Proof Dilemma In Child Sexual Abuse Cases And Its Solution

There are many child sexual abuse cases in these years,which aroused people’s concern.Crimes of child sexual abuse greatly harm the physical and mental health and legitimate rights of children,and should be severely punished.However,in practice,child sexual abuse cases often face the problem of insufficient evidence.And there is often a "one-to-one" situation between the victim’s statement and the suspect’s or defendant’s defense evidence,which makes it difficult to meet the requirement of"mutual corroboration of evidence".The requirement of "mutual corroboration of evidence" results in difficulties in determining the facts of the cases.In this regard,we should build a set of comprehensive proof ideas that meet the characteristics of child sexual abuse cases and are more rational and scientific,including expanding the scope of evidence and materials to be assessed,breaking through the single corroboration proof method,and using multiple evidence analysis methods.This thesis discusses the proof dilemma and its solution in child sexual abuse cases.Firstly,it clarifies the proof dilemma of child sexual abuse cases.Secondly,it summarizes the existing solutions of the proof dilemma and makes a review.Finally,it constructs a set of comprehensive proof ideas of child sexual abuse based on the reference of previous studies.The first part of this thesis is an overview of child sexual abuse cases.Firstly,it clarifies the meaning of child sexual abuse,as well as the connotation and scope of crimes of child sexual abuse.Secondly,it summarizes the characteristics of child sexual abuse cases:rape and child molestation are the most frequent crimes,the victims are younger,the suspects and victims are often acquaintances,the crimes are usually hidden,and there is often a "one-to-one" situation between the victim’s statement and the suspect’s or defendant’s defense evidence.The second part of this thesis examines the reasons of proof dilemma in child sexual abuse cases.First,the evidence of child sexual abuse is "inherently insufficient".Due to the difficulties in discovering cases,physical evidence is scarce and easily lost.The defendant’s defense and the victim’s statement evidence are easily appearing "one-to-one" situation.In practice,a large amount of auxiliary evidence is ignored,which exacerbates the difficulties in determining the facts of the cases.Secondly,due to the special nature of the children,it is more difficult to assess the victim’s statement which plays a central role in the proof of child sexual abuse cases.Finally,China’s traditional method of proof has mechanical problems in the use of evidence,with excessive emphasis on mutual corroboration of evidence and crude methods of evidence analysis.The third part of this thesis summarizes the existing solutions to the dilemma of child sexual abuse cases,including three ideas.The first method is lowering the standard of admissibility of evidence by common law countries,so that more evidence can enter the courtroom and become the basis for adjudication.The second method is the establishment a lenient corroboration rules.The third is the establishment the rules of evidence assessment with the victim’s statement as the core.The fourth part of this thesis is to construct a set of comprehensive proof ideas for solving the proof dilemma of child sexual abuse cases based on the summary of existing studies,focusing not only on the use of evidence at the trial stage,but also on the collection of evidence before trial.First,the collection of evidence should be comprehensive.The collection of the victim’s statement should be regulated in terms of the subject of questioning and the persons present,questioning procedures,and questioning methods.Pay attention to the collection of physical evidence,especially the collection of electronic data.Secondly,the reliability of the victim’s statement should be assessed using multiple methods,including examining the reliability of the victim itself and the reliability of the content of the statement.Finally,the facts of the cases should be constructed with the victim’s statement as the core,and the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt should be adopted.