The Legal System and Child Sex Abuse—Ross Cheit's The Witch‐Hunt Narrative: Politics,Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children

Cheit, Ross E. 2014 . The Witch‐Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children . New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. xvii + 508. $49.95 cloth. The prosecution of child sex abuse in cases involving very young children presents difficult problems for the justice system. Ross Cheit's book The Witch‐Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (2014) addresses these problems in the context of the 1980s cases involving daycare centers. While the conventional conclusion drawn from these cases is that young children are not credible witnesses, Cheit's examination of the trial records in these cases reveals credible evidence of abuse in many, as well as evidence of injustice attributable to untrained and/or overenthusiastic interviewers. Cheit's examination of this litigation provides an opportunity to evaluate the legal system's treatment of child witnesses in sex abuse cases, as well as to discuss the appropriate use of social scientific evidence in litigation, the impact of mass media accounts on public policy, and the respective merits of criminal versus civil lawsuits in child sex abuse cases.     

The Transitioning Families Therapeutic Reunification Model in Nonfamilial Abductions

The existing literature on abduction reunification is limited and evolving. Although guidelines for model service approaches exist, few programs address the unique challenges of reunifying children and families following abduction. This article delineates a family‐based reunification model that has assisted families affected by abduction since 2006. Model components include a team‐centered approach, a stage‐oriented reunification process, and pitfalls and strategies related to intersystem collaboration. We present the value of a family‐systems, solution‐focused, trauma‐informed, and case‐specific approach to therapeutic reunification following child abduction. Evidence that is contrary to the popular notion of Stockholm's syndrome is also marked. Research on the efficacy of therapeutic reunification is essential for the growth of systems equipped to address the dynamic needs of these families. Accordingly, suggestions for evaluation research are proposed.     

More money,new household cultural dynamics: women in micro-finance in Ghana

This article reports on research into the impacts of micro-finance on gender roles, the extent to which socio-cultural factors influence these changes, and how such changes affect the well-being of rural Bogoso households in the Wassa West District of Ghana. Findings indicated that micro-finance has changed men's and women's control over decisions and resource allocations, which consequently affected financial responsibilities and the education of children, and largely contributed to household well-being. However, the small size of the loans was a limitation. The article concludes that socio-cultural factors may promote or inhibit well-being in rural households, and that micro-finance is not a sufficient tool in itself to promote women's and households' well-being. It is recommended that if rural people's well-being matters, collaborative efforts in the appraisal, monitoring, and evaluation of micro-finance initiatives, with the government providing leadership, are imperative.     

Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Why do lower courts treat Supreme Court precedents favorably or unfavorably? To address this question, we formulate a theoretical framework based on current principal‐agent models of the judiciary. We use the framework to structure an empirical analysis of a random sample of 500 Supreme Court cases, yielding over 10,000 subsequent treatments in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. When the contemporary Supreme Court is ideologically estranged from the enacting Supreme Court, lower courts treat precedent much more harshly. Controlling for the ideological distance between the enacting and contemporary Supreme Courts, the preferences of the contemporary lower court itself are unrelated to its behavior. Hence, hierarchical control appears strong and effective. At the same time, however, a lower court's previous treatments of precedent strongly influence its later treatments. The results have important implications for understanding legal change and suggest new directions for judicial principal‐agency theory.     

The single most polymorphic STR Locus: SE33 performance in U.S. populations

The STR locus SE33 (ACTBP2) located on chromosome 6 (6q14) is arguably the most polymorphic marker examined thus far by the forensic community with a heterozygosity of >0.95 in some populations. Three different primer sets were utilized in this study in order to assess the possibilities of primer binding site mutations. Population variation was measured in 460 U.S. Caucasian, 445 African American, 336 Hispanic, and 202 Asian samples along with mutation rates from almost 400 father–son pairs. In addition, the 10 genomic DNA components in NIST Standard Reference Material SRM 2391b were sequenced and found to exhibit a variety of additional base changes, insertions, and deletions outside of the SE33 repeat region.     

Premilitary adult sexual assault victimization and perpetration in a Navy recruit sample

Female (n = 5,226) and male (n = 5,969) U.S. Navy recruits completed a survey assessing their premilitary histories of adult sexual assault (SA), defined as attempted or completed rape since the age of 14. The survey was completed under anonymous or identified conditions. Overall, 39% of women reported premilitary SA victimization and 13% of men admitted premilitary SA perpetration. As predicted, rates were significantly higher in the anonymous than in the identified condition. For the sample of women as a whole, marital status, ethnicity, and family income were associated with SA victimization; for men, only marital status was associated with SA perpetration. Compared to previous college samples, Navy recruits were more likely to have previous SA experience. Given the negative consequences associated with SA victimization and perpetration, the present study reinforces the desirability of developing additional treatment, education, and prevention programs to reduce the occurrence of SA among military recruits.     

Family First? The Costs and Benefits of Family Centrality for Adolescents with High-Conflict Families

Youth who do not identify with or value their families (i.e., low family centrality) are considered to be at risk for maladjustment. However, the current study investigated whether low family centrality may be adaptive in negative family contexts (i.e., high family conflict) because youth’s self-worth should be less tied to the quality of their family relationships. Multilevel models using daily diaries and latent variable interactions using longitudinal questionnaires indicated that, among a sample of 428 Mexican American adolescents (49.8% male, M _age?=?15.02 years), lower family centrality was generally detrimental to youth’s well-being. However, for youth in adverse family environments, low family centrality ceased to function as a risk factor. The present findings suggest that family centrality values play a more nuanced role in youth well-being than previously believed, such that low family centrality may be an adaptive response to significant family challenges.     

Gender and Perceived Control in the Russian Federation

The consequences of the socioeconomic transition for male physical health in Russia are widely documented, but much less research examines psychological well-being and mental outlook, or how these outcomes differ for men and women in Russia. Exploring gender differences in personal control, an important aspect of psychological well-being, we find that, controlling for social and economic factors, Russian women report lower levels of control than men. Gender differences in the social determinants of perceived control highlight the importance of gender roles for understanding psychological stress and inform how social expectations differentially influence men's and women's paths to well-being in Russia.     

THE NEW U. S. IMMIGRANTS: HOW DO THEY AFFECT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE?

The implications of recent immigration for race relations in the United States depend importantly on family cultural orientations among Mexican Americans and how this group is culturally perceived by Anglos. Because Moynihan's 1965 work (in)famously emphasized the need to change black family culture in order to ameliorate black poverty, his work still holds implications for understanding how cultural orientations affect changing color lines. Unfortunately, his partially insightful analyses inadequately foresaw that policies designed to alleviate poverty through the modification of family cultural patterns are likely to fail without parallel changes in structural opportunities. Similar limitations also often emerge from mis-characterizations of Mexican origin family cultural situations, which all too often are incongruously reified as either being unduly familistic (thus falsely implying Mexican origin families foster self-sufficiency) or largely governed by culture of poverty tendencies (thus inaccurately suggesting Mexican origin families depend on welfare). Here we review research suggesting that Mexican origin families are neither substantially familistic nor disproportionately susceptible to moral hazard, thus indicating that future Mexican origin economic advancement is likely to turn on the availability of structural opportunities. In-depth interviews with Anglos further suggest that Mexicans are not culturally viewed with the same degree of prejudice and discrimination as blacks, implying that the integration of Mexicans into American society, contingent on adequate economic opportunity, will probably progress more steadily than often feared, while that of blacks may proceed more slowly than often expected.