FREDERICTON — A man who was shunned by his community and reviled by family when he was wrongly branded a sex offender has been acquitted of sexually assaulting his step-granddaughter after the girl admitted she was forced to make up the story by her grandmother.
The man, who is referred to only as D.A.M. in court documents, outlined the devastating toll the wrongful conviction has had on his life since the little girl falsely accused him of touching her sexually when she was 12 years old.
"Not only was I convicted and incarcerated for something I did not do, but I have had to live with being despised by members of my family and the community," he said in a document presented in the New Brunswick Court of Appeal.
"My son's former spouse has kept and continues to keep their three children away from me because his ex-wife now believes that I am a sex offender."
The statements were revealed in court on Jan. 20 after the Appeal Court judge overturned his 2011 conviction, acquitted him and removed all related restrictions imposed on him when he was sentenced to four months in prison and 18 months supervised probation. Those included a firearms prohibition, a DNA order and an order to be registered in the sex offender registry.
The man was originally charged with sexual interference after the little girl alleged that he touched her vagina inside her pants on several occasions. He repeatedly denied the accusations, which were also found to have inconsistencies between what she testified and what she told social workers.
At trial, the girl's mother suggested her daughter had been forced by her spouse's family to fabricate the claims as part of a vindictive feud between the relatives.
The trial judge dismissed the assertion, something the Appeal Court highlighted in its six-page decision.
"We cannot but note the glaring failure of the trial judge to frame the issue as it properly should have been framed," the judges wrote.
The case took a dramatic turn when the man appealed and indicated he had new evidence to present to the court, including four affidavits that the appeal court judges in their ruling last month say, "leave no doubt the complainant has repeatedly and consistently recanted her trial testimony."
In one of the documents, the complainant described how her parents had separated and her paternal grandmother told her repeatedly that the man had sexually abused her, although she knew he hadn't.
The girl, who is now 17 years old, said she was told to make the allegations to social workers, police and in court.
"My (paternal grandmother) pressured me so much that I felt I had no other choice but to go to court and tell the story," she said in her affidavit, adding that she was made to watch a video of her statement before going to court to testify.
"All I wanted was to please my grandmother and I was very confused."
The judgment indicates she had apologized to the man, who the judges said, "has suffered greatly as a result of this miscarriage of justice."
The Appeal Court states that the complainant was living with "intense guilt" about the false accusations and eventually told a therapist of the lie after she had gained some distance from her father's family.
The social worker stated in the affidavit that the girl and her sister were told by their aunt and grandmother that her mother hated them and would hurt them, and instilled the idea that the man abused her.
The worker concluded that the paternal family "turned the children against their mother."
