childrens eyewitness testimonies

Children's Eyewitness Testimonies M. Bruning 2 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 …

…these young M. Bruning 6 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.