ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors review some of the research relevant to children who testify in legal proceedings, particularly children who testify about traumatic experiences such as abuse or witnessing interpersonal violence. They discuss the rates and impact of trauma and the role trauma plays on memory and highlight some of the work on children's testimony in the courtroom, including accommodations to help support child witnesses. Anderson and colleagues evaluated how the truncation of child witness testimony affected jurors’ perceptions of the child's testimony and the defendant's culpability. The majority of mock-jurors believed the core allegation to be true even when the testimony was not truncated and additional, less-plausible allegations were present. Jurors’ perceptions of child witnesses play a large role in determining case outcomes and are, as such, vitally important to the prosecution of any case of child maltreatment.
