NCJ Number
145806
Journal
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Volume: 32 Issue: 5 Dated: (September 1993) Pages: 903-910
Date Published
1993
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Because child psychiatrists do not have a consistent way to classify the untruthful child and because there are no generally accepted definitions of the many ways in which false statements occur in abuse allegations, this paper attempts to classify and define various ways in which false statements are made in child abuse cases.
Abstract
The author reviewed 40 articles, chapters, and books that contained examples of false statements made by children or caregivers in the context of abuse allegations. He determined that several possibilities should be considered in the differential diagnosis of abuse allegations. Such possibilities include true allegations, parental misinterpretation and suggestion, misinterpreted physical condition, parental delusion, parental indoctrination, interviewer suggestion, fantasy, delusion, misinterpretation, miscommunication, confabulation, pseudologic phantastica, innocent lying, deliberate lying, overstimulation, group contagion, and perpetrator substitution. The correct classification of abuse allegations is important in both clinical and forensic child psychiatry, and possibilities raised by the author should be studied through systematic research. 68 references