magazine issue 1 2015 / Issue 24

Children are poor witnesses. Or are they?

• written by Nathalie Brackmann, Henry Otgaar, Melanie Sauerland & Harald Merckelbach
• edited by Jay Wood

Paradoxically, children might be more reliable in situations that are very familiar to adults, but not to children. Especially when there is reference to a unique occurrence and the child makes a spontaneous utterance without previous pressure or influence, their statements should not be left aside. Consequently, in the aforementioned murder case, no external influences provide reason to doubt the 6-year-old girl’s identification of her father as the perpetrator.

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