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This week's writer calls for more stringent safeguards against and awareness of false allegations of sexual abuse.

I am a member of a family where the lives of children have been wrecked by their father's wrongful conviction for sexual abuse. It is so hurtful to read articles that dismiss miscarriages of justice as part of a necessary price for society to pay in the war against sexual abuse.

As I have investigated how this has happened, it has been hard to maintain the belief that in some quarters protecting children is being taken nearly as seriously as protecting colleagues, departments, ignorance, belief systems, ideologies, and the adult need for certainty and revenge.

What is your honest, gut response to sexual abuse? Have you ever harboured the thought that as so many of the guilty get away with it, so what if a few innocents go to the wall for the cause? If you do not care about false allegations or injustices in this area, why not? Do you publicly espouse the idea that children must be believed and yet privately keep the door open when working with children, work in twos to protect yourselves from potential falsehoods that you say do not exist? Why are the children who are harmed by false allegations less important than those harmed by sexual abuse? Are you as open to hearing a child say that nothing has happened, as you are to a child saying something has?

Are you trained in the area of false allegations? If not, on what basis do you claim to approach child sexual abuse investigations in a balanced, informed, educated way?

Our family has been destroyed, but not by the damaged woman who first made the allegations about her ex-husband.

She had power over her children, but she had no power over the ill-trained, vehement social worker who met not one member of the paternal family and who broke guidelines over and over again as she "kindly" dominated and sadly manipulated vulnerable children in her interview with them. She had no power over the police who said prior to interview that the man they were arresting was guilty.

I ask all well intentioned social workers, writers, academics, and professionals, to come out from behind your barricades of ignorance and to educate yourselves about false allegations and the part that professionals have played. If you can do that, the result will be not the betrayal of innocents, but their protection.

The writer wishes to remain anonymous.