engleski

Judges' and public' attitudes toward legal protection of abused children in Croatia

As a part of an ongoing reform of criminal law procedure in child abuse cases, judges (N=25) and district attorneys (N=22) were surveyed regarding position of children in the legal procedure. Participants were specialized for crimes against children and youth and came from whole Croatia.Subjects were asked to describe collaboration with psychologists during investigation in child abuse cases - although 79.5% of them found such collaboration very useful, only 36.6% of them collaborated regularly with a psychologist. When assessing different aspects of legal procedure in child abuse cases 82.2% of them thought that children had to wait too long for investigation ; 84.8% thought that children were being interviewed to many times ; 86.7% believed that children can be traumatized by a legal procedure itself ; 87% supported introduction of video equipment in child abuse cases as necessary. When reporting about their emotional reactions in child abuse cases, typical emotion was anger. They estimated the work in these cases as very stressful (82.3%) ; perceived that their professional preparation for work with abused children was not sufficient (30.4%) or only moderate (45.7%), but expressed high motivation for further education. Generally speaking, these results show that judges and public attorneys are (1) sensitive to the position of abused children in legal procedure, (2) do not find themselves educated enough for work in this area, but are motivated to receive additional training, (3) find their job very stressful and very often face own anger, (4) although they find collaboration with psychologists useful, they do not work with them enough. These results seemed to be sound ground for carrying out the reform of criminal law procedure in child abuse cases in Croatia.

Childe abuse; judges and public attorneys; attitudes; legal procedure

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