Connolly, D. A., Price, H. L. & Gordon, H. M. (2009). Judging the credibility of historic child sexual abuse complainants: How judges describe their decisions. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 15(2), 102-123.
Most victims of child sexual abuse do not report their victimization immediately and many delay reporting until adulthood. Prosecuting historic cases of child sexual abuse (HCSA) is complicated and difficulties include those related to how the credibility of complainants is assessed. This study examined judicial decision-making in order to explore how judges adjudicate HCSA cases.
Canadian judicial HCSA trial decisions were located using the database Quicklaw; the final sample included 51 criminal cases initiated a minimum of two years following the end of the abuse involving 87 complainants. The majority of complainants were female and aged, on average, 12 when the abuse ended and 25 at the time of trial. Approximately half of the cases involved allegations of repeated abuse (two or more instances) and the number of cases resulting in acquittal were approximately equal to those resulting in conviction. A total of 4,827 judicial comments were identified and coded using an inductive approach (i.e. grounded theory) according to four broad themes related to complainants' "memory for the offense, as well as credibility of the complainant, reliability of the evidence, and judicial inferences" (p. 108). Complainants' descriptions of the HCSA were not included in this research.
Results indicate the factors influencing verdicts in HCSA criminal cases are "supportable with empirical research and consistent with high-court rulings" (p. 120). Judges were far more likely to comment on specific rather than general details of HCSA allegations; however, they were sensitive to the impact of the passage of time on memory. Comments regarding the reliability of evidence were consistent with psychological evidence as "there were more judicial comments about inconsistencies in acquit cases than in convict cases and more comments about corroboration in convict than in acquit cases, although neither inconsistencies nor corroboration were strongly associated with verdict" (p. 105). The authors expressed concern regarding the "apparent and considerable judicial interest in complainants' behavior and emotions around the time of the alleged abuse and around the time of disclosure" (p. 105), noting comments about the credibility of the complainant occurred almost twice as often as comments about the reliability of evidence.
Godbout, N., Sabourin, S., & Lussier, Y. (2009). Child sexual abuse and adult romantic adjustment: comparison of single- and multiple-indicator measures. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(4), 693-705.
Research indicates child sexual abuse (CSA) has long-term consequences that may affect future marital functioning. Some studies have used multiple indicators "to obtain detailed information about the nature and correlates of CSA"; while others "have employed single item indicators in an effort to...respect and protect participants' privacy and wellbeing" (p. 694). This study compared the usefulness of single and multiple-indicator measures using a well-supported mediational model that associated CSA with marital satisfaction (assessed through measures of attachment representations and psychological distress). The authors hypothesized that the multiple-indicator approach would more strongly predict future marital satisfaction.
The sample of 1,092 French Canadian participants was recruited voluntarily through media advertisements and randomized telephone calls and included men (516) and women (574) in cohabiting or marital relationships who had lived together for a minimum of 6 months. Independent of their partners, participants completed questionnaires including: 1) a single-item measure exploring the presence or absence of CSA, and 2) a multiple-indicator measure including items "relating to level of force, relationship with perpetrator, number of abusive experiences, and nature of assault" (p. 695) and, 3) psychosocial measures of attachment, psychological distress, and dyadic adjustment. Of the 13% of participants who reported CSA, 40% reported one instance of abuse and 60% indicated more than one instance; approximately half of the perpetrators were extrafamilial.
Analyses of the single and multiple indicator models were conducted using structural equation modeling. Results did not support the original hypothesis; instead they demonstrated that, for research purposes, the simple presence of CSA provided sufficient information to predict the relationship between CSA and marital functioning through attachment representations and psychological distress. The authors suggest future research should separately examine indicators of CSA to better understand the correlation with future marital functioning.
Jack, S. & Tonmyr, L. (2008). Knowledge Transfer and Exchange: Disseminating Canadian Child Maltreatment Surveillance Findings to Decision Makers. Child Indicators Research, 1(1), 51-64.
Child welfare organizations are increasingly interested in developing strategies to use research evidence to inform clinical, administrative, and policy-level decision-making. In an effort to strengthen the Canadian child welfare research base used to inform policy, practice, and programming, the Public Health Agency of Canada developed the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS), a national survey conducted every five years to estimate the incidence and "characteristics of child abuse and neglect investigated by child welfare services" (p. 52). To date results from CIS- 1998 and 2003 have been released.
Guided by federal directives prioritizing knowledge transfer and evidence-based decision making in child welfare, the steering committee for the CIS-2003 struck an expert sub-committee with the intention of devising a strategy for making the findings of the CIS-2003 accessible to a diverse range of audiences including the general public, professionals, policy makers, and researchers. This article describes the process of developing the dissemination strategy through a discussion of how key messages, target audiences, appropriate messengers, and approaches to knowledge exchange were identified. The authors identify key lessons that will inform the development of a dissemination strategy for the CIS-2008, such as identifying knowledge transfer as a priority at the beginning of a study, and suggest these findings are relevant to other researchers interested in dissemination plans. They explain that the process of disseminating findings from the CIS-2003 is being evaluated and that results from this evaluation will inform future strategies for disseminating Canadian child welfare knowledge.
MacMillan, H. L., Georgiades, K., Duku, E. K., Shea, A., Steiner, M., et al. (2009). Cortisol response to stress in female youths exposed to childhood maltreatment: Results of the youth mood project. Biological Psychiatry, 66(1), 62-68.
Childhood maltreatment has been found to be strongly associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), particularly among females; however, it remains unclear why some individuals exposed to abuse or neglect subsequently experience MDD while others do not. Researchers have hypothesized that "alterations in corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) mediate the development of MDD" and linked increased activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA) to severe stress in early life. This study, part of a larger longitudinal investigation, explored whether "resting levels of cortisol, heart rate, and pattern of stress response to a psychosocial stressor differed" between female youth exposed to maltreatment (defined as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and neglect) and a control group matched on age and postal code (p. 62).
Female youth (n = 67) aged 12 to 16 with no prior history of depression or cognitive impairment were recruited from three child protection agencies; a control group comprised of youth (n = 25) with no history of maltreatment was selected from a pre-existing database of youth willing to participate in research. Visited by a public health nurse, youth completed two self-report instruments measuring child maltreatment, had their heart rate (HR) monitored, and saliva samples taken. Psychiatric stress was assessed by a trained clinician using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children. "The time prior to the TSST was conceptualized as a resting measure of cortisol, while the post-TSST period was considered cortisol reactivity" (p. 63).
Complex statistical analyses "examined differences between maltreated and control youth in resting and post-TSST levels of cortisol and HR" (p. 63). Both groups showed a similar decline in levels of cortisol during the resting period. Youth in the control group experienced an increase in cortisol levels following the TSST and a gradual flattening over time; maltreated youth exhibited a blunted cortisol response not associated with current systems of MDD. No differences were found in resting and reactivity levels of HR. The authors conclude the findings add to evidence linking chronic stress to "reduced physiological responsiveness to new stressors over time" (p. 66). Future research is necessary to clarify the clinical relevance of these results; however, the authors suggest blunted cortisol response may put maltreated youth at risk for impairment in both physical and emotional health.