Clinical Forensic Medicine Child Sexual Abuse

Children behave emotionally different during the forensic interview, and the higher the number of abuse allegations, the less the child is upset during the interview. Physicians who are evaluating suspected cases of child sexual abuse need to elicit some information from children with the main goal of maintaining their health and protection. Interviewers are recommended to shift the child's recollections from script memory to episodic memory by asking the child to give details of a single incident. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is the most researched forensic interviewing protocol where the behavior of the interviewers was reviewed to test for its applicability. The medical history provides an opportunity for the examiner to build trust with the child and to relieve the anxiety that is experienced by some children. Ridges of the vagina are more often seen in older children than in newborns, as the hymen decreases, giving a better view of the vaginal content.