ALSA 2025 meeting

The Citizen Participation Trial System in South Korea allows laypeople to serve as jurors, interpreting evidence and rendering verdicts in criminal trials. However, jurors are vulnerable to the influence of their personal biases especially in child sex abuse cases where the child’s testimony often plays a crucial role but differs significantly from that of adults. In real-life Citizen Participation Trials, jurors’ preexisting beliefs or biases regarding child sex abuse victims might influence their verdicts. Thus, this study aimed to examine the effects of CSA victim’s age, level of sexual knowledge on mock jurors’ legal judgment making. This study used 2(Victim age: 6 vs. 12) X 2(Level of sexual knowledge: Low vs. High) between-subject design. An online survey was conducted and participants(N=250) were randomly assigned to one of 4 conditions, read vignette based on real CSA case, and rated the Credibility of victim and made verdict. The findings of this research are anticipated to provide empirical evidence for the necessity of judicial interventions.