Health Outcomes by Closeness of Sexual Abuse Perpetrator: A Test of Betrayal Trauma Theory |
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| Authors: | Valerie J. Edwards Jennifer J. Freyd Shanta R. Dube Robert F. Anda Vincent J. Felitti |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Division of Adult and Community Health , Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Atlanta , Georgia , USA vae2@cdc.gov;3. Department of Psychology , University of Oregon , Eugene , Oregon , USA;4. Office of Smoking and Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , Atlanta , Georgia , USA;5. Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program , San Diego , California , USA |
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| Abstract: | Summary In this chapter, practicing attorney Brooks Cooper illuminates how the legal tradition of applying different standards to the ad-missibility of expert and lay opinions as evidence in litigation complicates delayed-discovery sexual abuse cases. Admissibility standards have long been a source of controversy, and recent developments in law, such as the pre-trial evidentiary hearings that invoke the “gatekeeper” function of the judge under the standard enunciated in Daubert v. Mer-rell-Dow Pharmaceuticals, have become a favored strategy by the defense in an effort to bar delayed memory testimony by characterizing it as the product of unreliable science. To overcome this litigation hurdle, Mr. Cooper contextualizes the present controversy in the history of scientific evidence admissibility, tracing emerging trends in judicial opinion on scientific evidence from expert witnesses from the 1923 case Frye v. United States through the present, and offers strategies and techniques to maintain admissibility of the evidence before and during all phases of the trial. |
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| Keywords: | adverse childhood experiences betrayal trauma childhood sexual abuse SF–36 scores |
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