In the last years, facial analysis has gained great interest also for forensic anthropology. The application of facial landmarks may bring about relevant advantages for the analysis of 2D images by measuring distances and extracting quantitative indices. However, this is a complex task which depends upon the variability in positioning facial landmarks. In addition, literature provides only general indications concerning the reliability in positioning facial landmarks on photographic material, and no study is available concerning the specific errors which may be encountered in such an operation. The aim of this study is to analyze the inter- and intra-observer error in defining facial landmarks on photographs by using a software specifically developed for this purpose. Twenty-four operators were requested to define 22 facial landmarks on frontal view photographs and 11 on lateral view images; in addition, three operators repeated the procedure on the same photographs 20 times (at distance of 24 h). In the frontal view, the landmarks with less dispersion were the pupil, cheilion, endocanthion, and stomion (sto), and the landmarks with the highest dispersion were gonion, zygion, frontotemporale, tragion, and selion (se). In the lateral view, the landmarks with the least dispersion were se, pronasale, subnasale, and sto, whereas landmarks with the highest dispersion were gnathion, pogonion, and tragion. Results confirm that few anatomical points can be defined with the highest accuracy and show the importance of the preliminary investigation of reliability in positioning facial landmarks.

The age of the victim plays a crucial role for the legal implications concerning pornography. Judges therefore often call on forensic experts to verify the age of individuals depicted on photographs or videos. However, there is no scientifically established protocol available for forensic practice in such cases. The conventional methods such as the evaluation of secondary sexual characteristics provide unsatisfactory results particularly when the legally relevant ages for child pornography (i.e. 14 and 18 years) are concerned. To overcome these limits, a European research group has explored the applicability of facial proportions as an age indicator on images. In this pilot study, standardized facial images of 353 females and 20 males from four age groups (6, 10, 14 and 18 years) were randomly selected for the metric analysis from a large data set including German, Italian and Lithuanian subjects. In this sample, several indices extracted from the frontal and lateral photographs were closely correlated to their respective indices taken from the living individuals. Furthermore, age-related changes were identified for indices taken from the photographs. The discriminant analysis showed that for the pooled sample, 60.3% of the cases were correctly classified into the respective age group. The percentage of correctly classified cases increased in the respective country samples as follows: 69.9% for Germany, 69.4% for Lithuania and 80.5% for Italy. The present study suggests that the metric assessment of the face may be used for age estimation on images. Nonetheless, more work needs to be done in order to verify the reliability of these findings on a large sample.

The visual analysis of the face produces reasonably accurate age estimates up to the age of 18 years, which is the legally relevant age threshold for victims in cases of pedo-pornography. This approach can be applied in conjunction with the conventional methods for a preliminary age estimation of juveniles depicted on images.

associated with human trafficking and, in particular, the specific issue of pregnancies and abortion requests resulting from sexual violence. This problem was highlighted by McGinn and Casey, 6 who claimed that refugee women escaping from conflict violence created the need for better targeting of reproductive health services and psychosocial services in refugee settings. It is the responsibility of humanitarian non-governmental organisations and of the accepting countries to provide safe abortions to women who become pregnant as a result of rape and adequate ethnopsychiatric care for posttraumatic stress disorder. This care will improve women's health and human rights and save lives. 7 Furthermore, there are criminalistic issues to be considered. Generally, the fetuses from abortions are not preserved for possible DNA analysis. However, a recent criminal case in Milan in which eight Somali victims of torture recognised their persecutor and rapist, who also had arrived in Milan, urged us to reconsider the importance of such material as legal evidence against perpetrators. We declare no competing interests.

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