Assessing the reliability of child sex abuse allegations: Protocol for the attorney and forensic practitioner
Child sex abuse allegations commonly arise in criminal prosecutions, child protection matters, and divorce/custody disputes. These allegations are high stakes situations for both children and the accused. This outline provides a framework for assessing the reliability of allegations. It is based on a large evidence based review of the literature. Context—what is the family/relationship context […]
Rind controversy redux: Psychological sequelae of adult-child sexual contact.
Forensic psychologists may be called upon to render opinions concerning psychological harm following adult-child sexual contact. Rind et al. (1998) examined assumed properties of CSA and found that psychological harm is variable. They found that family environment was consistently confounded with CSA, and explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA. CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant […]
Disclosure, denial, delay, recantation, and confirmation in CSA
Despite several years of high quality research in CSA, courts continue to hear that patterns of disclosure, denial, delay, and recantation are (or are not) dispositive of CSA. In their review of these issues in a recent special issue of Memory, London, Ceci, Wright, and Ceci (2008) draw the following conclusions: “We have argued that, […]
Psychological Experts in CSA Trials
Back in September 2011, I mused about how helpful psychological experts are in CSA trials. Testimony will inevitably have to address developments in several areas, including patterns of disclosure, memory, suggestibility, quality of forensic interviews, and error rates of CSA decision-making, highly technical stuff. The work of Bruck and Ceci has remained authoritative for almost […]