NCJ Number
164797
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 20 Issue: 5 Dated: (October 1996) Pages: 555-563
Date Published
1996
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This study examined participants' reactions to repressed compared to nonrepressed testimony by alleged sexual abuse victims/witnesses by manipulating the victim's age at the time the alleged abuse occurred as either 3, 8, or 13 years old.
Abstract
A sample of 561 college students (166 males and 395 females) participated in the experiment. Participants read a trial summary of a sexual abuse case. The victim in the case either claimed that her memory of the abuse had been repressed for 20 years and was only recently recovered during therapy, or she consciously remembered the abuse for 20 years but never discussed it until recently in therapy. Findings show that participants were significantly more likely to convict the defendant when the testimony was described as nonrepressed (67 percent) compared to repressed (58 percent). This effect was not modified by the age of the victim at the time the alleged abuse occurred (either 3, 8, or 13 years of age), although the younger and older victims were significantly less believable than the 8-year-old victim. Compared to female participants, male participants were significantly less likely to convict the defendant and rated the victim as significantly less believable. These findings are discussed in the context of recent research on juror reactions to repressed memory testimony. 16 references