Expert Witnesses

Role of expert witness

• Witness of fact – witness who saw what actually happened

• Expert witness bring their expertise on evidence which is beyond the juries knowledge

  • They must not usurp the role of the jury

    • No expressing an opinion of guilt or innocent

    • Job is to outline expertise, go through evidence and see if there are any red flags

    • Can not say, if the person is telling the truth, lying or have false memories if no evidence is available

      • Suggests red flags that suggest it might be false memories

  • Give assistance through objective, unbiased opinion on matters of expertise

    • Reports

    • Oral evidence

Non-Recent (Historic) Sex Abuse

• Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is much more prevalent than was once believed

• It sometimes causes serious psychological damage

• Disclosure may be delayed for a long time but this should not be taken as an indication that CSA did not take place

• Often, the only evidence is based upon memories from the distant past

• In a minority of cases, allegations may be based upon false memories

False Memory Syndrome (Kihlstrom 1997)

• When memory is distorted, the result can be false memory syndrome

• FMS is where a person’s identity and interpersonal relationships are centred around a memory of traumatic experience that is false but which they strongly believe

  • Syndrome is not characterized by false memories; we all have memories that are inaccurate

• Syndrome may be diagnosed when memory is so deeply ingrained that a person’s entire personality and lifestyle, disrupting all other adaptive behaviours

  • False memory syndrome is especially destructive because the person assiduously avoids confrontation with any evidence that might challenge the memory

  • The person may become so focused on the memory that he or she may be effectively distracted from coping with the real problems in his or her life

• This is not medically recognised syndrome. Useful to avoid

  • It is problematic as a term

Memory and Trauma - psychoanalytic perspective

• Memories for trauma (CSA) are put into unconscious part in mind by defence mechanism (repression)

• Repressed traumatic memories can cause psychological problems

• Problems can only resolved by recovering repressed memories and working through them

Memory and Trauma - false memory perspective

• Traumatic events are better recalled than neutral events

• No convincing evidence that repression exists

• Therefore ‘recovered’ memories are probably false memories and produced unintentionally by therapy

• False memories can also develop spontaneously (result of taking part in psychology experiments)

Trauma Myth

• Under certain circumstances memoires for CSA may be forgotten for time as result of normal processes of forgetting

• Such memories are not repressed and can be brought into conscious awareness by appropriate cues

• Most likely to happen if the abuse not seen as traumatic at the time

  • If the abuse stops they may just try to forget the uncomfortable memories rather than repressing them

Conclusion

• In the absence of independent evidence impossible to know whether a complainant is telling the truth, deliberately lying or sincerely mistaken

• Whatever the outcome of such trials, always remember that the verdict will have profound impact on real people’s lives