By Sandra Dobbs
Young children are interviewed constantly. They are interviewed by parents about their day, by teachers about their homework, and occasionally are interviewed in court or counseling environments. When young children are interviewed, they are easily misled if the interviewer has a preconceived concept of what occurred. A few years ago, I saw a made-for-TV movie about a group of preschoolers who were sexually abused by the owners of their daycare. In this movie, the children were ripped apart in the courtroom by a vicious defense attorney. After watching this movie, I became enraged and I set out on a crusade to prove that children can be reliable witnesses in sexual assault cases. However, as I began to research the subject more thoroughly, I soon began to realize that while children can provide accurate accounts of events, the techniques that interviewers use are ill equipped to elicit correct information from child witnesses.
In the 1980s there was a string of high profile sexual abuse cases that entered the media spotlight. In 1989, daycare provider, Bob Kelly, was convicted of 99 counts of abuse against the children in his care. He was given 12 consecutive life sentences. Children reported events such as rape, sodomy and having objects inserted into their various body orifaces. In addition to these accusations, some children also reported that they had been thrown into water and attacked by sharks and that Kelly killed babies. There was no other evidence in these cases save the children’s reports. In trail, the implausible accounts were not brought up in order to challenge the reliability of the statements. The conviction was overturned three years later.
In 1988, a 4- year-old child was taken to the doctor and his temperature was taken rectally. The boy told the doctor, “That’s what my teacher does to me at school.” An intense investigation resulted where parents were informed of abuse allegations and encouraged to examine their children for symptoms of abuse. However, there does not appear to be any evidence that the possibility that the preschool teacher had simply taken the child’s temperature was explored. Several parents returned with abuse allegations. The teacher was sentenced to 47 years in jail, but after five years the conviction was overturned.
There are many interview techniques that are found to produce inaccurate responses. These techniques include, presenting leading questions, ignoring a child’s denial of an event, having a preconceived idea of what occurred, repeating questions several times, and bribing a child to continue an interview. While it may seem like common sense that these methods should be avoided, these techniques are consistently used in practice. Each of these was used in the aforementioned cases.
Researchers have created interview guidelines in order to help investigators interview potential child witnesses more accurately. However, there is not a standardized method used in all areas. This creates a large problem. When inexperienced interviewers truly believe they are helping children, they create an environment where false statements are more likely to occur.
One issue to try to avoid is confirmatory bias. Confirmatory bias occurs when a person conducting an interview has a preconceived notion of what happened to the child. They use this idea to filter information from the child. They will accept information as fact that fits into their scheme and reject information that does not. For example, a study conducted by Ceci, Leitchtman, and White had trained social workers interview the children about an event that they believed had occurred (but had not occurred). Each social worker was given a report that detailed events that might have happened during a Simon-Says type game. The report included false and accurate activities. The study showed that “34 percent of the 3-to-4-year olds and 18 percent of the 5-to-6-year olds corroborated one or more events that the interviewer falsely believed had occurred.”
As the interview progressed the social workers consistently discounted information that did not fit into their idea of what had occurred. This meant that “when the interviewers’ hypothesis was incorrect, they elicit a substantial amount of inaccurate information.” Confirmatory bias can alter the interpretation of a child’s statements. This can lead to false conclusion regarding what actually happened to a child.
There needs to be universalized methods of interviewing children and interviewers should not know what abuse was suspected when conducting the interviews. In addition, the same interviewer should not interview multiple children suspected of being involved in the same abuse event. Children can be reliable, but right now it is difficult to tell which children’s statements have been tainted by poor interviewing techniques. Fundamental changes must be made to the system to ensure innocent people do not go to jail and that when children do accurately report abuse, a jury can believe them.