Criminal Trial Attorney Questions About Parent Conflict when Children Testify Against a Parent in Child Sexual Abuse Cases.

Authors

Colleen E Sullivan, Stacia N Stolzenberg

Published in

Child maltreatment. Pages 10775595261484593. Sep 03, 2026. Epub Sep 03, 2026.

Abstract

When a parent is accused of child sexual abuse (CSA), parent conflict raises concerns about allegation credibility. However, little is known about how attorneys question children about parent conflict. We examined 21,863 question-answer pairs from 53 testimonies of 6- to 17-year-olds (M = 13.46) in cases involving accused parents (49.1% stepfathers, 42.1% biological fathers, 8.8% other). We identified parent conflict topics and analyzed differences by attorney, child age, question type, and child elaboration. Parent conflict arose in nearly all cases but served different purposes: defense attorneys used it to suggest allegations resulted from conflict, whereas prosecutors used it to contextualize delayed disclosure. Attorneys questioned younger children more often about coaching. Closed-ended questions and unelaborative responses predominated, although children elaborated more when describing general parent conflict than other conflict topics. Findings highlight parent conflict as a versatile rhetorical tool and the need for developmentally sensitive questioning.

PMID:
42693067
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 04 Sep 2026.

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