Sexual Assault Trials Handbook — Investigation and interviewing children in child sexual abuse cases

M Martschuk, M Powell, R Blewer and J Goodman-Delahunty, “Legal decision making about (child) sexual assault complaints: the importance of the information-gathering process“ (2022) 34(1) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 58.

The authors seek to address why legal systems still struggle with prosecuting sexual offences, particularly against children, despite over a century of reform in the way evidence of adult and child sexual assault complainants is received during the common-law adversarial trial process. The authors review the information gathering strategies used to date and propose reforms to better align contemporary procedures with sound evidence-based practice. The authors argue that decision makers, including police, lawyers, clinical and forensic practitioners and judiciary need to better understand the science to bring about overdue change.