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Help me clear my friend's name
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
A very good friend of mine has been accused of heavy solvent abuse, which she insists (and I believe) is utter tripe. However, it looks as though she will lose access to her young daughter if we can't prove it. We think evidence (in the form of empty butane cans) has been planted at her home, which she left for domestic reasons.
If it were almost any other type of substance abuse, we'd just go for the usual urine and hair tests, which would conclusively prove that she's clean both now and at the time of the evidence discovery.
But solvents are apparently not tested for by conventional tests. For hair samples that's logical, as solvents are used to clean exterior contamination away, and solvents are in any case a component of many hair-beauty products.
So I'm asking here whether there's any kind of reliable test which can detect solvent abuse, either in the immediate or recent past. If so, we could use that as proof that she is clean, and therefore remove one of the major arguments against her fitness as a parent.
Failing that, there might be some statistical evidence we can build up which could show that the level of alleged abuse is unlikely. We think the planted evidence shows that several hundred pounds' worth of butane cans were involved over a fairly short time period, and there is some suggestion of evidence of longer-term abuse, so some idea of how unlikely her survival (or lack of serious side-effects) would have been under those circumstances would be useful. The goal here would be to discredit the accuser and the planted evidence.
A real "smoking gun" would of course be to find the accuser's fingerprints on the cans, but not my friend's! But I don't know whether we have the opportunity for that any more.
But thinking along those lines, how likely is it that a retailer would make a note of a large purchase of butane cans by an adult - and how likely is it that we could identify that retailer?
All this is happening in a medium-sized town somewhere in Yorkshire.
If it were almost any other type of substance abuse, we'd just go for the usual urine and hair tests, which would conclusively prove that she's clean both now and at the time of the evidence discovery.
But solvents are apparently not tested for by conventional tests. For hair samples that's logical, as solvents are used to clean exterior contamination away, and solvents are in any case a component of many hair-beauty products.
So I'm asking here whether there's any kind of reliable test which can detect solvent abuse, either in the immediate or recent past. If so, we could use that as proof that she is clean, and therefore remove one of the major arguments against her fitness as a parent.
Failing that, there might be some statistical evidence we can build up which could show that the level of alleged abuse is unlikely. We think the planted evidence shows that several hundred pounds' worth of butane cans were involved over a fairly short time period, and there is some suggestion of evidence of longer-term abuse, so some idea of how unlikely her survival (or lack of serious side-effects) would have been under those circumstances would be useful. The goal here would be to discredit the accuser and the planted evidence.
A real "smoking gun" would of course be to find the accuser's fingerprints on the cans, but not my friend's! But I don't know whether we have the opportunity for that any more.
But thinking along those lines, how likely is it that a retailer would make a note of a large purchase of butane cans by an adult - and how likely is it that we could identify that retailer?
All this is happening in a medium-sized town somewhere in Yorkshire.
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The trouble is that what the police see at the moment is a woman with poor education, no sense of balance, and a lot of butane cans that were found lying around and outside her house. Would you believe her story, if you didn't know the circumstances?
Her lack of education is a result of childhood problems partly caused by the accuser, and her lack of balance is caused by an illness (and the treatment for it) that she went through about a decade ago. The police probably don't realise this, so they have taken the accuser's story at face value.
That's why I'm asking for ways to provide some kind of concrete evidence to support her story. The police are much more likely to listen to it if we can show evidence to counter the existing evidence.
The good news is that my friend is - finally - seeking legal advice on the subject. This in itself is not easy for her to do, as she has developed a distrust of The System.