Alissa Anderson Call

Black Hills State University | BHSU · Department of Psychology

This study is one of the first to examine students’ intentions to report CSA. Students responded to items about rape myths and who they would consider telling in the event of CSA. Students who reject rape myths were more likely to report CSA to friends instead of Title IX or law enforcement.

We investigated undergraduate mock jurors’ attitudes of an ambiguous sexual assault (SA) case. Gender differences were found for views of complainant credibility, blame, believability, convicting on hearsay, consent, and sentencing. These results may inform SA prevention efforts on college campuses.

The present study examined mock jurors’ reports of evidentiary factors deemed to be most important when deciding their verdict in a CSA case. Jurors indicated that the victim’s testimony, age, motive to report, and delayed report were considered when adjudicating the case. Lack of prosecution evidence was also important. The influence of lack of de...

Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant societal problem, however few CSA cases are actually brought to trial. The cases that do proceed to trial typically involve little evidence, therefore, it is imperative that legal professionals become more aware of possible factors that may contribute to jurors’ perceptions of child complainants and in...

Child sexual abuse (CSA) claims brought forward weeks, months, or years after the alleged events are commonplace, yet the trial-level ramifications of delayed disclosure remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated the influence of length of delayed disclosure (1 day, 1 month, 10 months) as a function of the victim-perpetrator relationship...

Mock juror psychopathology has not been studied with regard to legal judgmentsforcriminalcases.Inthisstudy,mock jurorsreviewedabattered woman criminal case and were asked to render a verdict decision and sentencing recommendation. The anxiety and depression of each mock juror was measured by the DASS-21 (Henry, & Crawford, 2005). Verdict decisions...

In this study, we investigated the relationships between mock jurors’ beliefs about child sexual abuse (CSA) and their decisions for a mock CSA trial. Mock jurors (N = 364) read a written trial summary involving a CSA charge and provided ratings concerning child credibility and defendant guilt. Using a regression pathway model, we found CSA beliefs...

Extant literature on mock jurors’ perceptions of alleged child sexual abuse (CSA) victims suggests that child credibility attributions strongly predict verdict decisions for these specific cases. In this study, we examined the effects case-specific factors (i.e., delayed disclosure, child’s relationship to the alleged perpetrator) and individual di...

Student-teacher sexual relationships often make headline news and catch the public’s attention. This was an exploratory study that analyzed news articles about student-teacher sexual relationships published within 2014. The results indicated that teacher gender was related to several variables. Most of the reports described heterosexual contact. Te...

Delayed disclosure and relationship to perpetrator are factors often presented in child sexual abuse (CSA) trials, and may influence jurors’ perceptions of the child and case outcomes. The effects of both delay and relationship to perpetrator on mock jurors’ decisions (verdict, likelihood of abuse) and views of the alleged child-victim (honesty, co...

The present study investigated mock jurors' (N = 541) perceptions of a hypothetical case of teacher-student sexual contact. Mock jurors read a brief vignette describing an alleged sexual encounter where the gender and age of both the teacher and student were manipulated. Participants rendered legal decisions (i.e., verdict, degree of guilt, and sen...

Sexual contact between an adult and child is considered wholly unacceptable by today’s standards. However, adult-adolescent relationships seem to elicit mixed reactions. This study explored perceptions of sexual contact between teachers and students. Participants read a vignette in which teacher/student gender, attire, and attractiveness were exper...

Psychologists suggest an inverse relationship for child age and sexual knowledge (SK) level on jurors’ perceptions of victim credibility in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases (Nightingale, 1993), however, this interrelationship has not been experimentally tested. This study investigated child age and SK on mock jurors’ credibility judgments after revie...

Poster presented at the undergraduate poster session of the annual meeting of the North Carolina Psychological Association.

In the context of adult-victim sex crimes, extralegal factors such as perceptions of the victim and defendant often affect jurors’ abilities to make impartial legal decisions. We explored whether these perceptions similarly influenced jurors’ decisions in child-victim crimes involving students and teachers. In the present study, we evaluated how ma...

In the context of adult sex crimes, extralegal factors such as attitudes towards rape myth acceptance and homophobia often affect jurors’ ability to make impartial legal decisions. We explored whether these attitudes similarly affect jurors’ decisions in child-victim sex crimes. In the present study, we evaluated undergraduates’ attitudes of rape m...