Assessing children’s credibility in courtroom investigations of alleged child sexual abuse: suggestibility, plausibility, and consistency

As children’s testimonies of child sexual abuse (CSA) often lack concrete evidence to corroborate a child’s claims, attorneys devote a substantial amount of time to establishing a child as credible during the course of a trial. Examining 134 CSA victim testimonies for children aged 5-17 (M = 12.48,...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Denne, Emily (Author) ; Sullivan, Colleen (Author) ; Ernest, Kyle (Author) ; Stolzenberg, Stacia N. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2020
In: Child maltreatment
Year: 2020, Volume: 25, Issue: 2, Pages: 224-232
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Keywords:
Child Sexual Abuse
children’s credibility
children’s testimony
children’s consistency
Description
Summary:As children’s testimonies of child sexual abuse (CSA) often lack concrete evidence to corroborate a child’s claims, attorneys devote a substantial amount of time to establishing a child as credible during the course of a trial. Examining 134 CSA victim testimonies for children aged 5-17 (M = 12.48, SD = 3.34; 90% female), we explored how attorneys assess child credibility through specifically targeting children’s suggestibility/honesty, plausibility, and consistency. Results revealed that while prosecutors examine plausibility more often to establish credibility, defense attorneys focus their assessments on suggestibility/honesty and potential inconsistency. However, both attorneys asked many more questions about children’s consistency than any other area of potential credibility. Furthermore, while prosecutors ask proportionally more credibility-challenging questions of older children, the defense do not. These results suggest that prosecutors may be missing an opportunity to establish children as honest and consistent and elucidate a need to train attorneys on the implications of children’s inconsistencies, suggestibility, and plausible abuse dynamics.
Item Description:Literaturverzeichnis
ISSN:1552-6119
DOI:10.1177/1077559519872825