my brother has just been arrested in oregon on charges of a sexual nature. where can we get some advice?

Your question is completely devoid of any facts: where, what time of day, under what circumstances, who was nearby among other questions. Nevertheless, I'll do my best to provide a very general explanation.

In today's CAPTA world, the presumption is that he did it. This triggers flows of money from the fed to the state for child protection. Grant money provides the assistance of groups of lawyers for children where these lawyers always believe and agree with the child. Other grant money and an endless stream of court referrals provides mental health professionals (psychologists, social workers, therapists) who will write reports that the man is a sexual predator. A foster care agency run by a local faith based group will side with the child and their psychologists will validate that the child was sexually abused. Your own privately retained lawyer is subject to all of the court's rules as well as the bar committee of the local appellate court. This means that your attorney is under the gun to follow the court's guidance and if necessary, work against you by convincing you to accept a plea or a stipulation settling the case.

The judge will ordinarily preclude the father's case nearly completely. Motions for a substitute psychologist will be denied on the ground that another evaluation will stress the child. In reality, the state's group of professionals do not want outside scrutiny from privately retained, independent professionals. The court's professionals will not present their curricular vitae on the stand and their reports will typically be written long after the child has been deemed abused. This is a deliberate delay to build a case against the adult.

Slick judges will speed through direct examination of its appointed psychologist. Your lawyer may miss the hearsay based report and the one sided view against the adult. This type of witness requires you retain a psychologist expert who can view these goings on and see through the ruse.

Any trial will feature sustained objections against the adult and overruled objections in favor of the state actors. Therapy will be the outcome and the child may be placed in foster care all this time.

Even of concurrent criminal allegations are dismissed for lack of evidence, the family court proceeding continues because the fact finding stage is based upon a preponderance of the evidence and the disposition is based upon clear and convincing evidence. This is why the child is removed and the case is manufactured: the heightened second step is achieved through the continued intervention of the court's professionals.

In extreme cases, the judge will ban all contact between the family and the child, and then enter "findings" and then later appoint a psychologist to do an evaluation. The results of that report are exclusively designed to act against the adult.

The child may never have been touched yet none of this matters. The proceedings are always the same and the outcome is always the same.

As to the criminal front, criminal courts do not generate state funding from CAPTA so you can expect different results. The child may be videotaped and then later evaluated for various mental health issues. A psychologist can usually discern sexual abuse whether of a short term or long term. The psychologist's expert testimony will typically carry the case, so a careful cross examination as the methodology used in his report is a sound defense strategy. Remember that across all fifty states, a criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt and a shaky psychologist who perhaps saw the child for only fifteen minutes will provide doubt.

In your case, if I knew even a few of the facts, I could predict with some certainty how the case will proceed.

Otherwise, good luck.