One of the basic notions Adam Scott Wandt, an attorney and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, learned over the years is that personal testimony makes for the most inaccurate type of evidence. “People live through experiences and they get it wrong when they repeat it,” he said in a recent interview. “They don’t do it on purpose, it’s just that people’s recollections tend to be pretty poor.”

This is particularly true when it comes to sexual assault, said Wendy Patrick, a career trial attorney who is a member of the organization End Violence Against Women International. People tend to clearly remember being sexually assaulted decades later. But because it’s so traumatizing, they often do not remember the events surrounding the incident. “It’s not usual for people to be unclear when it happened,” she said.