Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with intellectual disabilities located in the Willowbrook neighborhood on Staten Island in New York City from 1947 until 1987.
Elizabeth F. Loftus is an American psychologist who is best known in relation to the misinformation effect,false memory and criticism of recovered memory therapies.
The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case in the 1980s,prosecuted by the Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner. Members of the McMartin family,who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach,California,were charged with hundreds of acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983;nevertheless arrests and the pretrial investigation took place from 1984 to 1987,and trials ran from 1987 to 1990. The case lasted seven years but resulted in no convictions,and all charges were dropped in 1990. By the case's end,it had become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria,a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Stephen J. Ceci is an American psychologist at Cornell University. He studies the accuracy of children's courtroom testimony,and he is an expert in the development of intelligence and memory. He has been the recipient of numerous awards,including the prestigious Lifetime Contribution Awards from the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Association for Psychological Science (APS) as well as many divisional and smaller society awards.
Wee Care Nursery School,located in Maplewood,New Jersey,was the subject of a day care child abuse case that was tried during the 1980s. Although Margaret Kelly Michaels was prosecuted and convicted,the decision was reversed after she spent five years in prison. An appellate court ruled that several features of the original trial had produced an unjust ruling and the conviction was reversed. The case was studied by several psychologists who were concerned about the interrogation methods used and the quality of the children's testimony in the case. This resulted in research concerning the topic of children's memory and suggestibility,resulting in new recommendations for performing interviews with child victims and witnesses.
Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s,and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse,including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County,California,United States,first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse,and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States,as well as Canada,New Zealand,Brazil,and various European countries.
Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis was a New Zealand childcare worker who was wrongfully convicted of child sexual abuse. He was at the centre of one of the country's most enduring judicial controversies,after being found guilty in June 1993 in the High Court on 16 counts of sexual offences involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. He maintained his innocence until his death 26 years later and was supported by many New Zealanders in his attempts to overturn his convictions,although others believed he was guilty. Concerns about the reliability of the convictions centred on far-fetched stories told by many of the children and the interview techniques used to obtain their testimony.
Susan J. Kelley is the former Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. She is also currently a professor of Nursing and the Director of the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren,and founder and director of Project Healthy Grandparents,at Georgia State University.
The Satanic panic in Utah is part of a broader moral panic that began in the 1980s as children in the United States,subjected to coercive interviewing techniques at the hands of zealous social workers,made unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre Satanic rituals and horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of day care workers. As the decade unfolded,clients of believing therapists began to make similar allegations,which are now generally seen as confabulations caused by iatrogenic therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis and automatic writing rather than the discovery of repressed memories. Despite the similarities between the allegations of adults and children,investigations produced only circumstantial,and in many cases contradictory evidence of the patients' disclosures. The court cases surrounding SRA allegations were among the most expensive and lengthy in history and produced no convictions or convictions based solely on the testimony of children that were frequently overturned or dismissed upon appeal.
Child-on-child sexual abuse is a form of child sexual abuse in which a prepubescent child is sexually abused by one or more other children or adolescents,and in which no adult is directly involved. While this includes when one of the children uses physical force,threats,trickery or emotional manipulation to elicit cooperation,it also can include non-coercive situations where the initiator proposes or starts a sexual act that the victim does not understand the nature of and simply goes along with,not comprehending its implications or what the consequences might be.
Forensic developmental psychology is a field of psychology that focuses on "children's actions and reactions in a forensic context" and "children's reports that they were victims or witnesses of a crime". Bruck and Poole (2002) first coined the term "forensic developmental psychology". Although forensic developmental psychology specifically focuses on a child's reliability,credibility,and competency in the courtroom setting,it also includes topics such as autobiographical memory,memory distortion,eyewitness identification,narrative construction,personality,and attachment.
Research published from 2000 to 2020 illustrates increased prevalence rates of sexual violence against people with intellectual disabilities,compared to the general population.:61 The World Health Organization (WHO) funded a study which concluded that 15% of the adult population worldwide in 2012 had a disability,putting them at increased risk of physical,sexual,and intimate partner violence. Of that 15%,6.1% or an estimated 7,008,716,704 adults worldwide had intellectual disability with 5.5% experiencing sexual violence. In another 2012 report,the WHO found that worldwide,children with intellectual disabilities experienced a 4.6 times greater risk of sexual violence than those without disability.
Michael E. Lamb is a professor and former Head of the then Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge,known for his influential work in developmental psychology,child and family policy,social welfare,and law. His work has focused on divorce,child custody,child maltreatment,child testimony,and the effects of childcare on children's social and emotional development. His work in family relationships has focused on the role of both mothers and fathers and the importance of their relationships with children. Lamb's expertise has influenced legal decisions addressing same-sex parenting,advocating for fostering and adoption by adults regardless of their marital status or sexual orientations. Lamb has published approximately 700 articles,many about child adjustment,currently edits the APA journal Psychology,Public Policy,and Law,and serves on the editorial boards on several academic journals.
Eyewitness memory is a person's episodic memory for a crime or other witnessed dramatic event. Eyewitness testimony is often relied upon in the judicial system. It can also refer to an individual's memory for a face,where they are required to remember the face of their perpetrator,for example. However,the accuracy of eyewitness memories is sometimes questioned because there are many factors that can act during encoding and retrieval of the witnessed event which may adversely affect the creation and maintenance of the memory for the event. Experts have found evidence to suggest that eyewitness memory is fallible.
Gail S. Goodman is an American psychologist,known as one of the first in her field to study children's roles in the legal system,specifically children's eyewitness testimony pertaining to the Sixth Amendment. Her awards for her contributions to research,writing,and teaching include the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest in 2017. Her involvement includes being cited in United States Supreme Court cases,which is rare for psychologists.
Judith L. Daylen(previously Cutshall) is a board-certified psychologist. In 1982,she received her B.A. in psychology and philosophy from the University of North Carolina. In 1985,Dr. Daylen received her M.A. in cognitive psychology,and in 1994 she received her PH.D. in clinical psychology both from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Daylen currently works as a clinical and consulting psychologist- she assesses the harm suffered to sexual assault victims and provides expert testimony in court. Recently,Dr. Daylen has focused on providing psychological assessments of victims of physical and sexual assault;however,she has past experience in providing both individual and group treatment to assault victims. To better understand the experience of assault victims and to assist them during times of crisis,Dr. Daylen also volunteered at a rape crisis center. She has even contributed to a book:"Trauma,Trials,and Transformation,Guiding sexual assault victims through the legal system and beyond". In addition to her work with sexual assault victims,Dr. Daylen has contributed to assessing the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Along with John C. Yuille in 1986,Dr. Daylen published a psychological experiment which concluded that eyewitness testimony is often reliable and has merit. Dr. Daylen is also an ordained lay practitioner of Zen Buddhism.
Simona Ghetti is Professor of Psychology at the University of California,Davis,where she is affiliated with the University of California Davis Center for Mind and Brain. She is known for her research on the development of episodic memory,reconstructive memory,and metamemory in youth,with a specific focus on individuals who have had traumatic experiences.
Denise A. Hines is an American psychologist doing research on domestic violence and sexual abuse with focuses on prevention,intervention,and public policy. She is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester,Massachusetts.
Karen Jill Saywitz was an American psychologist,author,and educator. She worked as a developmental and clinical psychologist and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and Department of Psychiatry and Development. For more than 20 years Saywitz taught child development and was director of several mental health programs for families. She also developed "non-leading" techniques for interviewing child witnesses and victims,based on cognitive and developmental psychology principles. She died of cancer in 2018.
Jodi Anne Quas is an applied developmental psychologist who is known for her work on how maltreatment and abuse affect memory development and children's ability to give eyewitness testimony after experiencing trauma. She holds the position of Professor of Psychological Science and Nursing Science at the University of California,Irvine School of Social Ecology.
