Protecting the Innocent

Studies we looked at in class show that children are highly suggestible when influenced through leading questions, repeated interviews, etc. Other studies show adults can also be very suggestible; subjects who watched a video of a car accident "remembered" details that didn't exist significantly more often when asked leading questions. This effect is much more pronounced in children, however, and this can lead to many challenges in legal situations where children are witness to or victim of a crime.

I learned a bit more about this topic over the summer while taking the course "Psychology and the Legal System." While there are all kinds of pitfalls in crime investigation, one of the most sensitive subjects deals with children in sexual abuse cases. With such grave accusations, it is important to get accurate information from children. As discussed in class, this requires a patient interviewer asking open-ended questions as early as possible in the investigation. Fortunately, there is an amazing organization in Eugene called the Child Advocacy Center, where they lessen the trauma, time, and shuffling around involved in such investigations. They also do interviews with children which can later be entered as evidence in a trial. In class, we had the opportunity to watch a video of such an interview; the child's identity was protected through blurring. The interviewer first took great care to introduce himself and explain everything that was going to happen, establishing a sense of openness to gain the child's trust. He then proceeded to ask questions of the child about what had happened in very general terms, he often didn't even use specific words until the child said them first, in order to structure the interview around her vocabulary instead of his. He let her describe the house she lived in, only talking about locations after she mentioned them. In this case, the child very clearly described situations in which her father had abused her, but the interviewer continued to speak in a friendly and professional manner, preventing the situation from being scary or shameful. The interviewer, who was our guest speaker for the day, said that his job is not always that straight-forward, though. On one occasion, he had a mother who brought her son in, positive he was being abused by another family member, but an interview with the child gave strong evidence that he was not being abused. One wonders, though, are there some children who are convinced by a suspicious parent that they have been abused? It sounds like the video next Thursday may shed light on this question.

This all comes back to the very important responsibility we have as adults to give children a voice, free of someone else's bias, if we would hear what they have to say. Fortunately there are resources like the Child Advocacy Center that understand how to best listen to and help children in those situations.