content: A relative of mine has been chased by false accusations of harassment and sexual assault for literally decades by an ex-wife I've thought about posting this in the past and figured people here might be interested. More than twenty-five years ago, in a fairly remote and underdeveloped part of the country -- the kind of place where, today, you'd find confederate flags everywhere -- a relative of mine, I'll call Jack, got married, and had two children. The marriage didn't turn out well and after a couple years they got a divorce.  The divorce proceedings went on for a little while and then Jack decided he wanted custody of his children.  His wife, however, had different ideas.  She didn't have a job, and we later learned that she wanted to keep the children for financial reasons (Jack's own mother told his wife to do this). The court case actually went well for Jack and it looked like he was going to get custody, despite (I assume) the odds being against him (I don't know much about the stuff you talk about in /v/MensRights, but I kind of assume men don't usually win custody battles like these). This is where things turned downhill for Jack.  He was abruptly put in jail and held without being charged for close to a week.  The cops, his wife, and his own mother, were having a hard time figuring out what to accuse him of, so he just set in jail waiting for them to come up with something.  Eventually, his wife filed a complaint saying that he was sexually abusing his two children, the oldest of which was only three at the time. They set a court date and Jack asked all of our relatives for money to hire a lawyer.  He said we would be convicted if he got a public defender, and wanted a real lawyer.  Everyone thought he was innocent, though, and nobody lived close enough to know what was going on, so we just figured the court would rule in his favor. A few people were going to go to the court and serve as character witnesses (a several hour drive back then), but nobody wanted to give him any money. On the day of the court case, everyone got there and found out the date had been moved.  The court case was over, and he was already convicted.  This meant that he didn't have any character witnesses like he was supposed to have.  While they were there, they did manage to find one of the lawyers from the case -- two of them, actually.  The prosecuting attorney and the public defender (the two opposing lawyers) were both out playing golf, together. Granted, both lawyers thought he was innocent.  They said the judge was corrupt and  that she was friends with the wife.  The prosecuting attorney later wrote a letter stating that Jack was innocent and that the court case was  biased.  This letter is public record and in a law book.  There are other facts from the case, which are also public record, that make it very obvious he was innocent -- including physical evidence from a doctor stating that what he was accused of was basically impossible. One of the reasons he was found guilty was because of the public defender.  Jack said that the public defender showed up without any idea what was going on.  He also never said anything about habeas corpus (where Jack was held without being accused of anything) so clearly he wasn't a very good lawyer.  The takeaway from this is that, even if you are innocent, get a good lawyer to defend yourself.  Don't rely on a public defender. So he registered as a sex offender then set in prison for 20 years.  Nobody ever heard anything from his wife and after a while people mostly forgot about this.  Until his mother died.  Jack's wife briefly came to a few of us after his mom died and asked about his inheritance.  His mom didn't have anything, and when she found that out, his wife disappeared again, then died a few years later (not sure what from). After he got out of prison, he was basically homeless.  We were originally going to send him to a homeless shelter, but we found out they were all full, so someone  decided to keep him.  He also can't get a job now due to his status as a sex offender.  Jack is a hard worker and has been doing odd jobs for people -- painting, yard work, stuff like that, but being labelled a sex offender has made everything really difficult for him. After he got out of prison, he did try to overturn his case, but because of a legal loophole, the county got off on double jeopardy.  I'm not sure the details, but I think he tried to represent himself while he was in jail, and the case was dismissed for technical reasons, which then made it impossible to try a second time.  The fact that his case was given to the same judge that put him in jail the first time also had something to do with it. It's actually really hard to get your name cleared even when you're innocent, and it's usually really expensive, so most people remain, on paper, guilty.  You can get money from the state if your case is overturned, so there is a really strong incentive to make that process as difficult as possible for anyone to go through. In this case, however, there were lawyers that were interested in representing him, pro bono (partially because of connections we have, and also because the case was really solid).    So he didn't get his name cleared.  You'd think everything would have ended there, but apparently one of his children has a gripe with him.  She started calling people trying to get ahold of Jack, leaving messages with her number for him to call her.  She said she knew that mom had lied and that she really wanted to talk to him.  Of course, he's not allowed to have any contact with her due to his conviction, so we never gave him any of these messages. One day, however, out of nowhere, a sheriff called one of us, demanding that Jack stop calling and harassing his daughter.  Of course we told the sheriff that she had been the one calling all of us, and not the other way around, and that we never gave Jack any of these messages, so there was no way he had called her. We figured out later that all the messages she was leaving was probably a way to trick him into calling her, so that his number would be on her phone.  Imagine, for example, what would have happened if she had "proof" that he had, at least one time, called her. It's interesting that the sheriff she went to was the sheriff of a neighboring county from where she lives.  I don't have all the details, but I hear that she's always filing complaints in her county, and that the sheriff there wont have anything to do with her anymore.  Once, she even set fire to her own house to collect insurance money (they figured out it was arson, and everyone thinks she did it). So we didn't hear anything back from the police after that.  We figure she was standing with the sheriff when we were on the phone with him, and he might have gotten the idea that she was making things up. That was more than a year ago.  Now, however, his daughter's sister-in-law is claiming that Jack has been up to both of their houses, multiple times, and even forced his way inside their homes.  They also say he wrote a bunch of letters and death threats.  Supposedly, they claim that he wrote these letters while he was in prison, despite only now, decades later, coming forward with it.  He's of course been here -- hundreds of miles away the whole time.  And he's never been able to read or write his entire life. The guy is really well adjusted for having been in prison so long.  He's a very nice person, a hard worker, and doesn't cause any problems, yet these people from hundreds of miles away wont leave him alone.  Their narrative, ironically, is exactly the opposite.  They say that he won't leave them alone, but really, they're the one's harassing him, not the other way around. I guess if you harass someone through the court system it's somehow ok? I want to think this kind of stuff is rare, but it seems like it's contagious.  His own mom, his wife, his daughter, and now his daughter's sister-in-law are all doing this.  And I'm not even sure what, exactly, they want at this point (granted, two of them are dead, but that just shows you how long it's been going on). To me this seems related to men's rights.  I don't want to frame it like men could never stoop this low, but I do feel like it belongs here. tldr: A relative of mine, more than twenty years ago, got a divorce, and almost got custody of his children. When it looked like he was going to get custody, his wife, and his own mother, got together and accused him of molesting his children. He lost the case because he couldn't afford a lawyer, and was assigned a public defender. I'm not sure what they got out of him financially, but both his mom and his wife were gaming the system with their children. Public record makes it clear that he was innocent, including a written statement from the prosecuting attorney stating exactly that. The judge from that county was friends with his wife, and the same letter from the prosecuting attorney accuses the judge of corruption. After he got out, his daughter started harassing him, and tried to to trick him into calling her to get him into trouble. Being registered as a sex offender is a good way to end up homeless and without any possibility of ever getting a job, even after you've served your time for society, and even if you're actually innocent.