Interviewing Children

Question 1

What are the percentages of child sexual abuse?

Answer 1

7-8% boys, 8-21% girls

Question 2

What was important about the Day Care Center Cases?

Answer 2

Research and later reviews showed that many of these cases were driven by suggestive and coercive questioning of very young children by adults, including investigators and therapists.

Interviewers often used leading questions, repeated questioning, praise for accusatory answers, and even encouraged children to pretend or speculate about events.

This made children, especially those under 6, highly susceptible to making false accusations, especially when dolls and diagrams were used.

Question 3

What is the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol?

Answer 3

Helps guide interviews aware from biased questions and towards a style of questioning that is more likely to elicit true responses from children

Question 4

What are the phases of the NICHD protocol?

Answer 4

1. Introductory phase
2. Ground rule phase
3. Substantive phase
4. Follow up phase

Question 5

What is child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome?

Answer 5

Child victims typically experience feelings of helplessness, confusion, and fear; these feelings cause child victims to behave in ways that conceal the abuse.

Question 6

What is the Hearsay rule?

Answer 6

When a child is an alleged victim in a crime (only admissible in child neglect/abuse), testifying about what someone else said outside the court.

Question 7

What is a closed-circuit TV?

Answer 7

An alternative method of presenting testimony is through a CCTV instead of taking the witness stand.

Question 8

What is the Paul Ingram Case?

Answer 8

Paul Ingram was accused by his daughters of sexual and satanic ritual abuse.

He had no memory of the abuse but, after suggestive police questioning, began to confess in detail.

No physical evidence supported the claims; experts showed Ingram was highly suggestible and likely formed false memories.

Ingram pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years.

Question 9

What are the factors that may make recovered memories skeptical?

Answer 9

1. Were recovered using suggestive or coercive methods
2. Began as vague images or feelings
3. Involve repeated abuse that extended into adolescence (abuse after childhood is unlikely to be forgotten)
4. Involve very early childhood memories (before memories can be formed)
5. Involve extremely rare forms of abuse