In cases of abuse I wonder if anyone here has read up about the “pre-school” cases of the 80’s where in a whole bunch of cases men (and in some instances women) were convicted of child abuse.
In all these cases eventually it was proven that the accused were innocent, in many cases they had already benn sitting in Jail for years.
In fact the near total exoneration of virtually all the accussed and the open demonstration of numerous cases where children did not say the actual truth plaid a real role in the child abuse accusation being laid to rest for a lon. long time.
Look the cases up some of them are pretty famous.
As for Halacha.
There is something called “kula d’loh posuk” in such cases Beis Din has the ability to require that a “suspect” no longer deal with a specific women or children ect… as a precaution even though they may not punish since they do not have enough evidence to warrant a punishment.