Journal of Forensic Research

Background and Objective: Child abuse is not an uncommon issue for pediatrics; rather, it is a major public health worry all over the world. An apparent form of maltreatment with children is child sexual abuse (CSA), which has negative consequences on both the short and long-term health consequences, apparent in both physical and mental disorders. This study is particularly important to determine the demographic and medico-legal aspects of sexual abuse of children in Fayoum Governorate, Egypt, which has clinical implications for pediatricians, psychiatrists working with children. Methods: This is a multi-faceted study that was conducted among children by the Forensic Medical Authority (FMA) in Fayoum Governorate. This study is a descriptive case-series analysis of child sexual-abuse cases documented over the last five years (2010-2014). Results: The total number of cases was 15 victims; 80% were males and 20% were females. Most assaults occurred in 2010 (20%), 2013 and 2014 (33%). The samples selected was at a mean age of 8 years and the range of ages varied from 5 months to 15 years; 12 (80%) were males and 3 (20%) were females. A total of 40% of the victims were related to the urban areas, and 60% of the victims were from rural areas. Physical signs were found in 26.7% of the victims in the form of abrasion and bruises in the face, forearm and leg, while such signs were absent in 73.3% of the selected sample. The perianal sign was found in 80% of the victims while it was absent in 20% of them. Conclusion: The study has shown that the rate of parental illiteracy of the selected sample was higher than it was for others (the general population), which seems to be one of the causes of the issue. The main victims are the children whose ages range from 6-12 years.

Lip prints are an important form of transfer evidence, establishing the connection between a person and the crime scene and with the parallel increase in the sophistication in crime it is necessary to apply less known techniques like Cheiloscopy. The aim of this study is to find out the most and least common lip print pattern in males and females residing in South India and to study the extent of similarity among lip print patterns of twins and siblings residing in South India. The study was conducted on 50 pairs of twins and 50 pairs of siblings out of which 90 were males and 110 were females. The samples were collected using two methods – lipstick method and black powder development method. The most common lip print pattern was found to be Type II- Branched Pattern in both males (42.2%) and females (43.63%) and the least common pattern was found to be Type III- Intersected Pattern in both males (5.55%) and females (2.72%) in the South Indian Region. There was no correlation between the extent of similarity of lip print patterns among twins and siblings in the South Indian region.

Drowning is one of the most frequent causes of accidental or suicidal death, and more rarely it is associated with a homicide. Cases of drowning in water or in the sea are common. The authors report an unusual and peculiar case of drowning, that of a woman who accidentally fell inside a collection tank of waste oil of motor vehicles

The 'omics' era and its concomitant technological advances have brought great insight into genetics. One of the most promising fields within human genetics is the prediction of physical traits from analysis of genetic material. Besides the predictive potential of DNA, the traceability of pathogenic agents in the human body through molecular analysis is also a field to be further exploited. In this review, we aim to discuss specific aspects of phenotypic prediction by analysing DNA, with special emphasis on normal variation, and the application of a technology known as ‘Forensic DNA Phenotyping’ (FDP). We also suggest the term ‘Phenotype Informative Markers’ (PIMs) to designate any molecular markers responsible for normal or pathological human phenotypic variation. In addition, we raise some recommendations related to forensic genetics, the molecular diagnosis of human diseases, and the traceability of pathogens in the human body, giving special emphasis to the need for validation of these tests with strict protocols. Some relevant concerns about privacy, ethics, and legality of such predictions have also been discussed. Finally, we look at perspectives on the use of epigenetic tools, and quote some examples of what has been done in this specific field.

A study of four different ballpoint pen inks was carried out using methods of HPLC and solid-phase micro extraction and gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Inks of different ballpoint pen manufacturers-two blue ones and two purple ones were chosen for the research. Naturally aged ink samples on paper were stored under various conditions, and the comparative samples were exposed to aggressive influence of light, temperature and ozone. During the study of artificially and naturally aged samples differences in chemical composition of ink were identified-possible signs of accelerated ageing were detected in records and signatures that were made with blue and purple ballpoint pen inks.

An experiment carried out on speaker identification by semi-automatic measurement of parameters with the goal of collaborating numerical data as well as descriptive data with that of probability scales. The 15 sets of speech samples of 15 speakers selected randomly from 100 actual crime cases, in Hindi utterances for purpose of speaker identification test subjected to spectrographic analysis. Speaker specific acoustic parameters, namely 1st formant frequency at a particular location (F1); 2nd formant frequency at a particular location (F2); and 3rd formant frequency at a particular location (F3) measured for the set of speech samples for all the 15 speakers. Also, the auditory analysis based on the linguistic features and phonetic features noted of each of the 15 sets of speech samples. We developed software to calculate the similarity percentage for the numerical data measured on the basis of acoustic analysis and numerical values assigned to auditory parameters on the basis of auditory analysis computed according to one of the nine probability scales. Most of the existing methods take only acoustic features to obtain numerical results for the purposes of speaker identification.