Should you believe child sex abuse charges made in high-conflict divorce cases?

(The above photos show Zachary Stratton Smith and Chelsea Paige Smith, kidnapped by their noncustodial mother in 1997. Zachary's picture is shown age-progressed to 20 years and Chelsea's picture is shown age-progressed to 17 years by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. For more information about their case, visit the Polly Klaas Foundation.)

Last week, we learned about the recovery, after 15 years, of  Jessica Click-Hill. She was kidnapped at age 8 from her Walnut Creek father in the midst of a bitter custody battle.  Before kidnapping Jessica in 1995, Jessica's mother, Wendy Dawn Hill, alleged that her ex-husband, Dean Click, had molested the girl.

The Contra Costa Times is reporting that another Walnut Creek father, Michael Smith, was also accused of molesting his son and daughter before his estranged wife took off with the children in 1997. Smith has not seen his children, Zachary, then 9, and Chelsea, then 6, since then.

During the custody which she eventually lost, Elizabeth Stratton repeatedly accused Michael Smith of molesting their children. The last known sighting of Elizabeth Stratton and her children was in Atlanta shortly after they left the Bay Area. Police suspect she received help for disappearing from an organization called Children of the Underground.

The Times spoke to Michael Smith as a follow-up to news last week of Jessica Click-Hill's recovery.  Smith says that the police finding Jessica, now 22, gives him hope that he'll see his children again after so many years. But the odds are not in his favor. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shows that less then 1 percent of children reported to the agency as abducted by relatives were found after being gone 10 or more years, the Times reports.

Given the volatile emotions at the center of some divorce and child custody cases, it's no surprise that angry, emotional debates rage between the two main camps representing the interests of fathers, and those advocating for the rights of mothers.

Father's rights groups have created their bogeymen--or women. These are the "shortsighted and abusive" mothers who, in high-conflict divorces, become so enraged at their estranged spouse that they will do anything they can to eliminate his presence from their own lives and their chiildren's lives. These women, according to father's rights advocates and attorneys, often become prey to what they call the Parental Alienation Syndrome. This termed was coined by Columbia University psychiatry professor Richard Gardner in the early 1980s. He described it as a disorder in which one parent deliberately or unconsciously attempts to alienate a child from the other parent. Gardner tended to see mothers as being the main culprits in parental alienation syndrome. 

Father's rights attorneys have liked using Parental Alienation Syndrome as a defense against mother's allegations that a father sexually or physically abused his children. But women's rights groups fired back against this strategy, saying that Gardner's science on this topic was shaky. Over the years, this syndrome has been  rejected by clinical and legal organizations. Mothers' rights groups charge that it is being used by fathers who are trying to marginalize mothers' genuine concerns about physical and sexual abuse. 

Elizabeth Stratton (left) said she was fleeing with her children to protect them from their father's abuse. But, as the Times says, several law enforcement agencies investigated the molestation allegations against Michael Stmith and found no evidence to support them.

There has been was talk about an "epidemic" of false allegations of sexual abuse in divorce and child custody cases. One researcher at the University of Washington, Merrilyn McDonald, dismissed this epidemic idea in an article published in the journal Court Review. She cites a study by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts Research Unit in Denver that found that of 9,000 families appearing in divorce court during a six-month period, less than 2 percent reported allegations of sexual abuse. McDonald also says that false allegations of sexual abuse are not widespread.

McDonald agrees that "allegations that arise in the context of divorce are immediately suspect in many people’s minds." And, she says, "the belief that women frequently make false allegations to take revenge on ex-spouses is entrenched in popular culture." 

However, she argues, this belief is "false" because: 1) sexual abuse allegations themselves are rare in divorce cases; and 2) of cases where such allegations arise, half of those charges end up being confirmed.

On the other hand, in the same study, McDonald found that no abuse was determined to have taken place in 33 percent of the cases. So, even her own research shows that false allegations do happen. 

Debates about Parental Alienation Syndrome and sexual abuse allegations in custody cases will continue. It would be nice if these two groups would stop bickering so much and think more carefully about what's in the best interest of the children. What a novel concept. 

Meanwhile, it looks like the mothers in our nasty local custody and child kidnapping cases lost authorities' sympathy a long time ago and now risk paying a high price for deciding to flee with their kids.

Elizabeth Stratton is being sought by authorities on charges of parent abduction. Wendy Dawn Hill was arrested in Southern California last week. She was brought back to Contra Costa County and booked into County Jail in Martinez on abduction charges.