ABSTRACT
Perceptions of child witnesses, in the eyes of both professionals and the public, have undergone major changes over the years. At different points in time, child witnesses have been denigrated as totally unreliable and prone to fantasy (e.g. Heydon, 1984), whereas at others they have been rehabilitated as much more reliable and accurate than previously believed (Spencer and Flin, 1993). In the United Kingdom (and in many countries around the world), the ‘discovery’ of child sexual abuse in the 1980s had a profound influence on policy and practice in relation to children’s testimony (Bottoms and Goodman, 1996). Legal and procedural innovations were implemented to increase the numbers of children able to testify in criminal courts, most notably through ‘livelinks’ and video-taped evidence-in-chief introduced as a result of the Criminal Justice Acts of 1988 and 1991 (see Westcott, Davies and Spencer, 1999 for a review). Similar developments occurred within family proceedings, where, although children rarely testify, their accounts are of critical importance to decision making. The British government published its now internationally regarded guidance on ‘how to’ interview child witnesses for criminal proceedings, The Memorandum of Good Practice (Home Office in conjunction with the Department of Health, 1992)—revised as Achieving Best Evidence in 2002 (see also Jones, 2003). Interviews made according to this guidance, and according to the influential Cleveland Report (Butler-Sloss, 1988), are used regularly to inform child care proceedings too.
