Two star prosecutors from Harris County, Terese Buess and Mike Trent, are writing a book on investigating and prosecuting child sexual assault cases. The working table of contents is included as an attachment.

We'd love to have any suggestions for additional material to include, any forms or resources you've developed or found helpful over the years, etc. Please post your comments or send an e-mail to me at beckham@tdcaa.com.

Child_sex_abuse_table_of_contents.doc (28 Kb, 77 downloads) Child Sexual Abuse table of contents

With the advent of Crawford and its progeny the book will have to address ways of getting a child victim's statements into evidence. I think our advocacy center, multi-disciplinary approach may harm us in this regard. Defense lawyers will argue that the close cooperation between police, CPS, medicos and therapists along with our structured forensic interviews make the child victim's out of court statements testimonial in nature thereby trumping our old friends the hearsy exceptions for stmts. for medical treatment and business records. Additionally, I think the courts may further restrict a CPS investigator's ability to testify about a
defendant's out of custody oral statements (absent Miranda on the theory that they have become an arm of law enforcement. The advocacy center approach is the best thing to ever happen in the investigation and prosecution of crimes against children. I am afraid the courts may force put us to a Hobson's choice.