ABSTRACT
The childhood traumatic event that has most occupied the adult world’s attention in recent years is the event of sexual abuse. As thousands of cases are brought to the attention of children’s protective services or the police, two very different populations of adults are forced to deal with the allegations: the therapeutic community and the criminal justice establishment. These populations have very different goals: The aim of the therapeutic community, usually social workers and clinical psychologists, is to deal with effect of the trauma on the child; the aim of the criminal justice establishment, from police through prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, and judges, is to seek justice for the accused abuser (Mason, 1991b). However, to help overcome their evidentiary problems in dealing with child witnesses, prosecutors rely increasingly on expert witnesses from the therapeutic community to inform the court about the behavioral chracteristics of sexually abused children. Many of these experts describe patterns or syndromes of characteristics that include information on how a child remembers and relates the incident of abuse.
