Preparation for Court Testimony in Child Abuse Cases

Abstract

Medical expert testimony in child abuse cases is a socially essential task if children are to be protected from abuse. Accomplishing this task in an excellent way is an important challenge requiring attention to its ethical, legal, and administrative aspects as well as to technical medical considerations. As the field of child protection matures as a medical specialty, expertise in child abuse becomes increasingly definable; it is now sufficiently definable to allow courts to begin to separate those physicians who are specialists in the field from those who are not.