As a clinical social worker for 35 years I've been involved in child sexual assault investigations for over three decades, off and on, including five years exclusively assigned to an urban child welfare unit which specialized in child sexual assault investigations. My mentor is Dr. Wayne D. Duehn, a professor emeritus of social work of The University of Texas at Arlington. Duehn's work - as well as those of others including Ann Burgess, Suzanne Sgroi, and A. Nicholas Groth, beginning in the early 1980s - focused on among other things facilitating a turnaround in professional attitudes toward these allegations.
Prior to this period, conventional wisdom was one of hardened skepticism toward all such allegations. As with all crime, investigations must be evidence-based. It is standard practice to obtain medical examinations of alleged victims, but realistically, few such exams produce anything admissible in a court of law. The exceptions involve very young victims of repeated assaults and those where sexually trasmitted diseases are found in both the victim and offender. Other cases which are quickly greenlighted for prosecution include those with a third party eyewitness. The rest - the huge majority - are those where allegations are made and denied, and clear and convincing evidence is not forthcoming.
I use the term "child sexual assault" as opposed to "child sexual abuse" because to me the latter implies there may be some sort of appropriate adult-child sexual interaction. That is my preferred usage. In this area of practice, the term "abuse" is used more frequently, but they mean the same thing.
My purpose here is to discuss the evolution of such investigations, how these practices applied to this one, and how I developed my opinion of this high profile case.
But first, read Dylan Farrow's "Open Letter" published by Nicholas Kristof is his New York Times blog:
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/...
My thoughts below the Rosarsch Test.