Prosecuting Child Sexual Abuse The Importance of Evidence Type

Corroborating evidence has been associated with a decrease in children’s distress during the court process, yet few studies have empirically examined the impact of evidence type on prosecution rates. This study examined the types of evidence and whether charges were filed in a sample of child sexual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCrime and delinquency Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 436 - 454
Main Authors Walsh, Wendy A., Jones, Lisa M., Cross, Theodore P., Lippert, Tonya
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.07.2010
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Child Abuse
Child abuse & neglect
Confession
Court Litigation
Crime
Criminal justice
Criminals
Disclosure
Empirical research
Evidence
Eyewitness
Law Enforcement
Litigation
Prosecutions
Sex crimes
Sexual Abuse
Sexual assault
Studies
Witnesses
evidence
criminal justice
child sexual abuse
prosecution
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Summary:Corroborating evidence has been associated with a decrease in children’s distress during the court process, yet few studies have empirically examined the impact of evidence type on prosecution rates. This study examined the types of evidence and whether charges were filed in a sample of child sexual abuse cases (n = 329). Cases with a child disclosure, a corroborating witness, an offender confession, or an additional report against the offender were more likely to have charges filed, controlling for case characteristics. When cases were lacking strong evidence (confession, physical evidence, eyewitness), cases with a corroborating witness were nearly twice as likely to be charged. Charged cases tended to have at least two types of evidence, regardless of whether there was a child disclosure or not.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
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ISSN:0011-1287
1552-387X
DOI:10.1177/0011128708320484