ABSTRACT
If the injuries are fresh, their documentation and interpretation will generally follow the standard route and practices of the examination of a victim of a violent physical assault. However, one of the major problems faced by the doctor is the long interval, often of months or even years, that will commonly have elapsed between the infliction of the injuries and the date of examination. This delay in examination is often inevitable due to periods of imprisonment and delays while the victim manages to escape to a country of sanctuary. During this time, the normal healing processes will occur and many acute injuries will disappear completely, while others will remain as scars. It requires very careful examination combined with experience of either similar cases or of forensic medicine to detect and interpret such old lesions.
