title: The difficult issue of age assessment on pedo-pornographic material.
abstract: The issue of juvenile pornography has seen an increase in the past few years of the number of expert opinions requested to forensic pathologists, paediatricians and other various experts within the forensic and medical fields concerning the age of represented individuals. Regardless of the entity of the problem, no actual method exists which can allow us to give an objective and scientific answer, particularly in the postpubertal stage. Using parameters related to sexual maturation can be very dangerous. Nonetheless some experts still insist with similar types of "expertises". This study aims at verifying the ability of different experts in assessing age of postpubertal individuals represented in pornographic material. Results underline the difficulties and major uncertainties of age evaluation by visual observation of photographic material particularly when the subjects have reached the sexual maturation stage - and therefore in verifying whether the individual is above or below 18 years of age (an important age limit for most European countries as far as this type of crime is concerned). Furthermore the study stresses the need both to search for an alternate approach and to apply extreme caution in judicial evaluation.
authors.affiliation: Labanof, Laboratorio di Antropologia ed Odontologia Forense, Istituto di Medicina Legale e delle Assicurazioni di Milano - V. Mangiagalli 37 - Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy. cristina.cattaneo@unimi.it
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cattaneo
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ritz-Timme
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gabriel
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gibelli
authors.forename: Elena
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Giudici
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Poppa
authors.forename: Doerte
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nohrden
authors.forename: Sabine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Assmann
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schmitt
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grandi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001940:Breast / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004882:Erotica; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D005260:Female; D005554:Forensic Medicine; D005858:Germany; D006197:Hair; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D010781:Photography; D011361:Professional Competence; D011627:Puberty; D015203:Reproducibility of Results