PART I: THE REALITY OF WRONGFUL ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE What kind of
allegations and why do they matter?
1: Ros Burnett: Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse: A
Neglected and Growing Category of Injustice
2: Edited by Ros Burnett: Experiencing False Allegations of Abuse:
First-hand Accounts
PART II: CULTURE, IDEOLOGY, POLITICS What is the terrain that gives
rise to false allegations?
3: Mary deYoung: Demons, Devils and Ritual Abuse: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives
4: Frank Furedi: Moral Crusades, Child Protection, Celebrities and
the Duty to Believe
5: Mark Smith: Telling Stories? Adults' Retrospective Narratives of
Abuse in Residential Child Care
6: John Brigham: 'Rape Culture' Narrative, State Feminism and the
Presumption of Guilt
7: Bill Hebenton and Toby Seddon: Making Accusations: Precautionary
Logic and Embedded Suspicion in an Insecure and Uncertain World
PART III: THE ALLEGATION: CAUSES, MOTIVATIONS, CASE-STUDIES Why
would anyone make a false accusation?
8: Felicity Goodyear-Smith: Why and How False Allegations of Abuse
Occur: An Overview
9: Barbara Hewson: The Compensations of Being a Victim
10: J. Guillermo Villalobos, Deborah Davis and Richard A. Leo: His
Story, Her Story: Sexual Miscommunication, Motivated Remembering,
and Intoxication as Pathways to Honest False Testimony Regarding
Sexual Consent
11: Christopher C French and James Ost: Beliefs about Memory,
Childhood Abuse and Hypnosis Amongst Clinicians, Legal
Professionals and the General Public
12: David Rose: To Catch a Sex Offender: Police, Trawls and
Personal Injury Solicitors
PART IV: INTERROGATION, PROSECUTION, CONVICTION, APPEAL How could
the justice system get it so wrong?
13: Deborah Davis and Richard A. Leo: When Exoneration Seems
Hopeless: The Special Vulnerability of Sexual Abuse Suspects to
False Confession
14: Luke Gittos: Complaints of Sexual Abuse and the Decline of
Objective Prosecuting
15: Daniel Medwed: 'In denial': the Hazards of Maintaining
Innocence After Conviction
16: Michael Zander: When Juries Find Innocent People Guilty:
Strengths and Limitations of the Appellate System in England and
Wales
PART V: FINDING WAYS FORWARD What's to be done?
17: Steve Herman: Reducing Harm Due to False Allegations of Child
Sexual Abuse: The Importance of Corroboration
18: Galit Nahari: Advances in Lie Detection: Limitations and
Potential for Investigating Allegations of Abuse
19: Robert F. Belli: Toward Reconciliation of the True and False
Recovered Memory Debate
20: Timothy Bakken: The Defendant's Plea of Innocent in Sexual
Abuse Cases
21: Ros Burnett: Reducing the Incidence and Harms of Wrongful
Allegations of Abuse
Ros Burnett is a Senior Research Associate, formerly Reader in
Criminology, at the Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford,
which she joined in 1990 after gaining a DPhil in social psychology
at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford. Her research
areas include interpersonal relationships; rehabilitation of
offenders and desistance from crime; and wrongful allegations of
sexual and child abuse. Her most recent book was Where Next for
Criminal
Justice? (co-authored with David Faulkner) published by The Policy
Press, 2011. Recent voluntary work includes research and
information consultant to FACT, the support group for falsely
accused, and she is
an associate editor of the International Journal of Offender
Therapy and Comparative Criminology.
Ros Burnett has brought together a fantastic collection of
contributors that cover almost every area of false accusations.
*Dr Denis Jones, FACT*
Ros Burnett ... does a wonderful job of rounding up highly
respected and credible professionals from the US, UK and New
Zealand as contributors to this book. Given Burnetts prior
experience as a Probation Officer, it makes her own contributions
to this topic all the more insightful ... It is extremely
refreshing and due time to have a reference book such as this that
honestly talks about the fallibility of the justice system,
misguided police officers, harmful social policies based on errant
moral crusades, and the devastating human consequences of wrongful
allegations and convictions.
*Clary Jaxon, Canadian Association for Equality*
It should ... become required study for all those whose task it is
to assess the truthfulness and reliability of allegations of sexual
assault police investigators, prosecution lawyers and trial
judges.
*Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, Counsel Magazine.*
A very important academic contribution to an increasingly worrying
contemporary debate.
*Sir Henry Brooke*
This is a ground-breaking book. It will undoubtedly become a major
reference work for criminologists, sociologists, legal researchers
and legal professionals. It deserves also to be read by policy
makers, parliamentarians and social commentators ... The arbitrary
nature of false allegations are discussed with a clarity that is
thought-provoking ... An authoritative and ambitious book which
exposes the injustice of untrue allegations.
*Dr Kevin Felstead, British False Memory Society*
The book, part academic, part polemic, is an essential read for any
and all involved in the criminal justice system - which means
everyone: investigators, interviewers, social workers, police,
prosecutors, defenders, judges and the public (as potential
jurors). To me, this book is a genuine 21-faceted diamond - and
how, how, I wish it was available some 25 years ago. As a whole, it
is one large cautionary tale. To finish on a practical note for
criminal lawyers: this book is a virtual directory containing a
gallery of experts, their expertise and their experience, with
excerpts of their work. If for no other reason than that, you may
want to think of acquiring it - or, at the very least, consulting a
copy. But if you do just try to use it as a directory, I venture
the thought that the content, its substance and its strength, will
lay a hold on you.
*Nigel Hampton QC, LawTalk*
The experience of those accused of such heinous crimes is little
explored and understood. This month, a new book is published
Wrongful Allegations of Sexual and Child Abuse - making an
important contribution to the debate.
*Jon Robins, Criminal Law & Justice Weekly*
This is an important book which raises serious issues not only for
academics but also for criminal justice policy-makers,
practitioners and commentators. It illuminates some troubling
features of the justice system in Britain and the United States and
of modern western society more generally. It deserves to be widely
read, not least by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse
which the British Government set up in 2014.
*David Faulkner CB, Centre for Criminology, University of
Oxford*
Happily - if anything can be so described in such a context -
Oxford University Press published Wrongful Allegations of Sexual
and Child Abuse, edited by a senior research associate at that
university's Centre for Criminology, Ros Burnett. Its 21
contributions from experts in this field, both legal and academic,
set out how public horror at the thought of sexual abuse of
children has led even apparently sophisticated legal systems into
extraordinary injustices.
*Dominic Lawson, The Sunday Times*
The one thing this book isn't, most emphatically isn't, is a
demolition of any particular claims of sexual abuse. It is far,
far, cleverer than that. It is a careful analysis, expert by
expert, of the psychological pressures that might lead to a
wrongful allegation; of the ways in which policing methods may
contribute towards this; the economic pressures on therapists and
personal injury lawyers; how judicial thinking is formulated and
best of all, several chapters on how we could move forward in the
future, in the best interests of both complainants and defendants
... I hope that people, particularly journalists and activists,
from both sides of the great divide as the issue of historic
allegations of abuse has become, will read this book, cover to
cover. If you are going to argue, debate, or be an activist on the
subject - then you should be in possession of all the facts.
*Susan Cameron-Blackie*
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