Children Should Not Be Used As Witnesses In Courts Of Law (Essay Sample)

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Children Should Not Be Used As Witnesses In Courts Of Law
The modern society has been featured with increasing cases of child abuse and neglects that ever before, a trend that has seen children increasingly being admitted as witnesses in both criminal and juvenile proceedings. Unfortunately, most of these cases end up unreported and this makes it difficult to have reliable statistics of the prevalence of child admission as witnesses. Other than being witnesses of domestic violence and child abuse cases in which they play a role of both a witness and a victim, children find themselves as witnesses in a variety of other cases including road accidents and playground injuries (Marsil & Warren, 2002). However, children witnesses have raised widespread concern particularly in legal sphere where questions have been raised regarding their veracity and testimonial competency especially in high profile cases such as felonious murder and sexual abuse. The fact that children frequently give uncorroborated testimonies in courts, one can rightfully argue that they should not be used as witnesses in legal proceedings. This is because their unreliable testimonies can cause advance effects to the outcome of a case, a situation that can adversely affect innocent defendants.
To begin with, the interviewing processes that witnesses are exposed to can greatly be traumatizing and can adversely affect a child. These interviews often take a couple of hours each and can occur up to ten times in the course of an investigation. As well some investigations take over a year to be complete and since children are known for their inability memorize for a long period of time, their testimonies are likely to vary from time to time, thus affecting their authenticity (Marsil & Warren, 2002). Unlike their adult counterparts, children start losing track of incidences only ten days after the exact date of the incidence. In addition, stress that is associated with traumatizing interviews can shock and repress child’s ability to recall. Unfortunately, the memories may not resurface again during the whole duration of the case and this makes it difficult for them to identify suspects in photos or identification parades. The level of memory loss directly related to the levels of stress an investigative interview provides, and a testimony of a person who cannot remember incidences clearly loses credibility of a case.
It is a common misconception that children do not lie but the truth is that children innocently when they cannot recall events. Another weakness of children witnesses is that they are easy to bribe and threaten. Most abuse cases which involve children witnesses and victims end up unsuccessful since some defendants take advantage of their vulnerability to threaten, bribe and scare them from the proceedings. These forms of abuse make the children afraid of telling the truth in the eyes of the abuser. As a result, they may start denying th...