Charles Ray Spencer, once a police officer in Vancouver, British Columbia, was incarcerated for 20-years after a conviction for molesting his two children. Now, his son and daughter have announced that the molestation never happened and it was a product of police coercion and parental alienation on the part of their mother.
On Friday, July 10th, 2009, Matthew Spencer and Kathryn Tetz testified in Clark County Superior Court in an effort to clear their father’s name after all of these years.
It appears from their testimony that a combination police coercion, prosecutorial misconduct, and their mother’s parental alienation forced them to make these allegations when they were 9- and 6-years old, respectively. They even recalled details such as the detective on the case, Sharon Krause plying them with ice cream and questioning them incessantly. This prompted Matthew to make his allegation just to get her to stop. Kathryn recalled the ice cream but not what she told the detective.
It took until 2004 for Spencer’s sentence to be commuted after problems come to light regarding the conviction, including prosecutors withholding medical exams that showed no evidence of any abuse whatsoever despite claims that the sexual abuse was violent and repeated.
Shockingly, Charles Ray Spencer still carries the horrendous label of “convicted sex offender” and will retain the label unless his convictions are overturned. Worse still, prosecutors are still saying that they don’t believe he was wrongfully convicted and, if the convictions are overturned, they will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Both children said that while growing up in California they were told by their mother, who divorced Spencer before he was charged, that they were blocking out the memory of the abuse.
Several things come to mind as I read this story.
- The lengths that police, detectives, and prosecutors will go to secure a conviction are boundless. Withholding evidence that would demonstrate that the accusations were baseless, aside from being criminal, supports what many already believe – a conviction has now become more important than the truth.
- That despite all you read that challenges the contention that parental alienation doesn’t exist, anyone with a reasonable level of intelligence must know that people can be trained to do just about anything. Children are especially vulnerable. Anyone who would contend that parental alienation doesn’t exist would do well to read this story and explain why they don’t believe that a malicious parent is incapable of teaching children to hate.
- Finally, given what has been revealed in this story as it exists so far, any official who would dare challenge the overturning of Charles Ray Spencer’s convictions should be fired, criminally charged, and given a sentence of 20-years (minimum). Those who were responsible for the wrongs committed against this man should immediately be arrested, convicted, and given the same sentence. So should the mother.
