ATTORNEY ATTITUDES REGARDING BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED WITH CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

There appears to be a good deal of disagreement between professionals as to what constitutes child abuse. Attorneys as a group have been fou nd to judge behaviors associated with child abuse more leniently than other abuse professionals. However, no one has discriminated between d efense and prosecuting attorneys in these areas. It was hypothesized t hat because of divergent roles in child sexual abuse cases attitudes t oward adult-child behaviors associated with sexual abuse would differ among attorney groups. Two prosecuting and two defense attorneys from every county in die state of Indiana were sent questionnaires. Partici pants were asked to indicate if a behavior was acceptable, inappropria te, or sexual abuse if it occurred on one or on multiple occasions. Pr osecutors had more severe judgements than the defense attorneys on 32 of the 42 behaviors. They were more likely to indicate that a behavior was inappropriate or abuse. Cognitive dissonance theory is proposed a s a possible explanation for these findings.