wait im confused here. Did the daughters not deny it to begin with? were they too young to remember if they were raped? why didnt they just say they werent? why they looked relieved like they didnt know if they were rape or not?
It sounds to me like they were young enough that Mom could've twisted seemingly innocent situations into things they were not.
I work in this field and have conducted the interviews from both the children and the parents. A vindictive parent will twist something like a parent giving their 2 year old a bath into something that it wasn't a parent tucking their child into bed or taking a nap or sleeping with their young child into something it wasn't.
When this happens usually a parent drills into a young child's mind what happened or may have happened. You ask a child 15 different ways "did he hurt you?" "Did he touch you?" "Did he give you a bath?" "Did he touch your face?" "Did he touch your arm?" "Did he touch you there?" Especially when you know what you are leading them to or want them to say or confirm, just waiting for that "gotcha" eventually the child will come around. "So he didn't touch your arm? No? So when you were in the bath your arm didn't get washed? Did you wash your arm? Did you put soap on it or did he? Oh, so he did touch your arm when he put soap on it and washed it."
Case in point. I interviewed separated parents. She says her son told her that dad 'took' his little sister in the room and 'locked' the door and wouldn't let him in because they took a nap.
Dad said it was nap time for both of the kids but the son who was 4 wanted to finish watching his show or playing with toys meanwhile the 1.5- 2 year old was getting settled down for a nap. The 4 year old was talking too loud and clicking and clacking his toys too loudly for the little one to sleep so he sent his son to his room where he could continue to watch the show or play while the little one took a nap in dads bed.
Now the issue was the boy didn't want to be in his room alone (little kid being afraid of being alone) but since he was talking and playing too loudly dad said he couldn't come into the room where his sister was napping. The boy was upset that he had to be alone and couldn't be in the room.
So when he went back to moms, either she asked or he tells Dad wouldnt let me in the room while they napped. And Mom took that as an opportunity to if not intentionally harm the father, to at least have an investigation and see if their was any form of abuse.
Interviews with the kids corroborated that no sexual misconduct or any sort of abuse took place. However the children were removed from fathers custody for like 2 weeks while the investigation was going on.