Wrongful Acquittals of Sexual Abuse

Reliability of the Sexual Knowledge Picture Instrument: a potential diagnostic instrument for sexual abuse in young children

OBJECTIVE

To determine the intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the Sexual Knowledge Picture Instrument (SKPI), a potential diagnostic instrument for young suspected victims of sexual abuse containing three scoring forms, that is, verbal responses, non-verbal reactions and red flags.

DESIGN

Video-recorded SKPI interviews with children with and without suspicion of child sexual abuse were observed and scored by two trained, independent raters. The second rater repeated the assessment 6 weeks after initial rating to evaluate for intra-rater reliability.

SUBJECTS

78 children aged 3-9 years old were included in the study. 39 of those included had known suspicion of sexual abuse and the other 39 had no suspicion.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of the scores per study group and in the total sample were assessed by Cohen's kappa and percentage of agreement (POA).

RESULTS

The median intra-rater Cohen's kappa exceeded 0.90 and the POA exceeded 95 for all three forms in both study groups, except for the red flag form (median Cohen's kappa 0.54 and POA 87 in the suspected group, and 0.84 and 92, respectively, in the total sample). For the verbal scoring form the median inter-rater Cohen's kappa and POA were 1.00 and 100, respectively, in both groups. For the non-verbal form the median inter-rater kappa and POA were 0.37 and 97, respectively, in the suspected group, and 0.47 and 100, respectively, in the control group. For the red flag form, they were 0.37 and 76, respectively, in the suspected group and 0.42 and 77, respectively, in the control group.

CONCLUSION

The reliability of the SKPI verbal form was sufficient, but there is room for improvement in the non-verbal and red flag scoring forms. These forms may be improved by adjusting the manual and improving rater training.

Causal Indicators for Assessing the Truthfulness of Child Speech in Forensic Interviews

When interviewing a child who may have witnessed a crime, the interviewer must ask carefully directed questions in order to elicit a truthful statement from the child. The presented work uses Granger causal analysis to examine and represent child-interviewer interaction dynamics over such an interview. Our work demonstrates that Granger Causal analysis of psycholinguistic and acoustic signals from speech yields significant predictors of whether a child is telling the truth, as well as whether a child will disclose witnessing a transgression later in the interview. By incorporating cross-modal Granger causal features extracted from audio and transcripts of forensic interviews, we are able to substantially outperform conventional deception detection methods and a number of simulated baselines. Our results suggest that a child's use of concreteness and imageability in their language are strong psycholinguistic indicators of truth-telling and that the coordination of child and interviewer speech signals is much more informative than the specific language used throughout the interview.

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.

A retrospective approach to examining child abuse disclosure

BACKGROUND

Often times, a child's disclosure is the only forensic evidence available in child abuse cases. Therefore, understanding disclosure patterns of suspected child abuse victims plays a critical role in the forensic investigations of both child physical abuse (CPA) and child sexual abuse (CSA) cases.

OBJECTIVE

To explore adults' retrospective reports about childhood disclosure of CPA and CSA.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

College students (N = 907) were screened for reported histories of CSA (n = 94) or CPA (n = 109).

METHODS

Through an online survey, participants provided anonymous information regarding CSA and CPA experiences along with information about any disclosure events or opportunities that they have encountered since the abuse.

RESULTS

Among the adults reporting CSA histories, 50 % indicated disclosing the abuse during childhood; 80 % indicated any lifetime disclosure. Among the adults indicating CPA histories, 32 % reportedly disclosed the abuse to someone during childhood with 52 % reporting any lifetime disclosure. For both groups, length of delay until disclosure was bimodal with many individuals reporting immediately and many waiting considerable time. Among adults reporting CSA, a minority (16 %) indicated the abuse came to the attention of authorities, with even fewer CPA cases (8%) reporting authorities were aware of their abuse. Denial and recantation in a formal setting was infrequent regardless of abuse type reported.

CONCLUSIONS

Given that participants experiencing CSA and CPA both reported low levels of denial and recantation, forensic investigators and practitioners may benefit from considering consistent interviewing approaches and protocols, regardless of the type of abuse suspected.

A Response to "The Legacy of the Witch-Hunt Narrative"

The article provides an overview of and commentary on the last chapter of Cheit's book, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children. The chapter is divided into two sections called "Recent Developments" and "The Legacy of the Witch-Hunt Narrative." We respond to the key assertions in each of those sections, providing discussion points of agreement and disagreement with Cheit, and note some areas Cheit does not cover, including important advances in the aftermath of the witch-hunt narrative (WHN). The article takes the position that there is cause for optimism with these advances in systems responses, child forensic interviewing research, and multidisciplinary team and training approaches; some of these advances are related to the WHN. The conclusion warns of the need to be vigilant about continuing Cheit's work, we suggest this could take place in six key areas: (a) enhanced teacher training, (b) improved court responses to child sexual abuse (CSA) victims, (c) expanded use of Extended Forensic Interviews so that the complex cases (children with disabilities, children from multi problem households) might be thoroughly considered for prosecution, (d) broadened focus on CSA validation, recovery, and prevention, (e) engaged multistate research on the actual occurrence of day care CSA allegations, and (f) expanded efforts to educate the public and potential jury pools about the nuances of CSA prosecution, and the illusion of toughness in how we respond to convicted offenders. Cheit's detailed research enables us to see where we came from, and what else needs to be done to understand the legacy of the WHN.