Legal Question in Criminal Law in Florida

I am married and we have a 17-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son. We live in a very small community ( < 10,000), so most everybody -- especially those who have children -- knows everyone else one way or the other.

My wife fell ill about 14 years ago and a result I have worked from home ever since. Here's an example why this is necessary: My wife had a pain pump implanted this past December. In March, it malfunctioned, causing a change in the pressure in her spinal column in brain. That caused a cyst in her brain to rupture, causing chemical meningitis. She lost her vision, was in the hospital for three weeks and nearly died. While there, she had multiple surgeries and ended up with several infections, the worst of which was in her spinal column and brain. After she was released, she had a PICC line directly into her heart so she could receive several weeks of IV antibiotics.

Because of these kinds of struggles, we decided to keep our children at home where they attend a private virtual school where they are both straight-A students. Though we are all together in the home every day, we all have active social lives outside of the medical issues that pop up. For instance, our son participates in a theater troupe that executes numerous, time-consuming productions throughout the year and also takes guitar lessons. Meanwhile, our daughter has played piano for 13 years, earned her freshman degree in social music, plays complex classical pieces, performs publicly and competes in piano competitions as well as annual training camps that involve master classes with some of the most sought-after professors in the world. In addition, she also takes guitar lessons, works part-time and volunteers her time. Also, until recently, she was part of a girl's social service organization that was extremely active in the community. As a family, we often go out to dinner, shop in the community and so forth, and my wife, when she can, participates in multiple organizations in the community. The point is that we are anything but hermits, which people often think when you say that you work at home and that your children attend virtual school. We likely do as much or more than the average family. Lastly, because my wife requires care, we have a person who is in our home for about 20 hours every week; she is there every day but Sunday. Her hours vary from day-to-day depending on my wife's needs, so there's little predictability to when she shows up and when she'll leave.

Now to the meat of this:

This past Saturday, a DCF investigator and sheriff's deputy showed up on our doorstep. They said a report had been called in claiming that I have been sexually abusing my daughter. After interviewing everyone, they took my daughter to the DCF office to conduct a more intensive interview and then placed her with a friend of our family (the same person who also works for us).

Every person involved in this has been flabbergasted. Our daughter has never given any indication whatsoever of any problems and never suggested anything was wrong to anyone -- her mother, the caretaker, teachers, etc. Moreover, until this point, my daughter and I have had an incredibly close relationship that most parents are never able to have. She and I were nearly inseparable, as a matter of fact.

After the shock wore off, I did some investigating and found some very disturbing things, but first a small amount of background.

Our daughter began her periods when she was 11. From the very first one, she was regular and had no abnormalities, which always surprised us because girls generally are not regular initially. Often a teen girl's periods will vary in length, skip months and be different every month as far as flow, pain, etc. However, last summer, her periods suddenly began causing her problems. She started having more pain and flow some months, she would have her period and then have it again two weeks later and so on. Then, in October, I noticed her performance in school was slipping. I didn't think too much of it initially because she had just started a new set of much more difficult classes. We discussed the problem nearly every day and I encouraged her and helped her to try and get back on track. However, she continued to slip further and further to the point that she was nearly going to fail out. At this point, I knew that something else must be going on so I started checking phone records, Internet records and so forth. What I found is that she had been seeking out multiple boys ( > 5) with whom she had varying degrees of relationships that ranged from just chatting to intense sexual interludes via Skype video. These involved everything from exposing themselves to each other to mutual masturbation, including the use of phalic objects for penetration.

When I found out, I of course locked down everything and took away all her devices. I confronted her about the situation and this is what she told me: She said she is angry at her mother for being sick her entire life and that she feels like she's been denied living a "normal" life because of her mother's illness. Further, she is angry at her mother because her mother "had" me and didn't "deserve" me. Finally, she stated that she "wanted" me and wanted to have the relationship with me that her mother had. She also said she felt as if her hormones were out of whack and that she wanted to have sex "all the time." She claimed that she loved me, wanted to be intimate with me and had been unable to deal with those feelings so as a result she acted out. We talked and talked and talked through all of this. I reassured her that I loved her, that I was her dad, that I did not look down on her, that I understood how confused she was and so forth. I tried to help her understand that hormones can be a very powerful thing. I also explained to her that, even though she had been socially active, she had never really pursued any kind of male relationship outside the house and encouraged her to do so. I explained that have "relationships" in cyberspace is just fantasy and that she needed to have a real relationship. Unfortunately, nothing ever panned out of that -- that his, she never went on any dates, etc. She simply continued to stay very, very close to me.

As the months passed, she pulled her grades back up, earned back trust and we thought everything had turned around fine. Then, for pretty much all of 2014, we have been dealing with her mom being in and out of the hospital, having the surgeries, nearly dying (again) and so forth. It has been very intense.

After our daughter was placed with our friend, I still left the home. I just couldn't be there. As a result, my wife had to go live with her parents in Georgia because she cannot take care of herself or our son. As I mentioned previously, by Sunday night, I started investigating and found that she had kept in contact with one of the boys from October and that the two of them had "fallen in love," continued to engage sexually by video (in some very involved and intense and perverse sessions from what I found out) and so on. Their plan was for her to leave the house when she turned 18 (in November, about five months from now) so that they could be together (he lives on the West Coast and we are on the East Coast). However, to manipulate this boy, she began to tell him that she was physically, mentally and sexually abused by me, her father. She claimed that I "made" her take the role of her mother, since her mother was no longer "available" to me. Then, about two weeks ago, my daughter started suggested that the abuse was too much too handle. This caused the boy to become more and more concerned since he obviously was only hearing and knowing the information she fed him (I actually spoke to this boy for two hours and he confessed to everything). Finally, she cut off contact with him to induce him to think that something had happened to her. After a day or so, he took it upon himself to make a report to DCF because he "thought" he was "rescuing" the "love of his life."

Our daughter stayed on the phone with this boy almost non-stop the entire weekend while this was going on. They continued to make their plans, profess their love, etc. until I found and out off her phone. I also had her caretaker remove all electronics (iPad and computer) from her possession. Then, in the middle of the night, my daughter stole phones from various people in the house where she is staying and continued to be in contact with this boy. Finally, the caretaker has hidden all means of communications.

At this point, NO ONE from DCF has talked to me AT ALL since Saturday and no one will return my messages. I have filed a complaint through the main DCF office in Tallahassee. They have stayed in contact with my wife and the caretaker but are very ambiguous. We have provided them all the background and extraneous details about our daughters behavior and how the boy has acknowledged that the two of them plotted this entire thing.

So, my question is this: I know that often the "wheels of justice" will go forward, regardless of the cooperation of the victim, especially a child, and so forth because they believe in erring on the side of caution where a child is involved. But I mean, our daughter is nearly 18 and has clearly demonstrated unreasonable, irrational behavior. There is not a shred of any physical evidence because nothing every happened and our daughter has been unable to communicate clear details about any of the alleged abuse. Her accusations have boiled down to "he touched me inappropriately" and so forth, but when asked specific questions about things I may have done or to describe things, etc. she is unable to provide details. What are the odds here that this will go much further? I mean, will I actually be charged with anything? Or is DCF going to go the counseling route? Also, if I am charged -- I have left the state to go be with friends because I just had no where else to go -- do I have to go back or can I fight it from here?

There is not a single person involved in this case (friends, family, etc.) who believes my daughter. Every single person knows that I have done nothing but sacrifice to make sure that my children had all the love and security they could possibly have, especially given the circumstances with their mother.

One last tidbit: Here's the irony. I have had Type I Diabetes since 2001. Because I've spent most of my time looking after my wife, I have very often not taken care of myself. As a result, the disease has ravaged my body in so many ways -- in particular, I have been impotent for the last 8 years. Further, my testosterone levels don't even exist, so I don't even have the urge to have sex any more. Finally, I had a heart attack and congestive heart failure about 18 months ago and those events have left me in atrial fibrillation. My heart has about 20% pumping capacity. I can barely get up a flight of stairs much less have sex -- even if I could get and/or maintain an erection. Obviously, I have almost a dozen doctors who can testify to all these facts.

This is just nuts.

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