As shown in the previous section, knowledge of the exact wording of each question asked of children during
inves-tigative interviews—as well as the number of times ques-tions are repeated and the tone of questioning—is neces-sary to determine whether strategies recognized as capable of affecting the reliability and accuracy of chil-dren’s reports were applied (consciously or uncon-sciously) by interviewers. Without electronic recordings of interviews, this information cannot be preserved.
Because suggestive interviews can have lasting effects on the accuracy of children’s memory and reports, the fail-ure to record all interviews makes it impossible to sup-port any claims that children’s resup-ports are accurate or reliable and free of suggestive influences.
In light of these data, it is important to determine how the child’s statements were recorded. In most cases we have worked on, most of the statements are not elec-tronically preserved, unfortunately. Sometimes, there are notes of interviews or diaries in the file. Other times, hearsay testimony is presented at trial. When there is no electronic preservation of interviews, the scientific liter-ature warns us to be very cautious in interpreting the child’s statements. The following examples indicate why this approach is justified. The following is a brief excerpt from a police detective’s written report of an interview with a 9-year-old child.
On other occasions, Britt said that a man would put his privates in his butt, and that at the same time, a woman would make him put his mouth on her pri-vates, and yet on another occasion, they would hang him and his brother from the ceiling, on a hook, while being tied up.
It appears from this report that the child made spon-taneous and detailed statements about the abuse without any prodding or suggestion. However, we were able to compare the written report with the audiotaped tran-script of the actual interview:
Adult: When you were on the floor tied up, did they ever try to stick a penis up your butt?
Child: Yes.
Adult: Okay, when you were tied up, Britt, on the floor, and a man was sticking his penis into your butt, was a lady doing something to you at the same time?
Child: No.
Adult: Would that ever happen?
Child: Yes.
Adult: What would the lady be doing?
Child: I can’t remember.
Adult: Would she be doing anything with your mouth?
Child: (pause) Yes...
Adult: Would she make you do something with your mouth on her privates?
Child: Yes...
Adult: At any time when you were any of these places where the strangers were, did they ever hang you up to the ceiling?
Child: Yes.
Adult: What would they use to hang you up from?
(Long pause) Remember?
Child: A hook.
Although the police report is accurate in terms of the gist, it is inaccurate in terms of how the events were reported and who in fact initially provided information about the events. It is possible that the official report was influenced by the bias of the investigator as evidenced by his omissions that the child was prodded and not forth-coming. It should also be noted that such errors are also made by unbiased interviewers who cannot recall whether children’s statements were spontaneous or the result of suggestive interviewing techniques (Bruck et al.
1999; Warren and Woodall 1999).
In the next example, the interviewer was an expert witness for the prosecution. The following example is taken from her report of a pretrial evaluation of a pre-school child and shows how adults can also make source monitoring errors (they forget who said what). The expert wrote in her report: “He informed me [the defen-dant] drank the pee-pee. That’s how she got crazy.”
The following was the actual interaction, taken from recorded transcriptions:
Dr. L: Did she drink the pee-pee?
Child: Please, that sounds just crazy. I don’t remember about that. Really don’t.
As can be seen, the above expert witness reversed the child’s and her own statements, testifying that the child told her what, in reality, she had suggested to the child.
In some cases in which there were no electronic records, we were still able to detect elements of inaccu-racy, incompleteness, and inconsistency of the police’s, mental health professionals’, and parents’ reports. The following examples are taken from the Amirault case.
According to the police report of October 4, 1984, Sue made the following statement:
• After saying that AC touched her vagina, Sue later denied the statement.
• After saying that Tooky told her to take her pants down, Sue said he was only fooling.
• Some bad guys at school.
• Sue was asked what school she liked the best. She answered Fells Acres. When asked why, she replied,
“We did Play-Doh.”
The social services report of the same interview con-tained the following information:
• Sue told her mother that her vagina was touched by AC.
• Sue told her father that Tooky asked her to take her pants down.
• “As Sue was not volunteering, Officer Healy asked her directly about bad guys at school.”
There is no reference in this report to Sue’s statement that she liked Fells Acres Daycare because they did Play-Doh.
It is for these reasons that it is crucial to electroni-cally preserve all interviews with child witnesses, partic-ularly the first one.
Although it is true that many of the errors that occur in our case examples are common and made by unbiased interviewers, in the case examples, it is our hypothesis that the errors do reflect the biases of the interviewers and the note-takers. They have come to believe that the child was abused, and their recollections of the children’s statements or their recording of the children’s state-ments are deeply colored by these beliefs. Thus, inter-viewer bias is detrimental in terms of the potential not only for tainting the statements of children but also for tainting the statements and memories of the interviewers themselves.
SUMMARY
We have concluded on the basis of both our laboratory work and our forensic work that unless investigators and other adults are very careful in the interviewing proce-dures that are used with children suspected of having been abused, one can never make an accurate determina-tion of whether or not abuse occurred. There are a num-ber of interviewing procedures that have the potential to make nonabused children look like abused children.
Using these procedures, children may not only come to falsely report acts of sexual abuse but also to believe that they experienced the events they reported. These chil-dren’s memories may be permanently tainted by the sex-ualized suggestions of their interviewers. These children can appear highly credible to subsequent interviewers, to family, and to jurors. There are no valid scientific tests to determine which of the children’s reports were accurate, once the children have been subjected to suggestive interview methods. Thus when children undergo extremely suggestive interviews, a determination of
reli-ability and accuracy of any of the allegations of abuse is impossible.
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149
Interviewing Children for Suspected Sexual Abuse
Kathleen M. Quinn, M.D.
Case Example 1
A 5-year-old girl and her 3-year-old sister had attended a local day care center when they had first moved to town. After 6 months the mother removed them due to concerns that the head teacher used physical punishment described by the older girl as hit-ting her on the face. Shortly thereafter, the mother was called by another mother, who stated that there were also concerns that sexual abuse had occurred at the center. The 5-year-old and 3-year-old were inter-viewed together by the local department of human services and police. The first two interviews were unstructured and included the protective services worker sitting on the floor with the children whisper-ing questions and answers. Puppet play was used in an attempt to understand the girls’ vocabulary concern-ing body parts.
Case Example 2
A couple who have been divorced for several years were engaged in a visitation battle in domestic rela-tions court over their children, ages 9 and 7. The mother had restricted the father’s visitation in the past because of her ex-husband’s history of physical abuse toward herself and the children and his alcohol-ism. Now sober and in Alcoholics Anonymous, the father insisted on visitation. The court awarded a lim-ited visitation plan, beginning with a half a day a week and a gradual increase to alternating full weekends.
Three months into the resumption of the visitation the mother and the 9-year-old girl alleged the child had been approached sexually by her father. The 7-year-old boy made no allegation. A report was made by the mother to the local department of human ser-vices. A motion to terminate visitation was filed by the mother’s attorney in domestic relations court.
Case Example 3
A 3-year-old boy alleged his teenage stepbrother had touched his bottom. The child was not yet toilet trained, and the intake worker taking the complaint found that the stepbrother assisted the 3-year-old in the bathroom. The mother, who reported the allega-tion, stated that the 3-year-old had immature lan-guage skills.