California IN BRIEF : SAN DIEGO : Father Wrongly Accused in Sex Case

A 10-year-old girl was reunited with her family after a two-year separation that followed her father being wrongly accused of raping her. The family’s ordeal began in 1989 when the girl was sexually assaulted as the family slept in their apartment at a Navy complex. For more than a year, she insisted to police, doctors and social workers that a stranger entered through the window, took her outside, sexually assaulted her and returned her. But authorities focused on her father as the assailant because her story did not fit a pattern for such crimes. The father, who was not identified publicly, was arrested and the girl placed in foster care. The father, a 37-year-old Navy man, was cleared of charges by the district attorney and a Juvenile Court. Juvenile Court Referee Yuri Hoffman apologized to the family “for the pain they have been caused through this horrible process.”