Elder Exonerated of Child Sex Charges Just as we Thought

Robert Elder, former council candidate, was apparently falsely accused by a child of sex abuse.

Robert Elder, who ran for city Council here in November 2013 and was charged with felony sexual abuse against a minor the following January, has had all of charges originally filed against him dropped.

"I've been exonerated of all charges," he told the Niagara Falls Reporter over the weekend. "Anything else, you'll need to speak to my attorney, Alan Roscetti."

Elder's council campaign was derailed by a family emergency. His sister became seriously ill with lupus in Florida and he traveled there at the height of the campaign to tend to her.

Elder said his sister is unmarried and has no children, and he is "responsible for making sure she is properly taken care of."

"If you don't take care of a problem in the family, how are you going to take care of the problems with a city?" Elder said at the time.

On Jan. 17 of this year, he was arrested by Niagara County Sheriff's deputies and charged with one count of sexually abusing a minor. He was arraigned in Lewiston Town Court and held in lieu of $5,000 bail. Elder, 34, was accused of having inappropriate sexual contact with a 12-year-old girl who lived in his home. Elder said that he had engaged in horseplay, wrestling with the girl and her brother, and that there was nothing sexual about it.

The girl, a fan of the television program Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show often dealing with children being sexually abused by grownups, made a complaint. Elder was arrested and embarked on what would be a nine month nightmare.

Last week the original charge was dropped. Elder was granted a conditional release on one count of endangering the welfare of a child, and does not have to register as a sex offender.

Despite that, Robert Elder will live the rest of his life under a cloud, a cloud perhaps created by a 12-year-old who watched too much television.

The 16th Century English bishop and writer Joseph Hall once remarked "a reputation, once broken, may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eye on the spot where the crack was."

Nobody knows this better than Robert Elder. He's lived it.

A 12-year-old girl, who apparently was permitted to watch too much adult television, claimed Robert Elder sexually abused her. The DA however did not find her story credible and dropped the sex abuse charges.