The author advances a taxonomy of expert evidence in relation to
the responses of sexually abused children to their assaults. He
analyses a series of Australian and New Zealand cases in the context
of Summit's publicly stated recent views on the use to which Child
Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome ("CSAAS") can be put. He argues
that expert evidence that goes further than dispelling myths or
disabusing triers of fact of misperceptions generally held within the
community should not be permitted. He contends that CSAAS is an
illegitimate description of such information and that such "syndrome
evidence" should not be permitted, particularly before juries. He
maintains, moreover, that further rigour will be (and should be)
required of prosecutors and mental health professionals alike if such
counterintuitive evidence is to be admitted. This will entail proof of
the existence of community misunderstanding of the phenomenon,
establishment that the field of expertise from which child sexual
abuse accommodation evidence emanates is sufficient for the purpose,
as well as proof of the expert's expertise in the field. However, he
argues against abandoning attempts to use counterintuitive evidence
merely on the basis of a number of adverse Australasian
determinations, whose reasoning is dependent on the quality of the
evidence hitherto advanced and the overly limited perceptions of the
evidential framework within which such evidence should be
evaluated.