A Phoenix, Arizona, grandmother, trying to gain child custody of her granddaughter, has been accused of attempting to frame her son on drug charges to gain an advantage in the custody battle. Police arrested the 58-year-old grandmother, accusing her of child abuse for allegedly sending the 9-year-old girl to school one day with a container of cocaine and instructing the granddaughter to falsely state that the drugs belonged to her father.
The grandmother previously had custody of the granddaughter but lost it. She had raised the child for almost her life. Police claim that the grandmother also told the granddaughter to plant some drugs in her father’s car. Her intent was to get her son in legal difficulty so she could regain child custody.
The grandmother has denied these accusations, saying that they are outrageous. In custody battles, sometimes a party will try to show that another person vying for custody is an unfit person to be a parent and take care of a child. Unfortunately, sometimes people do improperly resort to making false accusations against another person for that purpose. When discovered, however, such false accusations clearly can quickly backfire. Whether that occurred here, of course, is not yet known, and will have to be sorted out by a court.
Lawyers who are experienced in handing child custody disputes know how to question or cross examine persons in court to try and arrive at the truth and defend their clients against false accusations. Children, of course, should never be pressured to get directly involved in such child custody battles or be made to feel that they have to “choose sides.”
Source: MyFoxPhoenix.com, “Grandmother arrested in alleged custody battle drug plot” No author given, Oct. 17, 2013
