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.