JURORS REACTIONS TO SATANIC RITUAL ABUSE ALLEGATIONS

Objective: Some of the most highly publicized child sexual abuse trial s of this century have involved bizarre allegations of satanic ritual abuse, yet little is known about jurors' reactions to ritual abuse cla ims. We investigated how jurors' judgments of defendant guilt and witn ess credibility are affected by the presence or absence of satanic rit ual abuse allegations. Method: Two hundred forty-three mock jurors ren dered judgments about a case involving childhood sexual abuse allegati ons made by either a 5-year-old child or a 30-year-old adult survivor. The presence or absence of satanic ritual abuse allegations was varie d between subjects. Jurors' religiosity was measured. Results: Althoug h jurors were significantly less likely to believe the satanic ritual allegations than other case details, they were as likely to vote guilt y and to believe the victim in satanic as in nonsatanic cases. Victim age had no significant effect on mock jurors' judgments, but there wer e marked individual differences in decisions: When the allegations inv olved satanic ritual abuse, religious jurors were more likely than les s religious jurors to believe the victim. Further, across all conditio ns, women made more pro-victim judgments than did men. Conclusions: Ou r findings suggest that highly bizarre details may be discounted by ju rors (particularly less religious jurors), but that jurors may set asi de their skepticism of satanic ritual details and make judgments about child sexual abuse cases based on their perceptions of the credibilit y of nonsatanic allegations of harm. Whether or not this is an accurat e approach to decision-making in these cases remains an empirical ques tion. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.