This book considers the law relating to child abuse across the legal disciplines of family, criminal, tort and evidence law, as well as law and practice relating to the investigation of complaints of child abuse. It analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the reponse of each legal framework to allegations of child abuse, and places this analysis in the context of innovative legal policies and practices of other similar jurisdictions (most notably Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand). The book is unique in its analysis of such a wide range of legal frameworks within their social and political context.

About the Author:
Hoyano holds three degrees from the University of Alberta in Canada in medieval history and law, and the BCL (Balliol College Oxford). In 1994 she accepted an academic appointment at the Law Faculty of the University of Bristol. In 1999 she became a Tutorial Fellow and CUF Lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford University, where she teaches Evidence, Criminal and Tort Law. Together with colleagues at Bristol University, Caroline Keenan and Laura Hoyano were co-directors of a major empirical and comparative law study funded by the Home Office, An Assessment of the Admissibility and Sufficiency of Evidence in Child Abuse Prosecutions (HMSO 1999), which contributed to the eventual enactment of Special Measures Directions in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. Laura Hoyano has published and lectured extensively about litigating child abuse in different fields of law, in England and North America. Caroline Keenan graduated in law from the University of Sheffield, where she also
completed her PhD on the investigation of cases of child abuse. She then lectured in Criminal and Family Law and Criminology at the University of Bristol and subsequently at the University of Durham. In addition to the empirical study on the prosecution of child abuse, An Assessment of the Admissibility and Sufficiency of Evidence in Child Abuse Prosecutions, she was commissioned by the Home Office to conduct a review of the law on sexual offences against children and vulnerable adults which contributed to the law reform enacted by the Sexual Offences Act 2003. She has published widely in the field of child protection law, focusing on family and criminal law and the law relating to the investigation of abuse. Caroline Keenan is currently a Lecturer in Law at Queen's University, Belfast.