Judicial Sentence, Sexual Assaults and Psychological Expertise: A Cross-Cultural Approach

It was analyze the influence of psychological evaluation in judicial decisions of child sexual abuse in three departments of Colombia and in a Spanish province. The transcultural analysis compares judgments of child sexual abuse in both countries between the year of 2000 and 2014. The 91.7% of judgments of the Spanish judges or magistrates made explicit reference to the psychological evaluation while in Colombia the proportion was 88.8%. The proximity of these percentages is encouraging because these results were reached using different test data, different criminal codes and different routes in the application of psychological expertise. Similar conclusions in both countries confirm the value of the contribution of psychologist on judicial decisions.