil monster you are, when you haven’t done anything. Have you ever considered the possibility that, having been released without charge or with all charges dropped, with your good name and integrity still in place in the eyes of the law, you might be subjected to additional investigation of social services and other agencies where you may have no right of representation, when you haven’t done anything.

Have you ever considered the possibility that social services could force you to break off contact with your family and children, when you haven’t done anything. Have you ever considered the possibility that without proof, evidence, witnesses or corroboration you could be convicted and sentenced to several years in prison, when you haven’t done anything.

Through the system

Now, from your perspective, put yourself in that position, because what usually happens is the police either ask you to come in for an interview, or they turn up at your door with several people and take you in for an interview. It could be under caution or it could be voluntary. To be honest, they’re both the same thing, because you are interviewed on tape. Then there are two ways that you are told: you’re either on bail, or they’ll get back to you. Now, the on-bail bit has only recently come in. It’s supposed to try and keep the police in dealing with the issues within 28 days, but unfortunately that 28 days can then, with the signature of a higher officer, go on for another 28, then another 28, and then finally to the court. Now, one of our callers said even though it went to court, the court said you can’t have him on bail any more, so they just dropped the bail and just had him “we’ll get back to you”.

Once that’s happened, the police will then do their investigation, decide whether they have got enough evidence, and then pass it up to the CPS. The CPS is the people that look at that investigation and decide whether you’re going to be charged or whether you’re not. Then, if they’re going to drop the case, you then go about your business. Then, if you’re going to be charged, you go to magistrates court — magistrates, to make sure all the evidence is together ready for a Crown Court visit — then the Crown Court visit is made.

Now, once they’ve gone to the Crown Court, you have solicitors. Now, you’ve heard about legal aid, haven’t you? Now, it depends: if you get legal aid, the legal aid solicitors have not got the funding to be able to do an investigation into your crime at all and get your evidence. Whereas if you decide to pay a solicitor privately, you will get a better service, only because they have got the funds to be able to go out and, for instance, get a private detective to do this, that or the other, or any other type of psychologist to check on this.

Then it’s the jury’s turn. Once the two barristers have had their arguments in court, it’s the jury’s turn then to decide who is guilty and who is innocent. The one problem with that is they don’t get to hear the whole story, because your full story does not go into court. There are only elements of it, because the courts say you can’t use bad character evidence for the accuser, but you can use bad character evidence for the accused. So that’s the dilemma for the jury: they don’t hear full information. Then the judge is there to sum up both cases, and when he’s summed it up the jury make the decision.

Now, it could be not guilty and they go back into society — I’ll talk about that later — or they go into prison, and going into prison is quite hard. Now remember, you’re thinking, well, what the hell would I feel like in this position? I’ve just been accused, I’ve just been found guilty, so how am I going to feel?

Then they go into prison, and they suffer because they maintain their innocence. They suffer quite a lot of problems from the prison service, because the prison service has to take it that they’ve been found guilty, so they are guilty. Now, they will not recognise the fact people are falsely accused, and so they go through their prison sentence, they come out the other end, and still the organisations, because they’ve been found guilty, treat them as guilty. And they come into society, they’re monitored for a certain period, and then they’re left relatively to themselves, but they can’t go home necessarily. Now just think: going through all that, how is it going to affect you?

The helpline

Well, when they come to our helpline, the first thing they do is practically break down. They talk to us, because there’s myself and two other people on the helpline — because we cannot get the volunteers that are in the right frame of mind to be able to help with the helpline. And so they come to us asking for advice, often crying, and asking to be referred to psychologists — well, often asking to be referred for their nerves, for how they’re feeling. But we have nobody. They’ve only got us to listen to, because at least we believe them. We can suggest they go to their local GP, but because of the trauma of this type of crime the GPs can’t necessarily do much. They can refer them to their counsellors. We’ve got a nationwide counselling service that we refer them to as well. And then we’ve got my mobile.

Because for the ones that cannot get over that initial problem of really wanting to commit suicide, or are so stressed, they can phone me any time, day and night, on the mobile. It helps them. But then we tell them how to go about doing things. We also provide a couple of solicitors’ names for the nearest area they’re in. Now, we only give a couple, because I’ve had problems in the past where I’ve just given names and names and names, and people are just going around in a circle asking solicitors what to do, you know: oh, I don’t like him, so I’ll have a go with him. So what we do is give them two solicitors for them to go to.

Now, the thing is, people don’t often come back to say how they’re getting on — only the ones that are really down and use my mobile. But occasionally we get families coming back and saying thank God you were there, he can at least talk to us now. Because that’s one of the things — I’m saying “he”, but we have got “she”s as well, so excuse me for using the male term, it’s easier for me.

What it does to the family

So the families come to us and say: I can’t talk to him, he won’t talk to us, he’s scrunched up, he’s in his room, he won’t come out, he’s terrified of going out because he’s expecting to be attacked. Because the other thing is the press — I haven’t mentioned them. Even though they might not be nationwide, often people are in the press, talking about those accused locally, and it is horrendous, because it’s not the individual only that’s getting publicised, it’s their family, it’s their children. And one of my colleagues back in Wales, her father was accused, and her child, a teenage boy, was found hanging, and they found him just in time. And the daughter was in the same class as the mother of the accuser, and she had problems then. She was a bright young girl, she had problems.

And she had to move schools, and trying to move children between schools for whatever reason is extremely difficult. So they’ve had a huge trauma there. But the son is fortunately coming round. But the families are fighting for their loved one in prison, because nobody tells them how to fight a false allegation. We’re the only ones that can provide that information, and we do, in a leaflet form.

Have any of you heard of the CCRC? Just one of you. Yes — because the CCRC is where, if you’re going for an appeal, and that’s the people in prison — well, actually the people that have come out of prison can also appeal — your information goes up to them, and they decide whether your conviction can be overturned. And that is another ballgame. Go back to when people are on bail. I’ve got people on bail for two years, and the police don’t talk to them. They won’t tell the solicitors anything. They have got no timescale to complete an investigation. And this is why so many are so destroyed at the beginning, by going through that system.

Now, if they get the charges dropped, do you think they’re going to be okay? Now, you get people saying, oh great, it’s dropped, you can get on with your life now. Like heck you can’t. Because I’ve got them coming back years after something’s been said in the media, and they’re back to the beginning, they’re back to their trauma. And most of them get PTSD. You normally think of PTSD with soldiers, male and female, but it also is with this. Even with my helpers, my voluntary people — I say mine, it’s not mine, FASO helpers and volunteers — most of them have had either themselves or family go through it, and that’s the sort of person we need, because unless you’ve been there you have no idea whatsoever what the pressures are on you.

“There’s nothing you can do but cry your heart out”

Can I just read you a couple of things that people have written to me? I won’t go through the whole thing. I’ll go for the first one. This is a young man, and it’s starting off with him being accused, being kept not on bail because he was put into prison on a temporary measure, and then going through the whole system. He’s out now, and he’s under public protection. And this is the sort — I’ve just taken out his words — of the stress that he went through. When he was arrested he couldn’t believe it. “It was a very stressful time. I felt confused and angry” — this is their words, remember, that’s why I’m reading it. “There’s nothing you can do but cry your heart out.” He witnessed assault and abuse on others when he was on remand. He was threatened himself quite a few times.

And this, I’m afraid, is what I’ve got off others. But when he was found guilty in court, the staff tried to keep him calm because he was so distressed. He was numb. He then was put in prison with a person with huge psychological problems, and whilst he was there he still suffered threats and abuse. He then went to work and was promoted to a technician, and again, while he was there, he witnessed assault. Now remember, you’re in this position — what would you think? One was quite brutal and unwarranted. “I had to give a statement to appear in court, but fortunately he then admitted it, so he didn’t have to go.” He did share a cell with a person that he really got on with, but that person, after six months — he supported him while he was dying, and he still hasn’t got over that. That’s part of his PTSD, because he got on really well with him.

After being in prison for two years he really started getting depressed, and this affected his physical health, and his skin started to turn yellow. And then somebody encouraged him to do distance learning, and he took it up, and distance learning changed his life. Now he was able to see outside the box and into the future, the future that he wanted for himself. But the threats and the abuse was still always with him. He was indecently assaulted, and when he reported it to staff they just laughed at him. He went to the parole board — this is where you get examined to see if you’re safe to come back in society, and with that, nowadays, you also have a lie detector test. But that’s the only time that the prison service will allow a lie detector test, when you come out to society. They won’t do it at the beginning, when you are being investigated. Eighteen months after the first refusal he was able to come out, eighteen months after that, on his second hearing.

But he still had to wait four months. He was then sent 250 miles away, and he didn’t think it was too bad, but the PTSD, the threats, the abuse was still with him, and he was still suffering from that. But there was nobody there to give him any mental help. In fact it wasn’t diagnosed, because they don’t seem to diagnose in prison, and because he was only temporary there he hadn’t been to a doctor. His life started getting better, and he was sent to a bedsit, and in that bedsit he was there for seven months, settling down nicely. And then suddenly he was moved as an emergency, because somebody had recognised him in the town and it was all over Facebook. So with this PTSD he’s got — well, sorry, I’m not a psychologist, but this is what he has now been assessed with, PTSD.

But with him being so upset, it’s no wonder. He was then moved away, he was away again, a long journey on his own in a train. He went to accommodation that the parole had given him. Then he came back to another part of where he lived, and at the moment he’s now living in a flat, nice and cosy, single flat. He’s trying to get his act together, and he did all those courses, so he’s got a plethora of academic courses, and so he’s trying to get jobs. And unfortunately it’s very difficult, because he’s got this prison sentence on his DBS, and because of that there are lots of jobs that cannot take you. Also his PPU, public protection unit, have to agree what he can do, so he’s limited. But he’s trying to keep his strength there.

But this is what he said at the end of it. “I’m not happy. I suffer regular flashbacks and nightmares. When I get on a bus I want to get off at the next stop. Sometimes when I walk to the local shop I stop and go back home. You could say that I’m afraid — you’d be right. I’m terrified of going back to prison. I’m terrified that I’m going to be blamed for doing something I haven’t done. I’m terrified of being falsely accused again. Do I get angry? Yes. I maintain my calmness through breathing exercises. My physical health is not very good, however my mental health is very poor. I can’t help it, that’s how I feel.”

After the case is dropped

Now, that mirrors an awful lot of people, and as they go through the different phases it accumulates. And I can only talk to them on the phone, between being accused and when they go to court. And then, if their case is dropped, they still come back to us, because they’ve got another problem, something that makes them even worse. Because if they’ve got young children, they want to see the families, they want to be back with the families, but they’re not necessarily allowed, because social services wants to check them, to make sure they’re not a danger to the children. Now, the jury has found them not guilty. So — it’s understandable that social services do the checks, but whilst they do the checks they’re not allowed interaction, necessarily, until they’ve done the checks.

Then the accused often has to go through courses to prove that they’re safe to children. As I said at the beginning, just think, how would you react in this situation? What would you think? I mean, that one reading is how that one person felt, but many do, at the different levels. We’ve got parents, grandparents, who aren’t allowed to see their grandchild because their son has been accused — because she’s being nasty about the son — and the social services don’t think that the grandparents, because they’re relatives, can protect the child. So the child is with another relative, and so the grandparents want to go for access, and it’s all through court. The only trouble is, they have to pay to go through court, and the grandmother in this particular instance says they’ve paid ten thousand. They haven’t got the money.

And when people go through court, if they’ve got more than the legal aid will allow, they can go through the court procedures by paying out for solicitors. And if they win, do they get that money back? No. They get a percentage, and it has to be done through the solicitors. They only get a percentage of their money — and they’ve been found not guilty. So imagine what that’s like. Again, they come to us: what can we do, where do we go, this is crucifying me. And of course they’re incandescent about people that have made the false allegation, because they cannot understand, in some instances, why it’s being made. Because the allegation could have happened years ago, and we’ve got historic problems, where somebody is in their 40s now and, oh, it happened to me when I was a baby — well, not quite a baby, but a toddler.

Now, yes, these things need to be investigated. But if the accuser knows all the detail, and the accused, who it’s never happened to, can’t remember where, when and what, it’s so difficult. So there’s not an even-handed remembrance on either side. So the police have to be very careful, and they should be, in actually investigating both the supposed crime and the person saying that they’re innocent.

More of the letters

Another one. “The police called at my house and I was accused of historical rape, which totally confused me. I actually had consensual sex with this person. I can’t eat or sleep at all. I’m in pieces, contemplating suicide, as my whole life could be ruined beyond repair. I’m tempted to sell my house on the cheap,” because he has no money.

Another one, where he and his wife were accused of harming their 14-month-old child. He tells me they’re going through hell. And again, this is another common one. They took him to A&E on the advice of the doctor. The first doctor said, oh, he’s got a fracture, it’s quite common, you can go home. But then the second doctor decided to look, and then the child was x-rayed, had a body x-ray — it was a skeletal survey — and they found a few more broken bones. Now, you’ve heard about this in the press, but a lot of the time that is an inherited illness, and they don’t find it out before social services become involved and take the child. So what’s needed is to investigate before they take the child. They understand why the investigation goes on, they are happy with that. But the child has now got an interim care order and lives with the auntie up the road, and they don’t really know what’s going on, they’re not really told what’s happening.

And again, they come to us. We’ve got a family unit which has just started up. I mean, I used to do the family unit up until court, because my area of expertise is not on the family side, but we’ve now got experts that have been through the family court side and know what they’re talking about. And we’re setting up an advocacy service to help parents prepare to go through social services investigations, to be there to make sure that they’re looked at properly. But as they say, the whole situation is devastating, and they feel as though they’re being treated guilty before they’re even found guilty.

And the last one was a nice 20-year-old. He was accused at 18 and he’s been on bail ever since. He’s petrified. He’s at uni. He had a couple of voluntary jobs which he was quite high up in and loved doing. He’s extremely well supported. He was released under investigation and the bail extension was denied, but he’s still under investigation, and this is two years on. He had to take a year off his studies, and he can’t face opening up to his family and friends because, he says, they’re sick of it, they don’t want to hear it, it gets them upset. So as you see, it’s not just the accused, it’s the whole family, if they’re supporting him — because sometimes the families are broken down. And just imagine what that’s doing to the children and the partner. I won’t go into that.

He had a second police interview, and the statement that was made to him — he’s absolutely dumbfounded, because he could never do any such thing. He’s saying his entire life is being ruined by this. “I’m not coping. I’ve had all sorts of counselling” — now, he’s the only one recently that I’ve had saying that — “including trauma counselling, but none of it has helped. I just don’t know how I’m supposed to cope any more. I can’t believe this is allowed to hang over somebody’s head for so long” — remember, two years so far. “Nobody understands exactly how it feels. Everybody talks about how I’m not alone, but it’s not their name on the paper, it’s mine. My entire life has almost been ruined, and I can’t seem to find anything enjoyable any more. I’m scared of what happens. How much longer can I put on a brave face and pretend everything is okay? It’s cost me more than anybody else will understand — relationships, my livelihood, and everything I used to stand by. I feel as though I’m not the same person as I was back in 2017. I’m absolutely petrified I’ll never get back to where I was.”

The worst part of it was, he was named after a family member, and he thinks he’s let that family member down. “I don’t know what to do any more, or where to turn.” One of his coaches in one of the organisations suggested coming to FASO. “Any help would be gratefully appreciated.” And that’s where we’re at at the moment, because he’s a recent person, so I haven’t asked him yet whether what we do is useful to him and just talking to us helps. But I’ve had feedback off many, and they said: if you hadn’t have been there, we’d have committed suicide.

And in fact one mum phoned me up. What can I do? My son’s only 15, he’s got ADHD, he’s a prospective huge boxer and he’s been in the boxing field for the last five, six years. He’s only a young teenager. And after a long period of time being on bail, it was dropped. No explanations, it’s dropped. She phoned me back a fortnight later. She’d walked into the bedroom, her son was hanging there. And he’d been found not guilty — no, he hadn’t, he’d had his case dropped. And just imagine you’re in that position. Doesn’t matter whether you’re male, female, because if it’s you that’s been accused, or a member of your family, what are you going to feel? I sniff now and again, sorry. And how long is that, John? Yeah, okay, ten more. Okay.

Innocence projects

Sorry to ask — because I was speaking earlier this week to the Innocence Project. I don’t know if any of you know about the Innocence Project. They’re the law students that try and overturn somebody’s conviction. No, they don’t try and overturn it; they look at the information of somebody wanting to have their conviction overturned. So they look and investigate. Because they’re students, they’ve only got a limited time to do it, so their investigations take an awful long time. And they’re going through the same thoughts, they’re looking at what the legalities are and what legalities have been broken and what have you.

And if you look, last October the Cardiff Innocence Project had their second appeal overturned. They’re the only Innocence Project that have that. The reason I keep putting these forward is because I’m local to them, and we’ve got a separate voluntary group, and at the moment it is families of those convicted of sex offences, back in sort of up to 2002. It used to be those convicted of murders, and in fact the lead, Dennis Eady, helped overturn about five convictions of murder, because the evidence was there and he just helped with pointing out the evidence through to the CCRC, and they had the convictions overturned.

And Michael O’Brien, who was one of them — the Cardiff Newsagent Three — he made history, because in those days if you’d done a prison sentence and came out, you would then get compensation because your conviction had been overturned. But when he did that, he got his money, and he immediately got a bill for the number of years’ breakfasts he’d had in prison. And then he fought the police to get compensation off them for wrongful conviction. Now, they said that they hadn’t done it, but he was paid an unannounced sum, which is often the case. So now he goes round talking about what happened to him in prison. And whilst he was there he lost a child, he lost his father — because when you’re in prison you can’t go to funerals, usually, only on certain occasions. So just imagine, a member of your family dies and you’re not allowed to go to a funeral. How is that going to affect you?

“There’s nothing set up”

You see, I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t say that. All I can tell you is what people tell me, and I try to talk to them and explain the certain situations. And having been an emergency nurse in the past, I mean, I’ve been used to medical emergencies, so I’ve had to talk to people to try and calm them, and that’s all I do with these. And that’s all we can do, because there’s nothing set up for any falsely accused person to go to. We’re volunteers, we have to live on donations, the government won’t pay us. Because, as I tell everybody, we’re a combination, purely for this area, of Victim Support, Citizens Advice Bureau and Samaritans, because we fill the function of all those. And because they’re charities, they can’t deal with this situation, because they don’t understand it. And that’s the thing people need to understand — the trauma that these unrepresented people are going through.

We’re going to have a question and answer session in a minute, and I’m happy to answer absolutely anything. I’ve been doing this job 16 years of volunteering, and I haven’t seen it all, because I say that and then the next day something — it’s the same thing, but it comes in a different package. And that’s how we can tell the people are maintaining innocence, because it’s all the same language but different packages. And the stress is enormous. And even talking about it, as you heard, I get a bit carried away, I get a bit soft. But that’s the only way to be — if you’re hard you can’t do the job. And so everybody gets a single talk, and when people phone the helpline, if mum and dad phone, and son or daughter, each one gets a private conversation. So we’re registered with data protection, so everybody has a private conversation.

And just to let you know, we’ve got a plethora of paperwork to turn into statistics. We’ve got two years’ worth of statistics on the websites — the UWE put that together — but that’s the only statistics, apart from a couple of other academics that put something together. So they put two years together, and we’ve got more than that, but we need funding, or UWE need the funding, to be able to put the rest of it together. And I hope that has been useful, and I’m sorry I’m not from your psychiatric side, but thank you.