> The best approach against the "repressed memories" or "why are you reporting this now" is to make it as straightforward and encouraged as possible to report incidents as and when they happen, and collect and process any evidence at the time.
After the Cleveland "satanic abuse" scandal (where many children were wrongly removed from their kind and loving parents) the UK implemented wide ranging changes.
These include ABE (achieving best evidence) interview techniques that are designed to get accurate information from witnesses without creating false memories; getting social workers to say "allegation of abuse" and not "disclosure of abuse". http://www.transparencyproject.org.uk/things-children-say-di... and a culture of supporting the victim while providing a robust investigation which holds open the possibility that it's a malicious allegation. I'm not sure they're getting the balance right at the moment, and I think too many victims are not seeing justice.
Police and social workers are in a tricky situation here. Clearly Cleveland was awful and something needed to be done to protect innocent parents and children from the harm of false allegations. But the current rate of conviction for sexual offences is far too low (over 100,000 rapes each year, fewer than 3,000 convictions), and the Rotherham scandal was terrible -- vulnerable children being raped by criminal gangs were assumed to have "chosen" that lifestyle and abandoned by their social workers.
