The Rt Hon Lord Justice Wall: Medical Evidence in Child Abuse Cases: Problem Areas

The Rt Hon Lord Justice Wall

The need for expert evidence in a number of difficult cases under the Children Act is in my view incontrovertible. We all need high quality expert advice. In this context 'we' includes not only the judiciary and the legal profession but above all it means the litigants and the children concerned. The work could not be more important or more crucial to the outcome of cases and to individual children's lives. But and here is the paradox we cannot accept the advice we receive uncritically. For obvious reasons it would be an abnegation of our responsibilities to the children concerned and to their parents were we to do so. So we are saying to the experts in one breath:
'We need your advice: please come forward and give it to us' and in the next breath we are saying: 'When you give us your advice we will not accept it uncritically. We will examine it. We may turn it inside out. We will want to know how you reached your opinion ...

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