Matters of Suggestibility, Memory and Time: Child Witnesses in Court and What Really Happened

Abstract: As a result of an increasing awareness of child abuse over the last few decades, children have been admitted as court witnesses more frequently, yet there has been persistent wariness about the reliability of their testimony. Examining the interaction of legal rationales and paradigms of developmental psychology, it would appear that children are still frequently positioned as deficient and passive witnesses. Three tropes can be distinguished: 1. Children are positioned as unreliable containers of facts. 2. Children have proved to be irritable dispensers of information. 3. Children are volatile interactants. In this paper I will examine how the English legal system employs special measures that are designed to manage children's apparent deficiencies while guaranteeing the accuracy and admissibility of their evidence. My analysis unfolds around the specific case of video recorded evidence. Using courtroom observations and data from interviews with legal professionals, I will follow .... https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/204

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Matters of Suggestibility, Memory and Time: Child Witnesses in Court and What Really Happened ; volume:8 ; number:1 ; day:31 ; month:01 ; year:2007 ; Forum qualitative Sozialforschung ; 8, Heft 1 (31.01.2007)

Contributors, Places and Time

• Creator: Motzkau, Johanna F.

Further information

• DOI: 10.17169/fqs-8.1.204
• URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0701145
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:25 AM CEST