Lawyers rapport building practices with child witnesses

BACKGROUND

Existing literature on rapport building in forensic interviews with children has primarily focused on police or social workers (Collins et al., 2002); overlooking the lawyer-child relationship.

OBJECTIVE

The present study was a novel exploration of the rapport building process between lawyers and child witnesses during the interview stage of a criminal proceeding.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

A total of 67 Canadian lawyers (Mage = 41.69, SD = 11.19; 51 % female-identifying) with experience questioning child witnesses (i.e., under 18 years old) were surveyed on their rapport building with child witnesses.

METHODS

A self-report survey was used to assess how lawyers conceptualize and engage in rapport building with child witnesses.

RESULTS

Lawyers were found to perceive rapport building as an important element when working with child witnesses; however, the lawyers' self-reported rapport building techniques overlooked several important elements of rapport building identified in forensic interviewing literature. Overall, the role of the lawyer (i.e., prosecution or defence), but rarely gender, influenced their self-reported rapport building methods. Prosecution lawyers tended to report behaviors that were more aligned with creating an interpersonal connection during the rapport building phase with the child, such as creating an environment where the child feels safe and comfortable.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings provide insight into how lawyers conceptualize and engage in rapport building with child witnesses. Overall, the lawyers perceived rapport building as an important element with child witnesses, but only some of the techniques mentioned are considered best practices to build rapport with children.

When Disclosure Fails to Substantiate Abuse: Child and Perpetrator Race Predict Child Sexual Abuse Substantiation

We examined the effects of child race, perpetrator race, and abuse disclosure status (within the context of a formal forensic interview) on abuse substantiation outcomes. Specifically, we coded child sexual abuse disclosure, abuse substantiation, and race of 315 children (80% girls, M age = 10, age range = 2-17; 75% White, 9% Black, 12% Biracial, 3% Hispanic, 1% Asian) who underwent a child forensic interview in a Midwestern child advocacy center. Supporting hypotheses, abuse substantiation was more likely in cases involving (a) abuse disclosure (vs. no disclosure), (b) White children (vs. children of color), and (c) perpetrators of color (vs. White perpetrators). Also supporting hypotheses, the effect of abuse disclosure on increased abuse substantiation was greater for White children than for children of color. This research suggests that even when children of color disclose their experiences of sexual abuse, they nonetheless face barriers to abuse substantiation.

Mock Jurors' Perceptions of Child Sexual Abuse Cases: Investigating the Role of Delayed Disclosure and Relationship to the Perpetrator

Child sexual abuse (CSA) claims brought forward weeks, months, or years after the alleged events are commonplace, yet the trial-level ramifications of delayed disclosure remain unclear. In the present study, we investigated the influence of length of delayed disclosure (1 day, 1 month, 10 months) as a function of the victim-perpetrator relationship (next-door neighbor, stepfather) on mock jurors' perceptions of a CSA case. Jury-eligible participants (N = 328) read a mock trial summary describing an alleged incident of CSA between an adult male defendant and a seven-year-old female victim. Participants then rendered various case judgments. When length of delay was 10 months versus 1 day, mock jurors rendered fewer guilty verdicts and lower ratings of victim trustworthiness, believability, memory strength, and memory accuracy. Effects of length of delay varied as a function of the victim-perpetrator relationship, but only when the perpetrator was the victim's next-door neighbor versus stepfather. When the perpetrator was the victim's next-door neighbor, participants rated the likelihood of abuse as higher and the victim's memory as stronger with shorter versus longer lengths of delay. Delay did not vary as a function of the victim-perpetrator relationship when the perpetrator was the victim's stepfather. Findings have implications for trial-level safeguards (e.g., expert testimony) in CSA cases involving delayed disclosure.

Factors that Influence Mock Jurors' Perceptions of Child Credibility

Child sexual abuse (CSA) remains a significant societal problem; however, few CSA cases are actually brought to trial. The cases that do proceed to trial typically involve little evidence, therefore, it is imperative that legal professionals become more aware of possible factors that may contribute to jurors' perceptions of child complainants and in turn influence their case decisions. The goal of this study was to investigate the influence of jury instructions, child complainant age, child's level of sexual knowledge, and preexisting beliefs about CSA on mock jurors' child credibility ratings. Participants (N = 388) evaluated a mock CSA trial transcript and answered questions related to the child's credibility. Results indicated that child credibility was dependent on mock jurors' knowledge about CSA, which in turn, differed by mock juror gender. Pre-evidence jury instructions also influenced mock jurors' CSA misconception endorsements. Child sexual knowledge level did not influence credibility, nor did it interact with child age. Our study suggests that specialized pre-evidence jury instructions may educate legal fact finders about alleged CSA victims and in turn may enhance their views of children in this specific legal context.

Disclosures of Sexual and Physical Abuse across Repeated Interviews

This study examined the recorded interviews of 132 children between 3 and 16-years of age who were involved in a forensic investigation evaluating allegations of sexual and/or physical abuse. As part of this investigation, two interviews were conducted over a 5-day period. The interviews were analyzed to examine how frequently these children disclosed substantiated allegations of abuse when asked directly about these experiences in one or both interviews. Results revealed that 39.2% of children with substantiated sexual abuse and 55.6% of those with substantiated physical abuse denied these experiences in one or both interviews. The denial rate was highest among school aged children (6- to-10-year- olds), as over a third of the girls and more than half of the boys in this age group denied the substantiated allegations in one or both interviews. Recantations were also relatively common, as 24% of the children who disclosed sexual and/or physical abuse prior to the assessment denied the allegations in one or both interviews. The youngest children (3- to 5-year-olds) were most likely to be inconsistent in their denials/disclosures across interviews. Custody status and relation to the perpetrator also predicted denials/disclosures of sexual, but not physical abuse. Overall, the data suggest that denials of both sexual and physical abuse are quite common and higher than rates found in most archival file reviews.

Jurors' Gender and Their Fear of False Child Sexual Abuse Accusations Are Related to Their Belief in Child Victims' Allegations

We developed the first Fear of False Accusations scale, measuring the public's fear of personally being the target of untrue child sexual abuse allegations despite no actual wrongdoing as well as the fear of false allegations being a common problem in society. The scale was statistically reliable within a diverse sample of 964 participants. Several months later, in an ostensibly unrelated mock trial experiment, a subset of the participants assumed the role of mock juror and considered a criminal case involving an accusation of child sexual abuse. As predicted, (a) mock jurors with higher levels of fear were less likely than others to believe a specific child sexual abuse allegation (but did not differ in ratings of victim credibility nor responsibility), (b) men had significantly higher levels of this fear than did women, and (c) mediational analyses revealed that gender differences in fear partially explained men's tendency to believe the child abuse allegation less than women did. This research is important for developing the first empirically validated measure of fear of false accusation and linking this fear to perceptions of specific child sexual abuse allegations, and for finding a partial explanation for gender differences in mock jurors' reactions to child sexual abuse allegations.

The utility of direct questions in eliciting subjective content from children disclosing sexual abuse

BACKGROUND

Children alleging sexual abuse rarely exhibit emotion when disclosing, but they may be able to describe their subjective reactions to abuse if asked.

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the extent to which different types of questions in child sexual abuse interviews elicited subjective content, namely emotional reactions, cognitive content, and physical sensations.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

The study included transcripts of 205 Child Advocacy Center interviews with 4- to 12-year-old children alleging sexual abuse.

METHODS

We coded questions for question type, distinguishing among invitations, wh- questions, yes/no and forced-choice questions, and suggestive questions. We coded both questions and answers for whether they referenced subjective content.

RESULTS

When questions did not reference subjective content, the most productive questions were invitations, though they elicited subjective content less than 5% of the time. When questions specifically referenced subjective content, children were likely to explicitly mention such content, particularly in response to "how feel" and "what think" questions. Children's responsiveness and productivity was enhanced by requests to elaborate on their subjective responses, and both emotional and physical reactions could be elicited. There was little evidence of non-responsiveness or counterintuitive reactions to abuse. Younger children were less likely than older children to provide subjective responses to questions that did not reference subjective content, but were no less likely to do so when asked questions with subjective content.

CONCLUSIONS

Children, even young children, can be successfully encouraged to provide subjective content about sexual abuse, particularly when free recall questions are supplemented with "how feel" or "what think" questions.

Lawyers' Question Repetition and Children's Responses in Scottish Criminal Courts

This study examined the effects of repeated questions (n = 7,968) on fifty-six 5- to 17-year-olds' testimony in child sexual abuse cases in Scottish criminal courts. We examined transcripts of direct- and cross-examinations, categorizing how lawyers asked repeated questions in court and how children responded. Defense lawyers repeated more questions (39.6% of all questions asked) than prosecutors (30.6%) and repeated questions using more suggestive prompts (52% of their repeated questions) than prosecutors (18%) did. In response, children typically repeated or elaborated on their answers and seldom contradicted themselves. Self-contradictions were most often elicited by repeated suggestive prompts posed by defense lawyers. Younger children were asked more repeated questions than older children, but child age was not associated with the types of questions repeated or with how children responded to repetition. Questions repeated after delays elicited more self-contradictions than questions repeated immediately. Most repeated questions (69.2%) were repeated more than once, yet no "asked-and-answered" objections were ever raised. Overall, the findings suggested that lawyers frequently ask children "risky" repeated questions. Official judicial guidance and training is needed to help identify and limit the inappropriate repetition of questions.

"DID YOU EVER FIGHT BACK?": Jurors' Questions to Children Testifying in Criminal Trials About Alleged Sexual Abuse

The current study examined jurors' questions to children in criminal trials assessing children's allegations of sexual abuse, demonstrating a new avenue for studying how jurors think about, respond to, and assess evidence. We used qualitative content analysis to examine jurors' questions to 134, 5- to 17-year-olds alleging sexual abuse in criminal trial testimonies. Five themes emerged: abuse interactions, contextual details of abuse, children's reactions to abuse, children's (delayed) disclosure, and case background details. Jurors often ask about abuse dynamics, the context surrounding abuse, and children's disclosure processes, reflecting common misconceptions about child sexual abuse (CSA), such as whether it is credible to delay disclosure or maintain contact with an alleged perpetrator. This study improves our understanding of how jurors understand and evaluate children's reports of alleged CSA, suggesting that jurors may struggle to understand children's reluctance.

Implicit Encouragement: Enhancing Youth Productivity when Recounting a Stressful Experience

In recent years, increasing efforts have been focused on testing strategies of improving victimized children's narrative productivity, given that, for many youth, finding out what has happened to them is crucial to intervening and promoting their well-being. Implicit encouragement strategies, such as back channeling by conversational partners, have shown some preliminary promise, but their precise effects on productivity and accuracy have not been adequately examined. In this study, 98 youth, ages 8-14, completed a laboratory-based stressful activity, and a week later, a surprise memory test regarding what happened in the lab activity. Interviewers varied their use of implicit encouragement. Open-ended recall questions asked youth about both factual details and detail about their feelings and thoughts during the laboratory activity. Implicit encouragement increased the amount of both types of details and had no effect on errors. In fact, few youth provided any incorrect information in their recall reports. Neither age nor stress was related to youth's productivity or accuracy, directly or in conjunction with implicit encouragement. Results highlight the value of interviewers using encouraging behaviors when questioning children and adolescents to elicit a range of information about prior stressful experiences.

Using implicit encouragement to increase narrative productivity in children: Preliminary evidence and legal implications

Statements made by children in a range of legal settings can irrevocably impact their family structure, relationships, and living environment. Because these statements can fundamentally alter children's futures, efforts have been made to identify methods to enhance children's reports by increasing comprehensiveness, completeness, and accuracy. Interviewer support has broadly been considered a method of interest, but variations in what constitutes "support" have highlighted the need for greater specificity in documenting how different facets of supportive behaviors relate to children's reporting tendencies. In this review, we describe work focused on the effects of interviewer support, on children's memory completeness and accuracy. We then describe to a subset of interviewer behaviors that encourage elaboration in dyadic interactions: back-channeling and vocatives. We present preliminary evidence suggesting that these utterances, referred to as implicit encouragement, can increase the amount of detail provided without compromising accuracy. Implications for custody evaluations are discussed.

Investigating linguistic coherence relations in child sexual abuse: A comparison of PTSD and non-PTSD children

Background

Language is the most common way to communicate internal states and emotions into a narrative form. Studies on the use of language provide a useful understanding of how people process an event and interpret it.

Objective

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of PTSD on the narrative coherence of children's reports of sexual abuse.

Participants and setting

Narrative coherence was analyzed within a group of 89 allegations of children (M = 10; range: 4–16), who were victims of sexual abuse. Thirty-seven children presented the symptoms for a diagnosis of PTSD.

Method

Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) was employed and narrative coherence was analyzed through some linguistic markers (first-person singular pronouns, conjunctions, and cognitive words).

Results

Results illustrated the effects of PTSD on the narrative coherence, in terms of first-person singular pronouns, conjunctions, and cognitive processes. Indeed, compared with traumatic narratives of children without PTSD, traumatic narratives of children with PTSD contained a greater number of first-person singular pronouns (M_PTSD = 1.45 versus M_no-PTSD = 1.12) and a smaller number of conjunctions (M_PTSD = .37 versus M_non-PTSD = .67), cognitive (M_PTSD = 2.93 versus M_non-PTSD = 3.76) and insight words (M_PTSD = 2.29 versus M_non-PTSD = 3.09). Regression analyses were used to examine if age and PTSD were predictors of the narrative coherence, suggesting the effects of PTSD in predicting the use of the first-person singular pronouns and the conjunctions.

Conclusion

This study could underline the importance of considering the PTSD in legal testimony of children who have been sexually abused.

Measurement of Victim Credibility in Child Sexual Assault Cases: A Systematic Review

While the concept of credibility seems like an intuitive one, research has indicated that there is no consistent definition of this construct and that credibility may, in fact, be multidimensional. This article is the first to review how the measurement of credibility in child sexual assault cases has been conducted, with the view to improve how credibility is psychometrically measured. Our findings indicate that the majority of experiments have been conducted in the United States (67%), have been based primarily on undergraduate students as participants (67%), and primarily investigated cases involving a male defendant and female victim (69%). Ultimately, among experiments investigating victim credibility, approximately 60% of all measures were based on a single item and 53% used materials not based on the testimony of the child. Moreover, credibility has been measured using a great variety of constructs such as believability, honesty, truthfulness, suggestibility, accuracy, and reliability. A more nuanced and consistent definition of credibility will be needed to facilitate meaningful applications of the research literature.

Children as alibi witnesses: the effect of age and confidence on mock-juror decision making

This study investigated the influence of child alibi witness age and confidence upon mock juror decision making. Participants (N = 145) read a mock murder trial transcript containing the evidence of a defendant and a corroborating child alibi witness. Six versions of the trial transcript were created manipulating the alibi witness's age (8, 12, 16 years of age) and the confidence they displayed (high, low) while giving evidence. Despite a tendency towards returning not-guilty verdicts, no associations between alibi witness age, confidence and verdicts were found. However, confident alibi witnesses were perceived as more honest, accurate and reliable than unconfident alibi witnesses. The findings do not support the two-factor model of witness credibility, but do suggest that the alibi scepticism commonly found towards adult alibi witnesses may not extend as strongly towards children corroborating the defendant's alibi. More research is required before policy recommendations can be made.

Wrongful Acquittals of Sexual Abuse

Ross Cheit's book The Witch-Hunt Narrative highlights the difficulties of prosecuting child sexual abuse. Drawing examples from a single case, Alex A., we examine the ways in which false acquittals of sexual abuse are likely to occur. First, prosecutors tend to question children in ways that undermine their productivity and credibility. Second, prosecutors have difficulty in explaining to juries the dynamics of sexual abuse and disclosure, making children's acquiescence to abuse and their failure to disclose when abuse first occurs incredible. Third, attorneys undermine children's credibility by pushing them to provide difficult to estimate temporal and numerical information. A post-script to the Alex A. case illustrates the costs of wrongful acquittals.

The structural linguistic complexity of lawyers' questions and children's responses in Scottish criminal courts

In the first study to systematically assess the structural linguistic complexity of lawyers' questions of children in Scotland, we examined 56 trial transcripts of 5- to 17-year-old children testifying as alleged victims of sexual abuse. Complexity was assessed using 8 quantitative measures of each utterance's components (number of questions, phrases, clauses, sentences, false starts, average word count, word length, and sentence length) and a composite measure was used in the analyses. Lawyers did not alter the complexity of questions when prompting children of different ages. Defense lawyers asked more structurally complex questions than prosecutors. Directive questions were the least structurally complex questions, followed by option-posing questions. Suggestive questions, followed by invitations, were the most structurally complex questions. Option-posing and suggestive questions were more complex when asked by defense lawyers than prosecutors. Of suggestive questions, confrontation and tagged questions were more complex than any other question type. Increased structural complexity led to more unresponsiveness, more expressions of uncertainty, and more self-contradictions regardless of which lawyer asked, the question type, or the children's ages. These findings highlight the additional risks associated with asking some types of questions in structurally complex ways and highlight the need for further innovations (e.g., the use of intermediaries) to facilitate the questioning of vulnerable witnesses in Scottish criminal courts.

Emotional Language Used by Victims of Alleged Sexual Abuse During Forensic Investigation

Addressing the characteristics of children as witnesses has been a focus of many researchers; however, the emotion derived from children during investigative interviews is an understudied field that is vital for practitioners from various contexts. The current study explores the emotional language that children use during forensic investigations following suspected sexual abuse. The sample comprises 97 investigative interviews with children (N = 97) aged 3-14 years. These interviews were randomly selected from all forensic interviews carried out in Israel in 2011. All of the interviews were conducted in conformity with the National Institute of Child Health and Development Protocol, and the emotional language of the children was coded. The results reveal a limited overall presence of emotional language. Children hardly used positive emotional language and mainly employed negative emotional language. The interview phase and the age of the children greatly affected the use of emotional language, and gender and suspect familiarity had no effect on the children's emotional language. The findings from the current study enhance existing knowledge on the emotional language of children during forensic investigations and highlight the study's unique characteristics in the context of abuse, trauma, and forensic investigation. The results of this study demonstrate the need for including probes about emotions in investigative interviews and the addition of emotional language to coding schemes for investigative interviews.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: the Effect of Truncated Testimony on Juror Decision-making

In countries that allow child complainants of abuse to present their direct evidence via pre-recorded videotape, the recording is sometimes truncated for relevance or admissibility purposes before it is presented to the jury. In two experiments, we investigated how this practice affects mock jurors' judgments of child credibility and defendant culpability when truncation omitted the child's less plausible allegations. Mock jurors read a transcript of a 6-year-old girl making an abuse allegation against the janitor at her school. Some jurors read this allegation only (truncated version), while others also read either one or two additional - but less plausible - allegations by the same child. Contrary to what we predicted, the presence of these additional allegations did not decrease jurors' belief in the core allegation, nor did it influence their judgments about the child complainant's honesty or cognitive competence. In fact, under at least one condition, reading additional, less plausible allegations made jurors more likely to pronounce the defendant guilty of the core allegation - even when jurors did not believe the additional allegations. This finding stands in stark contrast to prior research on jurors' evaluation of adults' testimony that includes implausible details. Future research in this area will help to elucidate the conditions under which the presentation of truncated testimony may or may not influence juror decision-making. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Adults' Insensitivity to Developmental Changes in Children's Ability to Report When and How Many Times Abuse Occurred

In legal settings, children are frequently asked to provide temporal information about alleged abuse, such as when it occurred and how often. Although there is a sizeable body of work in the literature regarding children's ability to provide such information, virtually nothing is known about how adults evaluate the veracity of that information. This omission is especially noteworthy given that adults' evaluations are critical to the progression and outcome of legal cases. We examined adults' perceptions of children's reports of temporal details regarding alleged sexual abuse. We varied both children's age (6 vs. 11 years) and how certain children were when providing such details to assess whether adults were sensitive to changes in how children of different ages typically talk about temporal information. With regard to credibility, adults were insensitive to children's age, perceiving younger and older children who reported temporal details with confidence as more credible than those who reported information tentatively. Normative developmental trends, however, would suggest that, with age, children are often tentative when reporting true temporal details. With regard to perceptions of children's accuracy in reporting temporal information, adults found younger children who were confident to be the most accurate. Regarding guilt judgments, adults rated defendants as having a higher degree of guilt when children were confident in reporting temporal details. The findings have implications for juror decision-making in cases of alleged sexual abuse in which children report when or how often abuse occurred. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Improving the Credibility of Child Sexual Assault Victims in Court: The Impact of a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner

The present study investigated the influence of a sexual assault nurse examiner's (SANE's) testimony on mock juror perceptions of a child or adolescent victim of child sexual assault. Community members (N = 252, 156 females) read a fictional criminal trial summary of a child sexual assault case in which the victim was 6 or 15 years old and the prosecution presented medical testimony from a SANE or a traditional registered nurse (RN), or did not present medical testimony. Mock jurors were more likely to render guilty verdicts when a SANE testified compared with the other two testimony conditions. In addition, pro-victim judgments (e.g., sympathy toward the victim) and negative defendant judgments (e.g., anger toward the defendant) mediated this relation. Finally, cognitive network representations of the case demonstrated that the RN and no-medical-testimony groups were similar and the SANE group was distinct from the other two conditions. We discuss these results in terms of the implications of SANE testimony in child sexual assault court cases.

Explaining gender differences in jurors' reactions to child sexual assault cases

In three experiments, we investigated the influence of juror, victim, and case factors on mock jurors' decisions in several types of child sexual assault cases (incest, day care, stranger abduction, and teacher-perpetrated abuse). We also validated and tested the ability of several scales measuring empathy for child victims, children's believability, and opposition to adult/child sex, to mediate the effect of jurors' gender on case judgments. Supporting a theoretical model derived from research on the perceived credibility of adult rape victims, women compared to men were more empathic toward child victims, more opposed to adult/child sex, more pro-women, and more inclined to believe children generally. In turn, women (versus men) made more pro-victim judgments in hypothetical abuse cases; that is, attitudes and empathy generally mediated this juror gender effect that is pervasive in this literature. The experiments also revealed that strength of case evidence is a powerful factor in determining judgments, and that teen victims (14 years old) are blamed more for sexual abuse than are younger children (5 years old), but that perceptions of 5 and 10 year olds are largely similar. Our last experiment illustrated that our findings of mediation generalize to a community member sample.

Effects of child interview tactics on prospective jurors' decisions

Although decisions in child sexual abuse (CSA) cases are influenced by many factors (e.g., child age, juror gender), case and trial characteristics (e.g., interview quality) can strongly influence legal outcomes. In the present study, 319 prospective jurors read about a CSA investigation in which the alleged victim was interviewed at a child advocacy center (CAC) or traditional police setting. The prospective jurors then provided legally relevant ratings (e.g., child credibility, interview quality, defendant guilt). Structural equation modeling techniques revealed that child credibility predicted greater confidence in guilt decisions and also mediated all associations with such decisions. Having fewer negative prior opinions and rating the interview as of better quality were associated with higher child credibility ratings. Mitigating factors (e.g., interview quality), as opposed to proxy indicators (e.g., participant gender), better predicted CSA case outcomes. Similar associations across groups (e.g., CAC interviews did not make child victims more or less credible) permit a tentative conclusion that CACs do not positively or negatively affect decisions made in hypothetical CSA cases. Ideas for future studies examining factors influencing decisions in CSA cases are discussed.

Expectations of emotions during testimony: the role of communicator and perceiver characteristics

This study investigated the influence of communicator (child victim) and perceiver (adult participant) characteristics on expectations about witnesses' emotional displays during testimony. In total, 191 adults were asked whether or not they expected child victims who were testifying about sexual abuse to display sadness, fear, anger, disgust, happiness, or a neutral demeanor, and how intensely the adults expected each emotion to be displayed. In describing the victims, child age (5 vs. 13 years old) and child gender (female vs. male) were factorially combined as within-subject factors. Results included that victim gender predicted expectations of fear, and victim age predicted expectations of anger and disgust. There was a significant interaction of victim age and victim gender for expectations of sadness. Of participants who expected multiple emotions, a combination of negative and neutral emotions was expected more from 13-year-old female victims than from 5-year-old female victims. Child victim empathy predicted ratings of how intensely sad and fearful the child victim would look. Implications of these findings for psychological research and the legal system are discussed.

The emotional child witness: effects on juror decision-making

Despite wide variations in child witness behavior while on the stand, little research has focused on how that behavior influences jurors' perceptions of the child's credibility or the case itself. In the current study, the impact of a child's emotional displays on credibility judgments and verdict preferences was examined in jury-eligible college students and jurors released from jury duty. No significant differences emerged in perceptions or verdicts based on whether a child was shown as crying or not while participants read a transcript of the child's testimony. However, participants who rated the child as more emotional (regardless of whether the image showed a crying child) were more likely to render guilty verdicts, were more certain of guilt, and found the child more credible and the defendant less credible than participants who rated the child as less emotional. Also, when the child was perceived as low in emotion, older children were rated as less credible than younger children. The results have implications for understanding how children's emotional displays and jurors' perceptions of children's emotionality influence decisions in sexual abuse cases.

Children's perceived emotional behavior at disclosure and prosecutors' evaluations

The present study investigated the perceived emotional behavior of alleged child victims when disclosing sexual abuse in a forensic interview. It also addressed whether the perceived emotional behavior influenced prosecutors' evaluations of children's potential as witnesses and prosecutors' recommendations to press charges. Ninety-eight videotapes of forensic interviews with alleged child sexual abuse victims (4- to 17-year-olds) were coded for behavioral indicators of emotions. Case file information and district attorney evaluations were also coded. Results indicated that children were not generally perceived as being emotional (e.g., sad) during disclosure. However, the perceived intensity of expressed emotions was greater when children disclosed the alleged abuse compared to when they discussed more neutral topics in rapport building. Greater perceived emotional withdrawal by children at disclosure was associated with more negative evaluations of child witnesses by prosecutors. Moreover, children's emotional behaviors, as noted by prosecutors, were among the predictors of prosecutors' recommendations to file charges. Practical implications are discussed.

Effect of criminal defendant's history of childhood sexual abuse and personality disorder diagnosis on juror decision making

This study investigated whether a defendant's history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and/or personality disorder (PD) diagnosis affected juror decision making in a child sexual abuse trial. The PDs in the study were borderline PD and antisocial PD. Participants were 385 college students, 121 men and 264 women, who read a summary of a mock criminal trial and then made various juror decisions. Trial summaries were prepared by the principal investigator and were all uniform in content, length and detail. For the trial, both the defendant's gender and victim's gender were specified. The defendant was male, and the alleged victim was female. When the verdict was assessed, the results yielded that when the defendant's CSA history was presented, juror guilt ratings were higher than when there was no history of CSA. Similarly, when the defendant had a PD diagnosis, there were higher guilt ratings than when there was no PD diagnosis. CSA history and PD diagnosis were significant predictors of guilt ratings, suggesting that jurors perceive defendants more negatively if they have either been sexually abused as a child or have borderline or antisocial PD.

Evidence Summarized in Attorneys' Closing Arguments Predicts Acquittals in Criminal Trials of Child Sexual Abuse

Evidence summarized in attorney's closing arguments of criminal child sexual abuse cases (N = 189) was coded to predict acquittal rates. Ten variables were significant bivariate predictors; five variables significant at p < .01 were entered into a multivariate model. Cases were likely to result in an acquittal when the defendant was not charged with force, the child maintained contact with the defendant after the abuse occurred, or the defense presented a hearsay witness regarding the victim's statements, a witness regarding the victim's character, or a witness regarding another witnesses' character (usually the mother). The findings suggest that jurors might believe that child molestation is akin to a stereotype of violent rape and that they may be swayed by defense challenges to the victim's credibility and the credibility of those close to the victim.

The influence of medical and behavioral evidence on conviction rates in cases of child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse cases have one of the lowest conviction rates across all charges. While research has investigated the impact of attitudes and beliefs in judicial decision makers, little is known about the influence of medical evidence. The aim of this study was to examine how the presence or absence of evidence impacts on conviction. A sample of 113 child sexual abuse cases from Australia were coded for the types of evidence that were presented as well as other relevant descriptive data. The most significant predictor of verdict was the behavior of the child rather than the presence of medical evidence. This finding suggests that greater attention might be given to the collection and reporting of this evidence in future trials.

"How did you feel?": increasing child sexual abuse witnesses' production of evaluative information

In child sexual abuse cases, the victim's testimony is essential, because the victim and the perpetrator tend to be the only eyewitnesses to the crime. A potentially important component of an abuse report is the child's subjective reactions to the abuse. Attorneys may ask suggestive questions or avoid questioning children about their reactions, assuming that children, given their immaturity and reluctance, are incapable of articulation. We hypothesized that How questions referencing reactions to abuse (e.g., "how did you feel") would increase the productivity of children's descriptions of abuse reactions. Two studies compared the extent to which children provided evaluative content, defined as descriptions of emotional, cognitive, and physical reactions, in response to different question-types, including How questions, Wh- questions, Option-posing questions (yes-no or forced-choice), and Suggestive questions. The first study examined children's testimony (ages 5-18) in 80 felony child sexual abuse cases. How questions were more productive yet the least prevalent, and Option-posing and Suggestive questions were less productive but the most common. The second study examined interview transcripts of 61 children (ages 6-12) suspected of being abused, in which children were systematically asked How questions regarding their reactions to abuse, thus controlling for the possibility that in the first study, attorneys selectively asked How questions of more articulate children. Again, How questions were most productive in eliciting evaluative content. The results suggest that interviewers and attorneys interested in eliciting evaluative reactions should ask children "how did you feel?" rather than more direct or suggestive questions.

Non-verbal behavior of children who disclose or do not disclose child abuse in investigative interviews

OBJECTIVE

The study focused on children's nonverbal behavior in investigative interviews exploring suspicions of child abuse. The key aims were to determine whether non-verbal behavior in the pre-substantive phases of the interview predicted whether or not children would disclose the alleged abuse later in the interview and to identify differences in the nonverbal behaviors of disclosing and non-disclosing children.

METHOD

We studied DVD-recorded interviews of 40 alleged victims of child abuse. In all cases, there was external evidence strongly suggesting that abuse had occurred. However, half of the children disclosed abuse when interviewed using the NICHD Investigative Interview Protocol, whereas the other half did not. Two raters, unaware whether or not the children disclosed, independently coded the videotapes for nonverbal indices of positive and negative emotions, stress, and physical disengagement in each 15-second unit of the introductory, rapport building, and substantive interview phases.

RESULTS

Indicators of stress and physical disengagement increased as the interviews progressed while indices of positive emotions decreased. Non-disclosers showed proportionately more physical disengagement than disclosers in both the introductory and substantive phases.

CONCLUSIONS

Awareness of non-verbal behavior may help investigators identify reluctant children early in forensic interviews.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

There is substantial evidence that, when questioned by investigators, many children do not disclose that they have been abused. The early detection of reluctance to disclose may allow interviewers to alter their behavior, helping the children overcome their reluctance by providing non-suggestive support before the possibility of abuse is discussed. Of course, nonverbal behavior alone should not be used to assess children in investigative interviews. However, nonverbal cues may nonetheless provide additional information to interviewers and assist them in identifying reluctant children.

Repetition of contaminating question types when children and youths with intellectual disabilities are interviewed

BACKGROUND

The present study examined the effects of repeating questions in interviews investigating the possible sexual abuse of children and youths who had a variety of intellectual disabilities. We predicted that the repetition of option-posing and suggestive questions would lead the suspected victims to change their responses, making it difficult to understand what actually happened. Inconsistency can be a key factor when assessing the reliability of witnesses.

MATERIALS

Case files and transcripts of investigative interviews with 33 children and youths who had a variety of intellectual disabilities were obtained from prosecutors in Sweden. The interviews involved 25 females and 9 males whose chronological ages were between 5.4 and 23.7 years when interviewed (M = 13.2 years).

RESULTS

Six per cent of the questions were repeated at least once. The repetition of focused questions raised doubts about the reports because the interviewees changed their answers 40% of the time.

CONCLUSIONS

Regardless of the witnesses' abilities, it is important to obtain reports that are as accurate and complete as possible in investigative interviews. Because this was a field study, we did not know which responses were accurate, but repetitions of potentially contaminating questions frequently led the interviewees to contradict their earlier answers. This means that the interviewers' behaviour diminished the usefulness of the witnesses' testimony.

Children's expressed emotions when disclosing maltreatment

OBJECTIVE

Our goal was to examine children's expressed emotions when they disclose maltreatment. Little scientific research exists on this topic, and yet children's emotional expressions at disclosure may inform psychological theory and play a crucial role in legal determinations.

METHOD

One hundred and twenty-four videotaped forensic interviews were coded for children's emotional displays. In addition, children's trauma-related symptoms (depression, dissociation, and PTSD) and global adaptive functioning were assessed, and abuse type and frequency were documented.

RESULTS

Most children in the sample evinced neutral emotion during disclosure. However, stronger negative reactions were linked to indices of psychopathology. Number of abuse experiences was inversely related to negative emotional displays.

CONCLUSION

Fact finders may profit from knowing that maltreated children do not necessarily cry or display strong emotion when disclosing maltreatment experiences. Nevertheless, predictors of greater negative affect at disclosure can be identified: fewer abuse experiences; higher global adaptive functioning; and for sexually abused children, greater dissociative tendencies.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Although further research is needed, practitioners should consider that children who disclose abuse may display relatively neutral affect despite having experienced maltreatment.

Perceptions and predictors of children's credibility of a unique event and an instance of a repeated event

Perceptions of children's credibility were studied in two experiments wherein participants watched a videotape of a 4- to 5- or a 6- to 7-year old child report details of a play session that had been experienced once (single-event) or was the last in a series of four similar play sessions (repeat-event). The child's report was classified as high or low accurate. In Experiments 1 and 2, reports of repeat-event children were judged to be less believable on several measures. In Experiment 1, younger children were viewed as less credible than older children. In both experiments, neither undergraduates nor community members correctly discriminated between high- and low-accurate reports. Content analysis in Study 3 revealed the relationship between age and event frequency and children's credibility ratings was mediated by the internal consistency of children's reports. Recent research on children's reports of instances of repeated events has identified several challenges facing children who report repeated abuse. These data bring to light another potential difficulty for these children.

The impact of mock jury gender composition on deliberations and conviction rates in a child sexual assault trial

This study investigated how the gender composition of mock juries affects deliberations and conviction rates in a child sexual assault (CSA) trial. As opposed to studies in which mock jurors make decisions as individuals, mock jury research allows for investigation of how individual decisions translate into group verdicts. Gender composition within mock juries was varied to examine whether well-established gender differences in individual judgments affect the jury-level decision-making process. Three hundred men and women, in 6-member mock juries, heard a fictional CSA trial. During deliberations, proprosecution/ prodefense statements by women were approximately equal, whereas men made more prodefense statements. Women switched votes during deliberations more than did men; jurors in woman majority mock juries changed from not guilty to guilty more often than did jurors in nonwoman majority juries, and vice versa; and woman majority mock juries convicted most often. Findings indicate that predeliberation gender differences led to unique jury deliberation strategies and voting patterns.

Juror perceptions of child eyewitness testimony in a sexual abuse trial

A mock child sexual abuse trial was used to study juror perceptions of child eyewitnesses. The child's age (5, 11, or 16) and level of involvement (victim or bystander) were varied across conditions in order to test their impact on juror perceptions and verdict. Results indicated a significant effect of level of involvement on the verdict; defendants in trials involving a bystander witness received higher guilt ratings than defendants in trials with a victim-witness. In addition, jurors perceived the child's eyewitness testimony to be more believable when the child was younger. Implications for the impact of these findings on real-life child sexual abuse cases are discussed.

Child witnesses' metamemory realism

This study investigated the degree of realism in the confidence judgments of 11 to 12-year-olds (41 girls and 40 boys) of their answers to questions relating to a short film clip showing a kidnapping event. Four different confidence scales were used: a numeric scale, a picture scale, a line scale and a written scale. The results demonstrated that the children showed a high level of overconfidence in their memories. However, no significant differences between the four confidence scales were found. Weak gender differences were found in that the girls were slightly, but significantly, better calibrated than the boys. In addition, although both boys and girls overestimated the total number of memory questions they had answered correctly, the boys gave higher estimates compared with the girls. In brief, the results indicate that, at least in the context investigated, 11-12 year-old children's confidence in and estimations of their own event memory show poor realism (overconfidence and overestimation). A comparison with previous research on adults indicates that 11 to 12-year-old children show noticeably poorer realism.

Inconsistencies in the self-report of traumatic experiences by unaccompanied refugee minors

The authors investigated the consistency with which stressful life events are reported by unaccompanied refugee minors during a 12-month follow-up period and analyzed to what extent demographic and psychopathology variables affected memory consistency. From a population-based sample of 920 unaccompanied refugee minors aged 12 to 18 years old, 63% completed the follow-up measurements. Younger participants and those with lower levels of internalizing behavior and posttraumatic stress at follow-up were more prone to memory inconsistencies. Moreover, younger participants and those with fewer inconsistencies were more likely to have obtained a temporary residence permit. Given the difference between accuracy and consistency, it is not warranted to interpret memory inconsistencies as an indication of lack of credibility when assessing traumatic life events in minors applying for asylum.

Delayed prosecutions of historic child sexual abuse: analyses of 2064 Canadian criminal complaints

Recently, in many English-speaking countries, legal principles that had the effect of barring delayed criminal prosecutions have been abrogated. In these jurisdictions, criminal prosecutions of child sexual abuse that is alleged to have occurred in the distant past (historic child sexual abuse or HCSA) are a growing legal challenge. These cases raise myriad issues relevant to research and the development of public policy that would benefit from a considered exchange of ideas that is informed by a clear understanding of the phenomenon. Based on 2064 judicial decisions of Canadian criminal complaints of HCSA we describe the trial, the complainant, the accused, and the offence. In the context of these legal cases, we raise some of the germane issues as well as suggestions for future research and discussion that we believe are particularly current and pressing.

An archival analysis of actual cases of historic child sexual abuse: A comparison of jury and bench trials

Logistic regression analyses were used to predict verdicts from 466 Canadian jury and 644 Canadian judge-alone criminal trials involving delayed or historic allegations of child sexual abuse. Variables in regard to the complainant and offence were selected from the legal, clinical, and experimental literatures, including mock juror research. Of six variables that had been related to decisions reached in mock juror research concerning delayed allegations of child sexual abuse (i.e., repressed memory testimony, involvement in therapy, length of delay, age of complainant, presence of experts, and frequency of abuse) two (age of complainant and presence of expert) predicted verdicts. An additional five variables (duration, severity, complainant-accused relationship, threats, and complainant gender) were also examined: of these, threats and the complainant-accused relationship reliably predicted jury verdicts. For judge-alone trials, five variables predicted verdict: length of the delay, offence severity, claims of repression, the relationship between complainant and accused, and presence of an expert. Implications of the jurors' and judges' differential sensitivity to these variables for future simulation and archival research are discussed.

Hearsay versus children's testimony: Effects of truthful and deceptive statements on jurors' decisions

Researchers and courts are focusing increasing attention on the reliability of children's out-of-court statements, especially in relation to trials of child sexual abuse. The main goal of this study was to investigate the effects of presentation of children's out-of-court statements (e.g., hearsay) on jurors' perceptions of witness credibility and defendant guilt, and on jurors' abilities to reach the truth. Child participants experienced either a mock crime or were coached to say they experienced the crime when in fact they had not. During elaborate mock trials involving community member jurors, children's testimony was presented either: (1) live, (2) on videotape, or (3) via a social worker. Analyses revealed that testimony format directly influenced jurors' perceptions of child and social worker credibility (e.g., children were perceived as less likely to provide false statements if they testified live) as well as jurors' sympathy toward the child, all of which then predicted jurors' confidence in defendant guilt. Jurors had difficulty discerning accurate from deceptive child statements regardless of testimony format. Implications for psychology and the legal system are discussed.