My wife flew off the handle a week ago and took me down to the child protection ministry here in town (in Canada it's called the MCFD) and accused me of masturbating on my son who is now 2 years old. They sent me away, so I walked back home and realized I had left the car keys with her so I sat on the deck for 6 hrs waiting for her to come back home. The charges are false by the way, the whole case is ridiculous, but because she charged her former husband's wife with abusing her first son with abuse, which they never believed, they are taking her serious this time and took our baby away.

Now, just 3 months ago my boss fired me because I found out the new employee he had hired was using pirated software, and I asked him to take care of it, and as a professional engineer he knows I am required to follow it up so bang, I got fired.  It's been 3 months now but he is dragging out my case with employment insurance by saying that I had quit, and that case has become enormously complicated, and I haven't had any success finding a new job yet and nothing on the horizon either, and not a single cent in E.I. relief since. By the way, my wife quit her job last November and I spent $15,000 out of my retirement savings plan capitalizing a new business for her and living expenses for the last 3 months, she just started and business is slow.  She says she loves me but she just had to get this nagging suspicion off her chest.  I've only got $4,800 left in that and that's it.

Now here's what's going on today. The RCMP gave me an interrogation last Saturday and then asked me if I would take a polygraph test. The constable asked me what I would think if he told me he had a pair of baby pants with semen on them, I told him that I would say he was lying. It turns out that my wife dug up a pair of baby pants with something on them and they are being tested in the lab right now but we won't hear about it for a month. In the meantime (the interrogation was last Saturday), my wife's lawyer called me in a panic and said whatever I do, don't take the polygraph.
Now as I say I am 100% innocent, but I am rattled by this constable who told me he is convinced I did it; my wife's lawyer says don't take the test, the E.I. board of referees has me booked for a hearing at 9:30 am on June 1 in the next city, and the constable wants to bring in the polygraph operator from another city for 9:00 am on June 1, and he wants me to decide whether to take this test or not TODAY. And I still never got around to finding my own lawyer. And after reading this site and some other material, like "Lie behind the Lie Detector" I am scared spitless about this test all of a sudden. I feel like I'm getting set up for something I don't feel all that prepared to take. Oh, and to cap it all off: protective services took away my little boy. The cop called me Friday to ask about whether I would still take the test, I told him about the lawyer and the hearing (and by the way, my ex-boss has apparently postponed his involvement for another 3 weeks but it's going to take the chairman of the E.I. referees to decide whether or not the hearing will take place on June 1, which is 2 days away)... anyway, I told the cop about these other things, and he says I have until today to make a decision about the polygraph, and furthermore he says he understands MCFD are going to keep my boy until he's done with his investigation which will be delayed if I don't take it.

He says it's a way to clear my name, but my dad and wife's lawyer say I've got nothing to gain by taking the test.

My wife is making me go to another city right now to see a specialist all morning, then we have to go this afternoon and decide whether to sign up her other son, who is 12, overweight, and whose main recreation is playing nintendo gameboy, whether he will go into football, which costs $400 which has to be paid today and we don't have that money either (his whole life he said he didn't want to play football, now he demands to do it and we have to pay for it right now).  Plus house insurance was due today for $472, plus I have to scare up another mortgage payment of $584 and $200 for RESPs.. and there's about $600 in the chequing account.

I'm getting overwhelmed and the cop told me I have to decide today and get back to him. By the way, if I get charged that's really going to damage my career as an engineer and my wife is freaking out because they took her baby away. I mean really freaking out, she went through the bathroom, bedroom, baby's bedroom smashing stuff and throwing things around.

Anybody have any advice?  I've only got a couple hours to get all this together.

Good advice, thanks fellows. My wife and I just got back from the psychologist and he had some other good advice. He said that the polygraph is not legally admissable as evidence in Canada, which I did not know before. He also recommended I turn the test down, which I did. I'm putting off getting a lawyer until charges are actually laid, because I just can't afford another high-priced specialist. Man, when it rains it sure pours. It's too bad our rainy day fund is nearly gone, but there it is.

The reason I started looking this stuff up on the internet is because I wanted to find out some facts about this test, as in; what should I expect, what sort of questions do they ask, whether they would lay or drop charges based on what the results were, that sort of info. It alarmed me to see that they would ask what I knew about polygraphs, whether I had sought information about it prior to testing. It alarms me a great deal to find out that they regard this kind of behavior as "suspicious", when all I'm doing is trying to find out how the process goes. I've never been interested in polygraph tests before, but I tell you, when you're confronted with the situation you develop a strong interest awfully quick.

I'll let you know how the situation develops.

To KevinM:

I have no further advice to what you have already received.  It sounds as though you have made a wise decision in not submitting to polygraph testing.

To Bill Crider:

As Darkcobra2005 has mentioned he has long professed to be a polygraph examiner.  Maybe some of his posts were not outright but a few of them were revealing.  Even though the posts by Thevet2 and justchecking have been credited to him, he has made no attempts to mask or conceal his involvement with polygraphy as an examiner since signing on as Darkcobra2005.  Have a good one.