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State v. Sloan (1995 [Mo. Ct. App.]) was a criminal case of child sexual abuse. AD., the 6-year-old alleged victim, was dropped off on Friday by her mother at her grandmother's house, where the child's aunt Evelyn and the defendant also resided. Two days later, on Sunday, the child's aunt Anita phoned the child's mother and told her that something was wrong. AD. then told her mother that the defendant had sexually assaulted her the day before. The mother called the child abuse hot line. On Thursday, 5 days after the alleged abuse, a social worker and a police detective …

One can discern two parallel trends in the law and the psychology of child witnesses. In the law, appellate courts are beginning to stem the once powerful movement to increase the acceptance of children’s testimony and the admissibility of children’s out-of-court statements. In psychology, experimental psychologists are amassing evidence of the potential unreliability of children’s memory reports. The trends intersect when courts assess the reliability of children’s statements in order to evaluate the competency of child witnesses, to decide whether to admit expert testimony about the suggestibility of children, and to decide whether to admit children’s hearsay.