Has A Child Been Molested?

Dr. Lee Coleman and Patrick Clancy

To begin to understand the developments that ultimately led to our current system of investigating child sexual abuse, we will begin with Senator Walter Mondale’s 1973 hearings on child abuse and neglect. Those hearings led to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which required each state to develop programs aimed at faster recognition and treatment of child abuse.

We see no reason to doubt that thousands of children benefited, but we also believe that specifically in cases of alleged sexual abuse, unintended consequences resulted. With no real questions asked, law enforcement and child protection agencies allowed a few mental health professionals to become the leaders of this new movement, in the belief that therapists would know best how to interview children in ways which would help them reveal abuse.

It is this collaboration between the investigative community and the therapeutic community that is the fundamental error that continues to plague the system of child sexual abuse prevention, investigation, and prosecution. Neutrality is the hallmark of the skilled investigator. The present system, however, trains investigators to adopt ideas and methods drawn from the mental health professions, where neutrality is ordinarily not to be expected or even desired. California criminal law specialist Clancy and California psychiatrists Coleman's work is truly a classic.

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