Has anyone cross-examined Amanda Belshaw as a child suggestibility expert? She is from Houston. I have an agg sexual assault/indecency case that she will likely testify for the defense.

I would greatly appreciate any info you have.

I don't have any familiarity with this particular witness, but I did successfully deal with this issue in a trial last November with a well known expert in the Central Texas Area.

Look into your expert's training and experience in conducting forensic interviews of children. My expert had some brief experience interviewing victims YEARS after the fact for the purposes of therapy evals in a treatment setting years after the abuse. Those interviews were not focused on "did this perp actually do it" but on recognizing issues to be treated in therapy for the victim.

So although the expert had great experience in evaluating sex offenders, he had zip in conducting forensic interviews of non-recanting victims.

Further, my expert touted his work with the innocence project in interviewing a few recanting victims, again, years after the fact. And he had only done a couple of those.

In my case, I came across a line in the expert's report that just didn't look like something that should be in there. It seemed like a line from research. I put the sentence in quotes and googled it and found it was from another's work and was directly lifted from the work without attribution. Interestingly, the expert had used that sentence/quote out of context and that was certainly fun to cross him over.

Investigate whether your expert has any training in the conducting of forensic interview (often times they have none or very little training in this area). My CAC interviewer had hundreds of hours of training, but the expert had only 8 hours of attending a seminar on interviewing victims, and had NO ACTUAL experience interviewing non-recanting victims who had made recent outcry.

The expert in my case had never, ever interviewed a recently discovered victim. I stressed this fact in his cross again and again. I also stressed that my victim had never recanted, which was really the only experience he had with interviewing victims.

Finally, Dr. Lee Carter of Waco is your best weapon in the war of experts. He speaks the truth and can back up his testimony with research facts and figures and with his own relevant experience of interviewing hundreds of victims. Most importantly, Dr. Carter can communicate effectively to your jury, no matter what their educational level. Dr. Carter made the defense expert in my case look like a buffoon.