Child sexual abuse accommodation evidence: the travails of counterintuitive evidence in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

The author advances a taxonomy of expert evidence in relation to the responses of sexually abused children to their assaults. He analyses a series of Australian and New Zealand cases in the context of Summit's publicly stated recent views on the use to which Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome (“CSAAS”) can be put. He argues that expert evidence that goes further than dispelling myths or disabusing triers of fact of misperceptions generally held within the community should not be permitted. He contends that CSAAS is an illegitimate description of such information and that such “syndrome evidence” should not be permitted, particularly before juries. He maintains, moreover, that further rigour will be (and should be) required of prosecutors and mental health professionals alike if such counterintuitive evidence is to be admitted. This will entail proof of the existence of community misunderstanding of the phenomenon, establishment that the field of expertise from which child sexual abuse accommodation evidence emanates is sufficient for the purpose, as well as proof of the expert's expertise in the field. However, he argues against abandoning attempts to use counterintuitive evidence merely on the basis of a number of adverse Australasian determinations, whose reasoning is dependent on the quality of the evidence hitherto advanced and the overly limited perceptions of the evidential framework within which such evidence should be evaluated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.