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An Archival Analysis of Actual Cases of Historic Child Sexual Abuse: A Comparison of Jury and Bench Trials

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Law and Human Behavior

Logistic regression analyses were used to predict verdicts from 466 Canadian jury and 644 Canadian judge-alone criminal trials involving delayed or historic allegations of child sexual abuse. Variables in regard to the complainant and offence were selected from the legal, clinical, and experimental literatures, including mock juror research. Of six variables that had been related to decisions reached in mock juror research concerning delayed allegations of child sexual abuse (i.e., repressed memory testimony, involvement in therapy, length of delay, age of complainant, presence of experts, and frequency of abuse) two (age of complainant and presence of expert) predicted verdicts. An additional five variables (duration, severity, complainant–accused relationship, threats, and complainant gender) were also examined: of these, threats and the complainant–accused relationship reliably predicted jury verdicts. For judge-alone trials, five variables predicted verdict: length of the delay, offence severity, claims of repression, the relationship between complainant and accused, and presence of an expert. Implications of the jurors' and judges' differential sensitivity to these variables for future simulation and archival research are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the Alberta Law Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to the first author and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada to the second author. We would like to thank Pamela van Norden-Schaeffer for assistance with data analyses. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their very helpful and insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Portions of the results have been previously presented at meetings of the American Psychology-Law Society in March 2002 and the Canadian Psychological Association in June 2001 and June 2003.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

    J. Don Read & Deborah A. Connolly

  2. Department of Criminology, Kwantlen College, Surrey, BC, Canada, V3W 2M8

    Andrew Welsh

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  1. J. Don Read
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  2. Deborah A. Connolly
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Correspondence to Deborah A. Connolly.

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Read, J.D., Connolly, D.A. & Welsh, A. An Archival Analysis of Actual Cases of Historic Child Sexual Abuse: A Comparison of Jury and Bench Trials. Law Hum Behav 30, 259–285 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-006-9010-7

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