SC Gay Man Charged With Filing False Report
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ANDERSON, SC – On July 16, Dwight Clark Ables, 18, filed two police reports against his father, alleging that the 49-year-old man had yelled, cursed, swung a baseball bat, prayed and tried to “cast the demon of homosexuality out of him,” according to the teen’s version of events in the incident report taken by Deputy SC Weymouth.
On July 22, the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department charged the 18-year-old Ables with filing a false police report. A press release from the department’s Public Information Officer, Suzanne Griffin stated, “After conducting a thorough investigation and the lack of any forensic evidence to support the allegation of the assault, Dwight Clark Ables has been charged with one count of Filing a False Police report.” Ables later turned himself in.
OIA was able to speak with Jeremy Younginer, who spent several days attempting to help Ables after he filed charges against his father. Younginer got involved because he heard the story from friends in the area, and called the Sheriff’s Department, asking them to forward his contact information to Ables.
Ables eventually called Younginer. “The kid finally called me. We went out and ate with him and tried to figure out more about his situation and what he was dealing with and what he needed. And a lot of things weren’t adding up right, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt,” Younginer said.
Younginer said that Ables’ story kept breaking up, and that he would spend a lot of time trying to “remember” what had happened. Younginer also pointed out that Ables claimed he was returning from Atlanta Pride, which occurred the weekend of July 4th, when his father allegedly assaulted him. But Ables had always claimed the alleged assault had occurred on July 16th, more than 10 days later. “I never have confronted this kid on this issue, because I was hoping that he would come to me, and I think he was supposed to be on medication for bipolar [disorder] and wasn’t taking it, the whole time that I was dealing with him, and before, and so in his mind, I’m almost convinced that he thinks all of this happened,” Younginer said.
OIA also spoke to Dwight Ables on July 22nd, when he said, “The cop just told me that if my dad doesn’t start telling the truth, they’re going to make him take a polygraph test.”
Younginer said that the polygraph was offered to Dwight Ables, not to his father, and that after the issue of the lie detector test came up, Dwight began acting as if he wanted to reverse the report he had filed against his father.
Ables’ story became less believable as time passed. Younginer said, “When he went up to the Sheriff’s Department, he called me and told me that the Sheriff’s Department was going to charge him $65 to go with him to his parents’ house and pick his stuff up. And that’s when I knew something was fishy. And right after that, they offered him a ‘truth test.’”
When Younginer found out that the Sheriff’s Department had issued a warrant for Ables, he (and others who had been caring for Ables) convinced Ables to turn himself in. “He was really upset and thought everybody was after him. I think he thought everybody was mad at him and attacking him, and that something bad could happen to him. I’m sure he was pretty depressed. That was my biggest fear, that he would do something bad to himself because he realized how much trouble he was in,” Younginer said. “Not that he didn’t cause us a lot of trouble,” Younginer continued.
Through all of this, Younginer says the thing he is most impressed by is how the Anderson County Sheriff’s Department handled the situation. “They were phenomenal. They were totally open to working with gay groups to figure out what happened. They didn’t take sides; there was no favoritism. There were facts. It didn’t matter if it was gay, straight, whatever. Nothing about this kid being gay affected the investigation or how they handled it. It’s sad to say I was shocked, but I was,” he said.
Younginer, like others, fears that if something like this happens again, Aesop’s tale of the boy who cried wolf may become apparent. “Even though this was a boy who cried wolf situation, it shouldn’t affect the next time something like this happens,” Younginer said.
Upstate South Carolina’s gay community is not “throwing him under a bus, either,” Younginer said. “Nobody’s mad, everybody was upset, but everybody still wants to help him because they realize that it’s not that he caused us that big of a problem, but the fact that he was screaming for help in the wrong way, he obviously still needs help,” he continued.
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