150 f> Court and the Legal System—-Juvenile Forensicswill believe her. According to Jaskiewicz-Obydzinska and Czerederecka (1995),
evaluation of a child's reliability is extremely imperative and is determined by the
stability of his or her account after consecutive interrogations of the child. The
authors conducted a study with juvenile witnesses/victims of sexual abuse, with the
majority between the ages of 11 and 15. They found that in half of those examined,
testimonial changes occurred. However, they found that the most common reason
for these changes was the juvenile's low intellectual level. They concluded that in
order to accept a child's testimony as reliable, psychological factors that include
intellectual ability, significant fear of social evaluation, and increased self-criticism
should be considered.
In addition to Martha's conflicting stories, her age also presents a problem with
establishing reliability. Bottoms (1993) reported that younger children tend to be
viewed as more reliable than older children and adolescents in testifying about sexual
abuse. People believe that children are not cognitively efficient and therefore could
not possibly invent such stories, whereas adolescents are believed to be at fault in
the sexual abuse or to have fabricated their story.
Another factor affecting the reliability of children's testimony is the stress of the
entire situation. Children must face an intimidating courtroom setting and discuss
personal, traumatic events while confronting the alleged abuser (Batterman-Faunce
& Goodman, 1993). Having this feared person in the courtroom could reduce
the likelihood of the child disclosing entire descriptions of the events. Therefore,
allowing the child to testify in the absence of the accused may provide more re-
liable testimony (Pipe & Goodman, 1991). Tobey, Goodman, Batterman-Faunce,
Orcutt, and Sachsenmaier (1995) suggested that if a child testifies in front of the
defendant, then he or she may be psychologically traumatized because effacing
the alleged abuser. They highlighted that this trauma could negatively effect the
reliability and thoroughness of the testimony. The authors stated that the use of
closed-circuit technology eliminates the need for children to testify in such a trau-
matic situation. They could provide their testimony from outside the courtroom
via television monitors. The opposition to this procedure is that it violates a de-
fendant's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process because it interferes with
the factfinder s capabilities of determining witness credibility and it violates a de-
fendant's Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses directly (Goodman et aL,
1998).
The Supreme Court has agreed with this opposition to some extent. In Coy v, Iowa
(1988), the Court ruled that the use of closed-circuit television did violate a
defendant's Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. However, 2 years later in
Maryland v. Craig (1990), the Court decided in favor of allowing closed-circuit tele-
vision in child sexual abuse cases where the child would be so traumatized as to
be unable to reasonably communicate. The Supreme Court does agree that such
technology is a violation of rights but that the psychological effects related to a
child's testimony outweigh those rights. In Martha's case, the judge would need to