A child needs to be questioned in a way that does NOT “suggest” the truth to him/her. Some kids are too young to explain things, or even to understand what they are being asked. When my husband was a teacher in the PS system, an emotionally-disturbed child accused him of abuse (not molestation). She had climbed on a chair and was rocking back and forth and it tipped, all in the space of a second or two. He caught her just as she began to fall, and sat her down firmly in her seat with a stern admonition to NOT get up again. She told her parents that he shoved her down and hit her, and a report was filed against him at school.
VERY fortunately his assistants were present and witnessed the entire incident, and stated unequivocally that he had saved her from injury, and did not shove or harm her in any way. However, the otherclassmates, many of whom were non-verbal in this special education class, “stated” (meaning they were spoonfed the question and answer) that he HAD pushed her. I don’t know how kids who cannot speak at all could make such a verbal assertion, but that being said, the very next day, the extremely embarrassed parents who filed the complaint, acknowledged that their daughter finally admitted to them that she made the shoving story up, because she wanted to go to a different class where she had been the previous year, and thought if she said something bad about her present teacher, they would move her out.
Now, my husband was cleared of any scintilla of suspicion of wrongdoing, but it remained in his file that an accusation has been made, albeit that it was dismissed as without any foundation. Still, it is like sending something into Cyberspace -it is there forever.