childrens eyewitness testimonies
Using young children as witnesses in criminal and civil cases has come under the spotlight in recent years due to an increased awareness of child sexual abuse. Children are now allowed to provide testimony in cases dealing with sexual abuse, where there are only two accounts of reality, that of the child's and that of the alleged perpetrator. Herein lies the major problem with allowing young children to testify in a court of law. Numerous studies have shown that there are weaknesses in children's reporting and memory, thus causing great concern in the legal profession. Also, there are questions concerning the use of suggestibility techniques by interviewers that may sway a child's testimony and may even allow children to create events that may not have occurred at all. Obviously, this is a topic of great concern that has major impacts on the lives of numerous people across the globe and is an issue that we must resolve. There are many concerns to address when discussing this topic and this paper will address several of the issues in order to clarify a few misconceptions. The main issue concerning child testimony and recollection is that of the intervie
Another type of interview bias that is seen in some interviews is the use of anatomically detailed dolls. These dolls are given to children and then they are asked to show the interviewer how they were fondled or touched. Often times, children are asked these specific questions before they even offer any evidence to suggest any abuse had taken place. This often urges children to describe events that never occurred at all simply Guided imagery is another technique used during interviews. This strategy is applied when professionals ask children to remember or pretend if an event occurred and then visualize this event. Often, interviewers ask children to pretend about instances that they believed to happen. Here again children are intimidated and pressured into describing things that may or may not have taken place. vulnerable minds and not push our hypothesis of the alleged events onto the children. If we can control many of the techniques used in the interview process, a child's testimony could be the beginning and the end to a criminal or civil case. The key to controlling these interviewing techniques is training and until we train our professionals who make devastating mistakes with our children, we will always question our children. There should be special cautions taken when relying on children's testimony. Individuals in the legal system often refer to the child's reliability (accuracy of the child's report) and credibility (the believability that one assigns to a witness's testimony) as true measures of determining a child's testimony. An important question is whether a jur
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Approximate Word count = 1079
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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