Abstract Religion is an under-studied factor affecting children’s sexual victimization and their willingness to discuss such experiences. In this qualitative study, 39 child forensic interviewers and ...child advocacy center (CAC) directors in the United States discussed religious influences on children’s sexual abuse experiences, their relationships to CACs, and their disclosures in the forensic setting. Participants reported both harmonious and dissonant interactions between religiously observant children and families on one hand and child advocacy centers on the other. Themes emerged related to abuse in religious contexts and religious justifications for abuse; clergy and religious supports for disclosures as well as suppression of disclosures; and the ways CACS accommodate religious diversity and forge collaborations with clergy. Participants discussed a wide range of religions. Recommendations for practice and research are included.
Adults' assessments of the credibility of children's reports are affected by factors including the frequency of abuse, reporting delays and the child's age. The present study examined whether similar ...factors affect the perceived credibility of children reporting physical abuse, which is more common than sexual abuse. Two hundred and eight mock jurors read a simulated transcript of a child reporting physical abuse to police and made credibility ratings. Within each transcript, abuse frequency (once, repeated), reporting timing (recent, delayed), police question type (open, closed) and child age (6 or 10 years) were manipulated. The child was considered more credible when the abuse was only experienced once and reported shortly after it occurred, and when prompted with open questions. The child's age did not affect credibility judgments. Current findings support recommendations to prioritise open questions with children and provide evidence for extension of the benefits of open questions to children's credibility.
Professional guidelines for forensic interviews of children emphasize cognitive factors associated with memory retrieval and pay less attention to emotional factors that may inhibit cooperativeness. ...Can an additional focus on rapport-building alter the dynamics of interviews with alleged victims of intra-familial abuse, who are often uncooperative? Transcripts of interviews with 199 suspected victims who made allegations when interviewed were coded to identify expressions of interviewer support and children’s reluctance and uncooperativeness in the pre-substantive portions of the interviews. Half of the children were interviewed using a Protocol that emphasized enhanced rapport-building and non-suggestive support, the others using the standard NICHD Protocol. Although there were no group differences in the use of recall-based questions, interviews conducted using the rapport-focused Protocol contained more supportive comments and fewer unsupportive comments. Children interviewed in this way showed less reluctance and the level of reluctance was in turn associated with the number of forensically relevant details provided by the children. A focus on enhanced rapport-building thus altered interview dynamics without changing the appropriateness or forensic riskiness of the questions asked.
Most of the foregoing research on child investigative interviewing has focused on interview practices in Western countries, thus potentially limiting the generalizability and application of the ...findings to improve interview practices in non-Western countries. The current studies are the first to examine police interviewing practices involving alleged child sexual abuse (CSA) victims in Indonesia which has marked cultural differences compared with Western countries. In Study 1, we presented Indonesian police child interviewers (
N
= 26) with a sexual abuse case vignette concerning a 7-year-old girl. Police interviewers were asked to write down the questions they would pose to the child. We categorized questions into four types: open-prompts, directives, option-posing, and suggestive. In Study 2, we examined Indonesian police files (
N
= 24) containing child sexual abuse interviews and also scored the type of questions used as per the first study. We compared our data with those obtained in Western countries. The consistent finding in both studies is that Indonesian police interviewers rarely used open-prompts, asked more directive and option-posing questions. Consistent with findings from Western countries, our studies provide indirect evidence that open-prompts may be infrequently used by forensic child interviewers in Indonesia.
During investigative interviews, police practice can influence key aspects of child credibility, namely the accuracy, competency, reliability, and truthfulness of their testimony. To date, police ...interviewers' perceptions of how best to assess child credibility at interview, and how practice impacts upon credibility, have been overlooked. We conducted a qualitative study that examined data from focus groups with 16 English police officers who regularly interview children. The focus group transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis, and four main themes were identified - the 4Es: eliciting information, evaluating credibility, empowering the interviewee, and a high-quality end product. Within these themes, police officers acknowledged some responsibility for the perceived credibility of child victims. Poor interviewing practice could decrease the accuracy of the information elicited and cross-examined in court. Registered intermediaries could empower child interviewees and increase their competency. A lack of reliability contributed to evaluating credibility, but this relationship was not straightforward. Finally, obtaining the most truthful account from child victims was not always possible, because there are many barriers to overcome. Our findings suggest the need for a continued focus on interview protocols that facilitate disclosure from child victims and a review of the professional relationship between those who interview children and prosecutors.
Interpreters play a crucial role in many investigative interviews with child complainants of sexual abuse; however, little has been written about the interpreting process from the perspective of the ...interviewers. This study elicited interviewers' perspectives about the challenges of using interpreters, with the aim of understanding how investigative interviews could be improved. The participants consisted of 21 investigative interviewers and prosecutors of child abuse cases (from a range of jurisdictions) who use interpreters on a regular basis. Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with the professionals about the interpreting process revealed two main challenges particular to child abuse interviews, namely the interpreters' lack of preparedness to deal with the traumatic and sensitive nature of children's abuse histories, and an insufficient understanding of 'best-practice' child interview process. The recommendations focus on the need for more specialised training for, and screening of, interpreters, and more extensive use of pre-conferencing to familiarise children with the interpreter-mediated interview process.
In New South Wales ('NSW'), the week commencing 4 April 2016 was a landmark for investigations and trials of sex offences against children; a three-year pilot began for children's champions (witness ...intermediaries) and for pre-recording the cross-examination of child complainants. These provisions were enacted in November 2015 when the Criminal Procedure Amendment (Child Sexual Offence Evidence Pilot) Act 2015 ('the Act') became law. The author, a professor of law and the creator of the accredited intermediary training in other jurisdictions, was engaged by Victims Services, Department of Justice, NSW to write the procedural guidance, design and deliver accredited children's champion (witness intermediary) training and run awareness raising seminars for the judiciary, prosecutors, police and social workers in February and March 2016. The author also observed the first pre-recorded cross-examination of a child complainant and spoke to the police officers who were the first in Australia to engage an accredited children's champion.
In New South Wales ('NSW'), the week commencing 4 April 2016 was a landmark for investigations and trials of sex offences against children; a three-year pilot began for children's champions (witness ...intermediaries) and for pre-recording the cross-examination of child complainants. These provisions were enacted in November 2015 when the Criminal Procedure Amendment (Child Sexual Offence Evidence Pilot) Act 2015 ('the Act') became law. The author, a professor of law and the creator of the accredited intermediary training in other jurisdictions, was engaged by Victims Services, Department of Justice, NSW to write the procedural guidance, design and deliver accredited children's champion (witness intermediary) training and run awareness raising seminars for the judiciary, prosecutors, police and social workers in February and March 2016. The author also observed the first pre-recorded cross-examination of a child complainant and spoke to the police officers who were the first in Australia to engage an accredited children's champion.
In this review, we describe a shift that has taken place in the area of developmental suggestibility. Formerly, studies in this area indicated that there were pronounced age-related differences in ...suggestibility, with preschool children being particularly susceptible to misleading suggestions. The studies on which this conclusion was based were criticized on several grounds (e.g. unrealistic scenarios, truncated age range). Newer studies that have addressed these criticisms, however, have largely confirmed the earlier conclusions. These studies indicate that preschool children are disproportionately vulnerable to a variety of suggestive influences. There do not appear to any strict boundary conditions to this conclusion, and preschool children will sometimes succumb to suggestions about bodily touching, emotional events, and participatory events. The evidence for this assertion is presented in this review.
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