Commentary on “Analyzing Child Sexual Abuse Allegations”: Will a New Untested Criterion-Based Content Analysis Model Be Helpful?

We accepted an invitation from O’Donohue et al. to provide feedback on their criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) model for assessing child sexual abuse allegations and identified three concerns. First, the claim that “most allegations are likely true” risks departing from the neutral and objective hypothesis testing stances required for forensic evaluations. Second, the article fails to review the extensive literature concerning previous (and mostly unsuccessful) efforts to empirically validate similar CBCA approaches. Third, we posit that any model or systematic analysis must occur within comprehensive forensic evaluations that integrate contemporary advances in interviewing techniques, data collection from multiple sources, and consideration of multiple hypotheses.