Assessment of children in criminal matters
Abstract
A child can be involved in criminal matters in three roles – as a victim,
a witness or an offender. According to the Police of the Czech Republic, a child
or an adolescent is often both a victim and a witness of a criminal act.
In my practice of an expert witness I most often, and recently more and more,
encounter sexual abuse. It is alarming that the age limit keeps going down –
two years ago I really did not assess children of the age of three in this
area. Less often are expert witnesses asked to assess cases involving physical
abuse and the least attention is paid to psychological abuse. I assume that it
is a paradoxical situation – criminal acts are often accompanied by
psychological distress in the sense of psychological harassment and abuse and
psychological damage and repercussions are not only frequent but also long-term.
The issue of psychological abuse is still underestimated by (not only) courts in
the Czech Republic.
(Fulltext in Czech)