I met and married my wife when her daughter was 3. My son was 6. After about 1 year of marriage, we acquired a foster daughter of 2 months old. When my step daughter was 3, she came home from a visit with her dad and complained of her privates hurting. She then told my wife a story of how "Daddy touched her in the bathtub and made her cry", with a good deal of details. We thought it best to have her examined because the story fit together well and was quite elaborate for a 3 year old. As it turned out DCFS investigated the dad, and the report was that she fell on a toy in the bathtub and she hurt herself. He and his wife had to check her out and forgot to tell my wife about the incident. From the ages 4-6 there were a few times that it came up that my step daughter had touched other kids and it culminated in December of last year, when she locked herself in a bathroom and made another child touch her and she touched him inappropriately. My step daughter had been seeing a counselor for her acting out and the counselor called DCFS and reported the incident. The counselor also suggested that the 4 parents involved take polygraphs because the behaviors seemed to be coming from somewhere. We all agreed and took the polygraphs. The counselor called my wife and said that my results didn't look good and I needed to get out of the house until this was sorted out. I moved in with a friend for a couple nights and the counselor called DCFS on me. DCFS does not consider a polygraph reason enough to start an investigation, so the counselor told her DCFS that I was the one that should have been investigated 3 years prior,, because she called me "DAD". this was a complete lie, but DCFS investigated and found the complaint to be unfounded. However, my wife's ex was so upset about the whole thing that he had a new parenting agreement drafted that said that his child would have no contact with me. He took my wife to court for custody of the child and the guardian ad litem filed a report heavily based on theory that I failed a polygraph and my wife was not providing a safe home for her child because of that. I say "Theory" because an attorney advised me to withdraw the rights of the counselor and the polygrapher to discuss the results with anyone but me. that's what I did, but the counselor still continued to suggest that I had perpetrated something, which cast doubt on me with everyone. Since the judge usually goes with the findings of the guardian ad litem, my wife made the deal to give up child support, give the father more custody than she has, let him take her out of the private school we had her in and have no contact with me. So, now we are getting a divorce, my faithful church friends don't want to be associated and in a small town, there are a lot of false rumors going around about me. This, all quite literally because of a polygraph. I feel for the rare cases where someone in my shoes falls into the same fate because of a test that has no legal validity, but can still destroy the life that you have. If you are innocent, don't take the test. If you're guilty, take the test and I hope you fail and suffer a worse fate than mine. Something more has to be done to end this ridiculous test and its effects on innocent people.

John Doe MM1234 wrote on Oct 17^th, 2014 at 11:37pm:


Thank you for sharing your story, and I'm very sorry that things turned out this way. False positives are common in polygraphy (which has no scientific basis to begin with). And any "counselor" who suggests polygraphs in such a situation as you've described (or indeed, in virtually any situation) is clearly incompetent.

I'd be interested to know more about your polygraph experience, in particular, the name of the polygraph operator who falsely accused you of deception.

With respect to any friends, neighbors or family who think less of you because of polygraph results, please refer them to this site. And please check your private messages on this board for some additional information.