MARC details
| 000 -LEADER |
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| fixed length control field |
05247nam a22003017a 4500 |
| 005 - DATE AND TIME OF LATEST TRANSACTION |
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| control field |
20250625151529.0 |
| 008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION |
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| fixed length control field |
200612s2020 ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d |
| 040 ## - CATALOGING SOURCE |
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| Original cataloging agency |
AFVC |
| 100 ## - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME |
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| Personal name |
Stolzenberg, Stacia N. |
| 9 (RLIN) |
9179 |
| 245 ## - TITLE STATEMENT |
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| Title |
Children’s allegations of sexual abuse in criminal trials : |
| Remainder of title |
assessing defense attacks on credibility and identifying effective prosecution methods |
| Statement of responsibility, etc |
Stacia N. Stolzenberg |
| 260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (IMPRINT) |
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| Name of publisher, distributor, etc |
NCJRS, |
| Date of publication, distribution, etc |
2020 |
| 300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION |
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| Extent |
electronic document (35 pages) ; PDF file |
| 500 ## - GENERAL NOTE |
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| General note |
Available April 2020 |
| 500 ## - GENERAL NOTE |
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| General note |
This resource has not been published by the U.S. Department of<br/>Justice. This resource is being made publically available through the Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Document number: 254627 |
| 520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC. |
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| Summary, etc |
Due to delays in reporting, lacking witnesses, and infrequent medical and physical<br/>evidence, in criminal investigations of alleged child sexual abuse (CSA), children’s reports of abuse become central to determining whether a crime occurred. While researchers acknowledge that developmental vulnerabilities make children particularly susceptible to courtroom questioning, potentially influencing the reliability and validity of their in-court reports, little attention has been paid to how children are questioned in-court. Only one previous dataset, collected on older cases, can speak to questioning practices in the United States. This was the purpose of the present project: to examine how attorneys establish and attack children’s credibility. In addition, we were interested in assessing how attorneys would phrase questions,<br/>how children would respond, and whether questioning practices would exhibit developmental sensitivity.<br/><br/>Collecting cases prosecuted between 2005 and 2015 in Maricopa County, Arizona, we examined transcripts of 134 minors (5-17-year-olds) testifying about alleged child sexual abuse in criminal trials. The majority of cases involved allegations against a familiar, if not familial, adult. Children commonly alleged repeated abuse. All question and answer pairs were coded for whether questions assessed three areas of credibility: suggestibility and honesty, plausibility, and consistency. In addition, all question and answer pairs were systematically coded for the linguistic form of each attorney question and each child’s subsequent response.<br/><br/>Consistency concerns seemed to be embedded in nearly all questions in some capacity, representing 79% of prosecutor questions and 89% of defense questions. In addition, prosecutors devoted more time to establishing plausibility than did the defense, at the expense of addressing suggestibility and honesty, to which the defense gave proportionally more attention. Prosecutors also asked the fewest credibility questions of the youngest children, while defense attorneys did<br/>not differ in the proportion of credibility questions by the age of the child. Closed-ended questions accounted for three-out-of-four attorney questions; while children provided elaborative responses to open questions, they provided unleaborative responses to closed-ended questions. We found that declarative questions, or statements posed as questions (e.g. “He hit you?”) were common, representing 21% of overall questions, and indirect yes/no questions (e.g. “Do you remember if he hit you?”) were common, describing 11% of all questions asked. Children<br/>provided the most unelaborative and fewest elaborative responses to declarative questions, and the most non-substantive responses to indirect yes/no questions, when compared to other closedended questions. While prosecutors were more likely to ask open-questions, and less likely to ask suggestive questions, when compared to the defense, they had similar rates of closed-ended questions (including declarative and indirect yes/no questions). There were few differences in<br/>questioning practices, or response patterns, based on the age of the child.<br/><br/>Our data demonstrate that declarative and indirect yes/no questions produce problematic response patterns. In addition, the issues of consistency, or inconsistency, dominate in courtroom investigations of CSA, whereas issues of suggestive influence, honesty, and plausibility receive significantly less attention. Furthermore, according to the kinds of credibility questions observed,<br/>children may not be developmentally mature enough to answer the questions asked of them - a tactic that may in itself be undermining credibility, particularly by the defense. Researchers should work alongside prosecuting attorneys to develop effective training methods, as little is known about how attorneys learn how to question children in these cases. (Author's abstract). Record #6692 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
121 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
CHILDREN |
| 9 (RLIN) |
127 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
COURTS |
| 9 (RLIN) |
162 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
CRIMINAL JUSTICE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
167 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
DISCLOSURE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
199 |
| 650 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
EVIDENCE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
237 |
| 650 #0 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
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| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
VICTIMS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
6716 |
| 650 #0 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--TOPICAL TERM |
|---|
| Topical term or geographic name as entry element |
YOUNG PEOPLE |
| 9 (RLIN) |
660 |
| 651 ## - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--GEOGRAPHIC NAME |
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| Geographic name |
INTERNATIONAL |
| 9 (RLIN) |
3624 |
| 651 #4 - SUBJECT ADDED ENTRY--GEOGRAPHIC NAME |
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| Geographic name |
UNITED STATES |
| 9 (RLIN) |
2646 |
| 856 ## - ELECTRONIC LOCATION AND ACCESS |
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| Uniform Resource Identifier |
<a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254627.pdf?utm_content=default&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery">https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/254627.pdf?utm_content=default&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery</a> |
| 942 ## - ADDED ENTRY ELEMENTS (KOHA) |
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| Source of classification or shelving scheme |
Dewey Decimal Classification |
| Koha item type |
Report |
