A child psychiatrist's expert roles in the criminal court: children as vulnerable witnesses

Abstract

SUMMARY In this article three main issues are addressed using anecdotal and anonymised illustrations of situations in which the author has been engaged, during 35 years of medico-legal practice, to assist in the process of obtaining and analysing the evidence of children to facilitate decision-making by various authorities and tribunals. Those issues are: the competence of a child to be a witness in the Crown Court; the process by which a child's evidence has been elicited; and the use of an analytical approach to the content (verbal, behavioural and emotional) of a child's evidence as an aid to jurists who have the task of reaching a decision as to the child's reliability, as distinct from their competence.