Evidentiary Standards in Sexual Abuse Cases in Continental European Legal Systems

Before coming to the real subject of my contribution, which is the way in which continental European legal systems in general and the Dutch Legal system in particular handle evidentiary problems in sexual abuse cases, it is important to consider some general features of continental European legal systems, as they differ in significant ways from the Anglo-American way. All continental European legal systems have civil law systems as opposed to the Anglo-American common law system. Both are actually families of systems, with different pedigrees, different family traits and based on radically different phi-losophies concerning what the law is about.*