,1998) In many cases, with children how you ask is what you get. In light of this, in the 1980's, most countries (including Canada) had the requirement for corroboration of a child's unsworn evidence dropped. Therefore, children's credibility, their reliability as witnesses, and their susceptibility to leading questions quickly became prominent issues. Recognizing that children would need help in dealing with the challenging task of testifying was the first step taken towards the reform of the treatment of children in the court system. In 1988 there were amendments made to the Criminal Code and the Canada Evidence Act to oversee the changes in attitude about child testimony. Again in 1993 additional sections were added and several amendment have commenced since then. Still currently, interest in this issue has proliferated and there are now hundreds of articles in the literature addressing these topics.
Judging the Reliability of Child Testimony.
As mentioned before, judging the reliability of child testimony is a very delicate issue. There have been many research projects dedicated to the understanding of a child's reactions to repeated questioning about the behavior of another person, as well as the impact of repeated suggestions and stereotypes. An example of the importance of addressing this issue can be seen by this example of a child witness testimony taken from State v. Marcias, 1987 (as cited in Thompson et al.,1998):.
"When I first saw Fred with red stuff on his shirt, I didn't think it was that important. At first I didn't even know if it was blood or chili. Later, when I saw Fred had a gun or a knife, it caught my attention, and I thought that it must be blood. Because different people asked me so many different questions about what I saw I became confused. I thought I might have seen something that would be helpful to the police. I didn't realize that it would become so important.
