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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 United States Department of Justice bulletin consolidates guidance on conducting forensic interviews with children in alleged abuse cases. It discusses interview purpose, preparation, rapport, open-ended questions, interview stages, and team coordination, while emphasizing that children’s accounts and needs differ and that repeated or overly focused questioning can create problems.
Children’s suggestibility can be shaped by factors such as age, prior knowledge, interviewer bias, repeated questions, and exposure to misinformation. The resource reviews research on children’s memory and forensic interviews, including findings that changing details of an experienced event may differ from planting or erasing an event memory.
Principles of child forensic interviewing include preparation, developmentally appropriate practice, and careful attention to how information is elicited. The DOJ bulletin summarizes interview stages and cautions about repeated or duplicative questioning, while a research review addresses assumptions about children’s testimonial accuracy.
The cited research examines age-discordant sexual relationships involving adolescent girls and adult men. One study considers girls’ recalled explanations for entering these relationships and contextual factors in the United States, while related research considers sexual motives, relationship settings, and links with sexual risk-taking.
The study investigates how evaluator attitudes may contribute to bias in forensic child sexual abuse assessments. It surveyed child-maltreatment professionals and identified attitudes related to sensitivity, specificity, and skepticism toward children’s reports, finding that these attitudes helped explain differing credibility judgments across decision exercises.
The collection reviews research on children’s testimony and the factors that shape its reliability. The studies address children’s eyewitness accounts, memory, suggestibility, interviewing, and credibility, including factors associated with false allegations and jurors’ responses to education about child sexual abuse misconceptions in trial settings.
Research on delayed disclosure describes disclosure as potentially unfolding over time rather than occurring in a single, immediate account. The resource reviews studies of children’s disclosure patterns, including findings on prior disclosure, age, interview context, tentative statements, denial, recantation, and later reaffirmation.
Conduct disorder is described as a pattern of behavior that violates others’ rights or age-appropriate rules and norms. The resource outlines diagnostic symptoms and onset, associated risk factors and comorbid conditions, effects on functioning, differential diagnosis, and treatment approaches.
False allegations of child abuse are considered through a compilation of studies and clinical literature. The material reviews reported frequency estimates and exonerations, then presents a clinical typology covering allegations in custody disputes, psychological disturbance, conscious manipulation, and suggestive or other iatrogenic influences.
