Beginning with the passage of The Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act in 1994 and Megan's Law in 1996, the federal government and states have passed numerous pieces of legislation to control and restrict those convicted of sex offenses. This study surveyed the attitudes of undergraduate students…

Purpose: This paper highlights the forensic implications of language impairment in 2 key (and overlapping) groups of young people: identified victims of maltreatment (abuse and/or neglect) and young offenders. Method: Two lines of research pertaining to oral language competence and young people's interface with the law are considered: 1 regarding…

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the trajectory of cases through four systems: child protection, law enforcement, the dependency courts, and the criminal courts. Method: This study focused on a county selected from a 41-county telephone survey conducted for the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3). For this…

Objective: To understand how the Swedish legal system perceives and handles mentally handicapped children who may have been victimized. Method: Twenty-two judicial districts in Sweden provided complete files on 39 District Court cases (including the Appeals Court files on 17 of these cases) involving children with learning difficulties or other…

An article by Seligson contended that the current intrafamilial child sexual abuse treatments are driven by legal concerns rather than the needs and complex feelings of the child. A survey of therapists (n=41) at an urban outpatient clinic do not support any of Seligson's major contentions, as a majority of therapists ranked legal matters as their…

Analysis of records of dependency and criminal filings in 833 substantiated intrafamilial child abuse and neglect cases in 3 U.S. cities indicated that legal intervention was rare, with dependency filings and prosecutions in just 21% and 4% of the sample, respectively, although treatment plans and out-of-home placements occurred more frequently.…

Thirty-six father-daughter/stepdaughter sexual abusers were followed over the course of a two-year outpatient treatment program. Results supported the importance of pretreatment personality assessment and suggested that involvement of the criminal justice system does not interfere with, and may help, therapeutic progress. (Author/DB)

This study of 13 cases assessed the extent to which prosecution of child sexual abuse was successfully resumed against defendants terminated from a treatment program for noncompliance in Sacramento, California. Results indicated that convictions were obtained against persons initially diverted to treatment and that sentences received were…