Around the country there are various types of innocence commissions being formed. Each commission functions differently.  Click here to see a list of states and their innocence commissions, as well as a fact sheet by the Innocence Project.

Sexual Abuse In Divorce Syndrome ("SAID")

SAID is a false accusation against one parent, usually the father, for molesting the child. In the American society, there is such a sensitivity or outrage about child abuse that when an allegation is made, it is presumed to be true. Instead of being innocent until proven guilty, the accused child molester, especially fathers, are guilty until proven innocent. Upon allegation, the courts generally order the removal of the child from the father and at the very best, allows the father only limited supervised visitation until the matter is completely settled.

Frank Zepezauer states that "in some jurisdictions, the accusation can send a man to prison for life. In others, it can incarcerated him for ten or twenty years or more and brand him, for the rest of his life as a sex offender. At the very least, it can immobilize him in custody proceedings by involving him in costly litigation." SAID is often used by women to alienate the father from his children. It is used more often than physical abuse since there is often no physical signs from sexual abuse. A defense attorney in San Jose, California states, "In one fell swoop, she (the mother) can get her husband completely out of her and her children's lives, and assure herself complete custodial control. And in one fell swoop, she can completely destroy the man's life, and any semblance of a normal relationship between him and his children."

One may wonder what the alienator would have to gain in making such false accusations or why one parent would try to erase the other parent from the child's life. There are several reasons. Fear of losing their parental identity, loss of family structure, envy, rage and revenge are all viable bases for which one parent will alienate the other parent from the child. This epidemic is not exclusively seen in America but is wide spread throughout the world. In the National Shared Parenting Association (Saskatchewan Chapter) Press Release, it states that in Canada, a Children's Aid Society study showed that of 1200 complaints of abuse, 900 involved custody disputes. Of those 900 allegations, two thirds (600) were found to be false.

Most people do not realize the effects of parental alienation on children and the false allegations of abuse. Many young children whose mothers have made false allegations of abuse will develop false memories of abuse because of leading questions or suggestive counseling. These children are left fatherless. Parentectomy results in children becoming depressed, sometimes reaching suicidal proportions. They often lack self-esteem. Often they will turn against the alienator in later adolescence when they realize they have been "brainwashed" against the other parent.


California Innocence Project fights for woman’s freedom – son to testify that he lied in trial that convicted his mother

SAN DIEGO, March 15, 2007 – California Innocence Project attorneys are fighting for the release of Dolores Macias, who was convicted of murder because of her children’s false testimony.

In 1994 Macias was convicted of drowning her niece, 4-year-old Lynette Orozco, in a trial where the prosecution’s case was based solely on the testimony of Macias’s children, Gilbert, Melody, and Frankie Alvarez. Attorneys and students with the California Innocence Project of California Western School of Law have spent the past four years tracking down Macias’s children who all say the testimony they gave as children was false.   Click here to read the entire article.