Stretching the blanket: Legal reforms affecting child witnesses

The author presents an overview of the changes in the rules of evidence that now govern criminal prosecutions of child sexual abuse and civil proceedings. The United States Supreme Court has issued six decisions that profoundly affect the receipt of children's testimony and expert testimony assaying the reliability of children's reported experiences. These cases as well as the Michaels prosecution in New Jersey have been catalysts for reform, exposing the pretrial investigative processes as the critical determinant of the reliability of trial evidence from children. She concludes that the next frontier is the application of social science research to the shaping of legislative standards and administrative guidelines aimed at minimizing the contamination of children's testimony during the pretrial staging of litigation.