Head varies | Editions vary

WASHINGTON -- In emotional and often tearful testimony, James Wade told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that San Diego County social workers destroyed almost three years of his life.

Wade, wrongly accused of the 1989 rape of his then-8-year-old daughter, said his life and that of his family were turned upside down. "We were put through a literal hell of contempt and accusations by evil manipulators bent on destroying me and my family," he told the Senate Subcommittee on Children and the Family. "Why? Because we had the misfortune of being the recipient of a random criminal assault."

His daughter, Alicia, was placed in foster care and put up for adoption. Wade's wife attempted suicide, and his parents spent their life savings trying to keep him out of jail.

Just before Alicia's adoption was finalized, DNA tests on semen stains found on the girl's clothing excluded Wade as the perpetrator of the Serra Mesa assault. Albert Carder Jr., a registered sex offender on parole, was convicted of the rape.

The Wades, who now live in Missouri, eventually received a $3.7 million settlement from various agencies.

His family sat behind him as he testified. His wife, Denise, leaned forward to pat him on the back when he found it difficult to go on.

"I don't want to see what happened to us happen to anybody else," Wade said later, explaining why he chose to tell his painful and personal story once more. "If this will help do that, it's worth whatever it takes." Wade said he supports a change in federal law to limit the absolute immunity from civil liability that social workers and other child abuse prevention workers have.

The subcommittee is considering reauthorizing the 1974 Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act (CAPTA), the only federal program specifically aimed at child abuse prevention.

Subcommittee Chairman Daniel Coats, R-Ind., said the panel will try to balance the desire to protect children from abuse with "legitimate concerns about the fact that two-thirds of all reported cases do not end up being substantiated."

However, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., warned that "we have to be careful we don't get so anecdotal in approach" that the subcommittee loses sight of the need to protect children.

Experts from around the country agreed that the law is in dire need of revision but disagreed on how it should be changed.

Carol Hopkins, who was deputy foreman of the 1992 San Diego County grand jury that criticized how numerous agencies handled the Wade case, said an unintended consequence of CAPTA has been the emergence of a child abuse industry more interested in perpetuating itself than in protecting children.

She called for more uniform training of child protection workers, who she said are given too much latitude in deciding families' futures. She also called for eliminating federal funding for child abuse-prevention conferences and advocacy groups and capping funding for foster care so that states will have more incentive to pay for family preservation programs. However, Betty Spivak, who directs the pediatric intensive-care unit at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn., criticized the San Diego grand jury report for implying that protecting families is more important than protecting children.

Spivak said no changes should be made that would reduce requirements for reporting or investigating child abuse.

Credit: Copley News Service