This week’s courtroom drama, in which a man who had been convicted of sexually abusing his daughter applied for release from prison after his estranged wife was charged with concocting the story and forcing her daughter to corroborate the accusations, raises a number of serious questions.

The man was denied release yet again yesterday by the Court of Criminal Appeals after it ruled, as the Magistrates’ Court had before it, that it cannot overrule a judgment given by the same court and re-open a case that has been closed. As such, the court said that it could not grant the conditional discharge being requested.

The man has been in prison for more than a year after being found guilty of abusing his daughter, but his former wife has now been charged with perjury in connection with the case. She is also accused of forcing her daughter to lie about her father.

The daughter had actually withdrawn her testimony at one point in the appeal proceedings and, despite her claims of abuse, medical examinations had found her to be a virgin even though she claimed to have been sexually abused five times by her father. An inquiry was opened, which led to his wife being charged with perjury and being held on remand herself. The daughter is also expected to be charged.

Without going into the merits of this particular case - that will be for the Constitutional Court to decide next week when it hears the man’s case - there is something seriously wrong with the fact that the courts yesterday found no other option available at law other than, despite the rather drastic turn of events, to leave him in prison.

A petition doing the rounds for his release has apparently collected some 4,000 signatures. But despite that, justice must be allowed its course and the man could be served justice eventually by the Constitutional Court.  Other than that, it is only the President who could intervene by way of a pardon, which, in this case, would be incorrect considering that the mother and daughter’s perjury case is still to be heard.

There are two main disturbing factors about this case. The first is that the court has no remedy with which to deal with such a case, and the second is the alleged gross misconduct of the mother in question.

Sadly, this case is by no means a one-off. In fact, this very week a similar case saw a man being found innocent of having sexually abused a 16-year-old girl after it transpired in court that the woman had filed several police reports against different people for having sexually abused her children. This led the court to suspect that the woman had used her daughter as a ‘weapon’.

The court later heard, from the mother’s own sister, that it was actually the mother who had had a relationship with the accused, as the man had insisted in court.

According to the mother’s sister, the girl had told her that the mother threatened to throw her out of the house if she did not make the false allegations against the man. The accused, in court, said he used to give the mother money and that matters took a distinct turn for the worse when his funds dried up.

What is striking about these two cases is that at least one, and allegedly both mothers had taken a conscious decision to use their own daughters as bait. In the first case a child was allegedly used, if the father’s assertions are true, – to exact some kind of sick revenge on her husband, and the other to extract money from an apparently easily led man.

At least one of these cases, and possibly both, show a disgusting disregard for the children at the hands of their own mothers. In the case of the father accused and convicted of sexually abusing his own daughter, and while bearing in mind that the perjury case against the mother and daughter is still pending, there are few accusations more heinous.

Just put yourself in this man’s shoes and assume if you will that he is innocent.  Imagine serving time for a crime you did not commit in the first place, and then imagine the despair of having been convicted of molesting your own daughter.  Also imagine the treatment meted out to child molesters in prison and the irreparable damage done to his reputation. There are, after all, few things worse to be accused of. If innocent, the man has truly been between the dock and a very, very hard place indeed.

What is even worse, far worse, is the fact that with every case in which someone cries foul about sexual abuse, future victims’ claims will, at least subconsciously, be doubted that much more. Cases such as these, again presuming that anyone is innocent until proven guilty as with the mother and daughter accused of perjury, only darken the natural shadow of doubt cast on the legitimate cases. In such circumstances, the courts need to come down very hard indeed on anyone levelling such false accusations.