Using Children as Witnesses in Court Cases

Your textbook discusses some of the issues related to using children as witnesses in court cases.  There have been many studies done relating to the unreliability of eyewitness testimony in both children and adults.  In the 1980’s and 1990’s, there was a series of court cases related to alleged multi-victim, multi-offender sexual and ritual abuse in day care centers across the country (the McMartin and Little Rascals cases being perhaps the most publicized). 

Please click on the two (2) links below and carefully read the articles:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/teachers-are-indicted-at-the-mcmartin-preschool

http://littlerascalsdaycarecase.org/

Please post thoroughly thought through answers to the questions below on the Discussion Forum for the week. 

1. How do you think that investigators and therapists, in their quest to find the truth, may have contributed to children making false or exaggerated allegations in these cases?

2.  What implications do these types of cases have for people who run childcare centers?

3.   What are the lessons learned from these cases? 

4.   How should investigators and therapists proceed when a child or their parent makes such    allegations?

5.  How can the investigators and therapists obtain the information they need without manipulating the child’s memory, even if inadvertently.

READING

Cognitive Development

Topics to be covered include:
● Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
● Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of cognitive development
● The information-processing perspective of cognitive development