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Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse

Myths and misconceptions surrounding the nature of sexual assault play a role in shaping the perceptions of victims as credible and perpetrators as culpable. Defense attorneys often capitalize on myths in court as an element of their defense strategies. Researchers have established that myths about...

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Autores principales: Denne, Emily, George, Suzanne St., Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10619182/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37530046
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08862605231189512
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author Denne, Emily
George, Suzanne St.
Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
author_facet Denne, Emily
George, Suzanne St.
Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
author_sort Denne, Emily
collection PubMed
description Myths and misconceptions surrounding the nature of sexual assault play a role in shaping the perceptions of victims as credible and perpetrators as culpable. Defense attorneys often capitalize on myths in court as an element of their defense strategies. Researchers have established that myths about both rape generally, and child sexual abuse (CSA) specifically, appear with regularity in criminal trials of children who have made an allegation of CSA. Yet no work has systematically and quantitatively examined the impact of a child’s age on the probability that attorneys will ask a myth-consistent question in criminal trials of CSA. In the current study, we examine 6,384 lines of questioning across 134 criminal trials of CSA to assess whether defense attorneys employ developmentally sensitive strategies when asking children questions that draw upon myths about sexual violence (CSA myths: disclosure myths, extent of harm, a child’s positive relationship with their perpetrator, and the presence of witnesses; Rape myths: force and resistance, motives to lie, victim precipitation, and character issues). We found that attorneys did not vary their use of CSA myths by the age of the child. However, the probability that a child would receive a rape myth-consistent line of questioning, increased with a child’s age. This work suggests that attorneys are, at times, strategic in their use of myths and employ these adult rape myths in ways that are plausible, purposeful, and likely impactful. The strategic use of these questions may acknowledge young children’s limited development but may place too great a demand on older children’s developmental capacities. Prosecutors should be prepared to counterquestion these myths in redirect examination.
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spelling pubmed-106191822023-11-02 Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse Denne, Emily George, Suzanne St. Stolzenberg, Stacia N. J Interpers Violence Original Articles Myths and misconceptions surrounding the nature of sexual assault play a role in shaping the perceptions of victims as credible and perpetrators as culpable. Defense attorneys often capitalize on myths in court as an element of their defense strategies. Researchers have established that myths about both rape generally, and child sexual abuse (CSA) specifically, appear with regularity in criminal trials of children who have made an allegation of CSA. Yet no work has systematically and quantitatively examined the impact of a child’s age on the probability that attorneys will ask a myth-consistent question in criminal trials of CSA. In the current study, we examine 6,384 lines of questioning across 134 criminal trials of CSA to assess whether defense attorneys employ developmentally sensitive strategies when asking children questions that draw upon myths about sexual violence (CSA myths: disclosure myths, extent of harm, a child’s positive relationship with their perpetrator, and the presence of witnesses; Rape myths: force and resistance, motives to lie, victim precipitation, and character issues). We found that attorneys did not vary their use of CSA myths by the age of the child. However, the probability that a child would receive a rape myth-consistent line of questioning, increased with a child’s age. This work suggests that attorneys are, at times, strategic in their use of myths and employ these adult rape myths in ways that are plausible, purposeful, and likely impactful. The strategic use of these questions may acknowledge young children’s limited development but may place too great a demand on older children’s developmental capacities. Prosecutors should be prepared to counterquestion these myths in redirect examination. SAGE Publications 2023-08-02 /pmc/articles/PMC10619182/ /pubmed/37530046 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08862605231189512 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Articles
Denne, Emily
George, Suzanne St.
Stolzenberg, Stacia N.
Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title_full Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title_fullStr Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title_full_unstemmed Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title_short Developmental Considerations in How Defense Attorneys Employ Child Sexual Abuse and Rape Myths When Questioning Alleged Victims of Child Sexual Abuse
title_sort developmental considerations in how defense attorneys employ child sexual abuse and rape myths when questioning alleged victims of child sexual abuse
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10619182/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37530046
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/08862605231189512
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