The Elusive Record: On Researching High-Profile 1980s Sexual Abuse Cases

This article reports on the difficulties encountered trying to research trial court documents in dozens of “high-profile” child sexual abuse cases from the 1980s. The article is organized around three concepts that are central to researching trial transcripts: 1) permanence, 2) completeness, and 3) accessibility. Each of these concepts is called into question by research the author conducted over a period of ten years. The article also reports the results from an original state-by-state survey of court record-retention policies. Twenty states have a permanent record-retention policy for all felony cases, and twelve have permanent retention policies for some felony cases and time-limited policies for others, while three employ a sampling procedure to identify the cases to be retained permanently. Fifteen states have policies limiting the time before they dispose of court records. Overall, less than a majority of states treat trial transcripts in felony cases as archival documents. Some states destroy such transcripts as soon as three years after the case is over. A surprising amount of material that is painstakingly transcribed and memorialized in felony trials is subsequently lost to history.