In court how do you challenge a child’s allegation that Grandpa or Uncle Bill “touched my private” or “made me touch his bottom?” It’s an incredibly difficult undertaking. The general public believes young children rarely conjure-up these allegations. Prosecutors, police, and child protective services share this powerful bias. Nonetheless, a reservoir of research shows young children are susceptible to suggestive interviewing techniques. Young children can be influenced by local child advocacy center employees, or even the police, who question the child about the allegations. Research on suggestive interviewing techniques identified several classes of interview behaviors associated with false outcries of sexual/child abuse. These interview behaviors are as follows:
1. Positive Consequences – Giving, promising, or implying praise, approval, agreement or other rewards to a child, or indicating the child could demonstrate desirable qualities like helpfulness or intelligence, by making a statement to the interviewer;
2. Negative Consequences – Criticizing or disagreeing with a child’s statements, or otherwise indicating the statement was incomplete, unbelievable, dubious, or disappointing;
3. Other People – Telling the child the interviewer has already received information from another person regarding the topics of the interview;
4. Questions Asked and Answered – Asking the child questions already unambiguously answered in the immediately preceding part of the interview;
5. Inviting Speculation – Asking the child to offer opinions or speculation about past events or framing the child’s task during the interview as using imagining or solving a mystery; and
6. Introducing Information – Introducing information not previously mentioned by the child. The new information in either an interviewer’s statement or question represents a substantial addition or discontinuity with the child’s previous statements.
These suggestive interviewing techniques don’t exhaust every way a forensic interviewer might impose suggestive questioning on a child. Yet, these techniques are typically the primary focus of forensic analysis of child “victim” interviews. To this end, sexual assault defense lawyers defending these allegations in criminal courtrooms need training to recognize a suggestive child interview. The best practice is to hire an expert in the field to evaluate and critique an interviewer’s questioning of a child. If necessary, the experts can testify at trial, or inform prosecutors, that an interview was tainted by poor methods and technique.
By Stephen_Gustitis
Bryan criminal attorney, Stephen Gustitis, has practiced criminal law exclusively since 1990. First as an assistant district attorney with Brazos County and then in private defense practice. He is Texas Board Certified in criminal law and committed to the aggressive and ethical defense of citizens accused of crime.
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