Abstract
The competency of child witnesses in cases of sexual abuse to give evidence in court and
the admissibility and credibility of their testimony is a fundamental component in establishing
whether an accused person is guilty or not. This has presented a significant challenge to the
criminal justice process as under the common law the reception of children’s evidence falls
within the absolute discretion of the judiciary. The paper examines the legal expectations of
child witnesses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the context of the religio-moral
perspectives and debates that influenced and shaped judicial attitudes towards the reception
of child testimonies and their ability to tell the truth, especially the requirement that a child
was suitably ‘pious’. The discussion concludes with an analysis of the most ‘extraordinary’
case of the Reverend Hatch in 1860, convicted of indecent assault partly on the testimony of
an 11 year-old child, he then successfully prosecuted the girl for perverting the course of
justice and persuaded the jury to convict her.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 0 |
| Journal | Law, Crime and History |
| Volume | 0 |
| Issue number | 0 |
| Early online date | 28 Jul 2017 |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Jul 2017 |
