cover image Unpardonable Sins

Unpardonable Sins

Robert McQueeney. New Horizon Press, $21.95 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-88282-068-2

In 1986, during a bitter divorce case with his second wife, the mother of his two children, McQueeney was accused of having molested his four-year-old son. His wife had grown up in a broken home; after the divorce she married a law officer who brainwashed the children to hate their biological father and to lie about him. Added to the mix was a social worker who claimed to have investigated some 100 child abuse cases and never found a child to be untruthful. After a two-and-a-half-year ordeal, McQueeney was found not guilty, and in 1991 he was granted joint custody of his children, Keefe and Wendy. Vacon, who covered the story for the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, was killed in an auto accident in 1990; his widow and ex-colleagues completed this excellent account. (May)