The “Whipped” Accusation

The client was accused of sexually abusing his girlfriend’s daughter. The defendant, the daughter, and the daughter’s grandmother were home one day while the daughter’s mother was at work. The grandmother told the daughter to go upstairs to the bathroom to take a shower. The daughter didn’t want to take a shower. Instead, she took off her clothes and ran into the defendant’s bedroom, where he was laying in bed. The defendant was scheduled to work a night shift a few hours later. The grandmother brought a load of laundry up the stairs when she discovered the naked girl in the defendant’s bedroom.

When the mother returned home from work, she was angry at her daughter for disobeying her grandmother and not doing her chores. She began to whip the daughter with a belt. As the beating continued, the daughter begged her mother to stop. The mother asked why she should stop. The daughter then said that she had something very important to tell her. The mother stopped whipping the daughter. The daughter then claimed that the defendant had sexually abused her. The mother called the police.

Through the investigation, the defense learned that the daughter was friends with an older girl at school who had recently made a very similar claim of sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend. The defense also learned that the daughter was aware of the friend’s allegation because they had talked about it at school only a few days earlier.

After a short deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of NOT GUILTY on all counts. The jury agreed with the defense that the daughter had made up the story about the defendant abusing her in order to shift her mother’s anger from her to the defendant.