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This State Bar of Arizona handout examines testimony about children’s responses and behavior in child sexual abuse cases. It surveys issues including disclosure timing, changing accounts, continued contact, interviewing practices, possible confounds, confirmation bias, and research relevant to evaluating competing explanations.
This article explains discriminant validity in research on counterintuitive behavior by asking whether reported reactions distinguish true assaults from false or unproven claims. It uses diagnostic sensitivity and specificity to frame that limitation, then reviews military case-disposition data and research on false-report classification, emphasizing that unproven cases are not equivalent to false reports.
This article examines an expert’s testimony in a trial involving two male friends who remained friends after a single sexual encounter, and evaluates the four studies offered to support the opinion. It highlights mismatches between those studies and the case, including differences in participants, prior relationship, and circumstances, and recommends reviewing the full research and its limits before testimony.
This article explains how confirmation bias can shape an expert’s interpretation of a sexual assault allegation and cautions against treating counterintuitive behavior as proof that an assault occurred. It describes how studies relying on unblinded interviews and self-reports may overlook alternative explanations, then offers questions for examining whether researchers tested competing hypotheses and contradictory evidence.
This resource examines factors that may complicate general claims about how a person behaves after sexual assault, including mental health, substance use, memory effects, and personal or cultural differences. It summarizes cited research and supplies questions for assessing whether an expert considered competing explanations, study populations, gender and orientation, and the possible effects of alcohol in the case at issue.
This brief research summary describes categories of motives reported in studies of intentional false allegations, drawing on work by Kanin, a Bavarian police study, an FBI bulletin, and a later review. The listed categories include alibis, revenge, attention or sympathy, personal and relationship conflicts, and other circumstances, while the resource encourages case-specific examination of whether proposed explanations account for alternative motives.
This short paper argues that proposed symptoms of counterintuitive behavior may be too broad to test scientifically because the same behaviors can occur in people who have not experienced sexual assault. It connects that concern to falsifiability under Daubert and questions whether research has adequately distinguished true, unfounded, and false reports when evaluating such claims.
This resource presents an argument about how research on child sexual abuse allegations should distinguish substantiated, unsubstantiated, and false claims, and compiles studies and excerpts on those categories. It discusses difficulties in establishing ground truth and summarizes a multisite extended-evaluation study, including its unresolved cases and stated limitations.
The resource explains sensitivity and specificity to question whether behavioral symptoms can distinguish confirmed sexual abuse from other explanations or unproven reports. It reviews cited research on substantiation and allegation outcomes, then frames these issues as questions for evaluating expert testimony and the limits of symptom-based conclusions.
The resource discusses internal, external, cultural, and gender factors that may affect a child’s behavior after alleged sexual assault. It highlights possible influences such as prior mental health conditions, family or treatment context, social support, assault characteristics, and cultural differences, and asks how research or testimony accounts for them.
