The Master's thesis entitled The Role of the Child as a Witness in Criminal Proceedings addresses the issue of the current regulation of the involvement of children in criminal proceedings as witnesses or as minor victims. Children are vulnerable and unable to take care of themselves, yet too often they are victims of violence, which causes them to feel hurt, fearful and breaks down their sense of security and trust. Our main concern in criminal proceedings is therefore to look after their best interests and ways of reducing the harm and harmful effects of secondary victimisation that children suffer as a result of their involvement in criminal proceedings. It presents the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act relating first to children as witnesses and then as minor victims, focusing on the specificities of questioning children in criminal proceedings. As the current system still has many shortcomings and does not offer a model for the holistic treatment of children, and as the field of child protection in criminal proceedings is in need of continuous improvement, in the next section, the Barnahus model or Children's House is described. It is a leading European model that combines a multidisciplinary approach to treating child victims of crime. The reasons for the adoption of the Act on the Protection of Children in Criminal Proceedings and their Integrated Treatment in the Children's House are further presented, whereas more focus is put on the provisions relating to interviewing children. It is important that professionals who talk to a child at any stage of the criminal justice process have a basic knowledge of developmental psychology, so the following section focuses on the child's developmental characteristics. Finally, the thesis concentrates on some of the psychological factors affecting the accuracy and credibility of a child's testimony, as research in recent years has shown that children are increasingly involved in criminal proceedings and are much more competent than was initially believed. However, it needs to be borne in mind that they need a specific way of treatment, adapted to their stage of development.
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