Twelve-year-old M.M. told her mother that Mr. Oliver, with whom she was on a camping trip, asked her to get into his bed and touched her in a sexual manner.
However, when her mother questioned her about the incident later, M.M. recanted her accusation. M.M. explained to her mother that she had accused Mr. Oliver of touching her because he had caught her stealing from a store.
When M.M.'s mother testified to this at trial, the prosecution was caught off guard and attempted to introduce the testimony of an expert in child sexual abuse for the purpose of providing information on the psychology of recantations. The testimony proffered that children are egocentric and tend to recant when they feel they are not being believed by the adult confidant. The expert stated, "[T]hey may actually take some responsibility for the abuse and say it's my fault. And therefore, since it's my fault for them to kind of resolve that crisis they're having they will recant.""
The defense objected to the testimony, contending irrelevance, but was overruled. Mr. Oliver was convicted of enticing a minor child and appealed, stating that the trial court had abused its discretion by allowing the government to present expert testimony without giving him advance notice and the opportunity to provide his own expert.
Holding: Affirmed. The expert's testimony was relevant and not unfairly prejudicial. The court first stated that the psychology of recantation by a child like M.M. is beyond the ken of the average juror. Next, it stated that the expert provided no direct testimony as to the credibility of either M.M. or her mother and as such, the testimony was not unfairly prejudicial.
 | Terence W. Campbell, Ph.D. Clinical and Forensic Psychologist none |
Dr. Campbell comments: Mental health professionals who assess allegations of child sexual abuse (CSA), commonly assume that recantation is part of the process of normal disclosure (Bruck Metal American Psychologist 53(2) 135-151 (1998)). Such thinking was originated by Summit in 1983. (Summit R Child Abuse & Neglect 7:177-193 (1983)). He indicated that subsequent to disclosing past sexual abuse, children will retract their disclosure in response to pressure from the perpetrator and other adults attempting to protect the perpetrator.
Disclosures of intra-familial sexual abuse frequently provoke loyalty conflicts and coalition formation in families. Family members who align themselves with the accused typically assume the allegations amount to lies, and therefore pressure the child to tell the "truth." Consequently, recantation-or retraction most often occurs in cases of intra-familial sexual abuse, specifically in response to adult influence.
In testifying for the prosecution, the expert claimed the relevant research demonstrated that recantation was not that uncommon in cases of CSA. Relying on the Sorenson and Snow study (Child Welfare 70:3-15 [1991]) the expert presumed that all the children in its sample were sexually abused. Such assumptions can be challenged.
Related data also challenge conventional thinking regarding CSA and recantation. A study of 309 validated cases of sexual abuse found only an 8 percent recantation rate (Jones D & McGraw J of Interpersonal Violence 2:27-45 [1987]). Another study of 234 validated cases reported 3 percent of the children recanting their previous disclosures (Bradley A & Wood J Child Abuse & Neglect 20:881-891 [1996]). It is significant that in these two studies in which sexual abuse was known to have occurred, the recantation rate was 8 percent or less.
The Gonzalez et al. study (Child Abuse & Neglect 17:281-289 [1993]) for example, reported that 27 percent of the children in its sample—all undergoing therapy for alleged sexual abuse recanted their disclosures. The children in this study, however, were supposedly victims in the McMartin case in California. The McMartin case resulted in the acquittals of five defendants, and hung juries for two other defendants. The prosecutor himself declined to try the latter two defendants again, characterizing the allegations against them as "patently absurd." Therefore, it seems quite unlikely these children were sexually abused.
Ultimately, then, the available data related to recantation and allegations of CSA are, at best, equivocal, It is ill-advised, therefore, to assume that recantation is a reliable means for identifying sexually abused children. This kind of one-sided bias inevitably increases the frequency of false-positive classifications-mistakenly concluding that a child has been sexually abused.
