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Best Practices: Forensic Interview Strategies With Children Reporting Abuse

By Tascha Spears, PhD, RN

FORENSIC INTERVIEWS are those designed to facilitate truth finding by collecting evidence in the form of victim or witness statements. In police departments, child advocacy centers and hospitals throughout the nation, nurses are increasingly called upon to conduct forensic interviews of children reporting abuse. Given our education and training, forensic nurses are well equipped to fill this specialized role. This challenging and often heart-wrenching task involves competent and compassionate strategies to assist children in talking about emotional, intimate and often horrific experiences. Protecting a child from further brutality is often at stake. Best interview practices, therefore, are critical when assisting with investigations of crimes against children.

Forensic nurses must conduct skillful interviews of children in order to preserve the integrity of investigations for all concerned. An ineffective interview could result in the need to conduct several interviews of a child. Multiple interviews may cause secondary trauma to children expected to respond over and over again to similar questions about a distressing event. Sound interview strategies are also necessary to protect those who may be wrongfully accused. In addition, interviews must be conducted competently in order for interview evidence to be admitted into tribal, superior and federal courtrooms.

Depending upon the jurisdiction where the crime occurred, different legal standards can be used to evaluate admissibility of evidence. Forensic nurses must conduct child interviews in a manner up to standard for the requisite jurisdiction. Irrespective of jurisdiction, if interviews are conducted using models supported by empirical findings, they should satisfy scrutiny under most legal standards such as the Frye test, Daubert standard or Federal Rules of Evidence.

Although best practice models put forth by various jurisdictions have subtle differences, their central tenet remains consistent. The use of open-ended questions allowing children to provide uninterrupted statements in their own words is considered most desirable. In contrast, leading and suggestive questions can create problems for those adjudicating crimes against children. Leading questions make it difficult to determine whether responses by children are descriptions of their experiences or instead, products of an interviewer's suggestions. The most common faux pas committed by interviewers appears to be the use of therapeutic methodologies instead of forensic techniques.

Therapeutic interviews, typically used in counseling, focus on diminishing clinical symptoms and enhancing children's abilities to "heal" from traumatic events. In contrast, forensic interviews are designed to elicit information in an unbiased manner about an alleged crime. The way questions are designed and the sequence they are presented in during an interview is critical to its overall quality. for children's statements to be obtained effectively, forensic nurses must be knowledgeable about a variety of theoretical considerations and research findings.

At a minimum, it is important to understand the dynamics of particular crimes, child development, linguistics, memory, communication, legal considerations involving children, issues of suggestibility and expert witness testimony. Forensic nurses must also be cognizant of the criteria necessary for charging particular crimes. For example, if a child reported a sexual offense, the interviewer must know what elements of the crime must be elicited from the child during the interview process. It could be devastating to a child to tell his or her personal story to an interviewer and then have to repeat it because the information necessary for charging the offense was not obtained.

At a minimum in any jurisdiction, forensic nurses must inquire about the alleged suspect and commission of the crime in the context of location and time frames. Additional clarifying questions would depend upon the type of crime in question and the initial responses provided by the child. Therefore, a bank of direct questions required during forensic interviews would not be appropriate. Effective interviews that maximize the quantity and quality of crime scene information, however, generally include the following best practice suggestions.

First, all aspects of the interview, including development of rapport should be preserved on audio or videotape. Videotaping is the most accurate representation of the exact questions asked by an interviewer as well as the responses and demonstrations of the child. Preservation of interviews on tape cuts through all of the debate about what words the interviewer may have suggested to the child versus those reported by the child on his or her own accord.

Second, interviewers must be cognizant of interview environments and their effects on children. Child-friendly environments are most conducive to creating a comfortable atmosphere for children. This means that irrespective of location (police department, hospital, advocacy center, agency), soft rooms should be created to provide comfortable places for children to talk about potentially traumatic events. Furniture can be arranged so that environments are more conducive to interviewing those who are feeling helpless, frightened or embarrassed. Seating oneself at an angle to the child is less threatening than sitting directly in front of a child. The child's comfort level can also be addressed through effective development of rapport during the initial phase of the interview.

Rapport-building skills are an important part of best-practice interview models. Developmentally appropriate time frames for interviews of school age children range from 45 to 50 minutes. Preschool children are interviewed from 15 to 30 minutes. Individual children with special needs may need modifications to all of these general guidelines.

Best practice models indicate that rapport-building should include a brief discussion of neutral topics, explanation regarding the purpose of the interview and an instruction encouraging children to inform the interviewer if questions are not understood. The development of rapport also includes at least one question designed to assess the child's capacity to provide a narrative response to a neutral question. An interviewer statement that begins with "tell me about" will accomplish this need.

Phrases that begin with "tell me about" require the child to respond with more than one word. For example, during the initial phase of an interview, inquiries are usually made about demographics such as the child's age, address and grade in school. A natural follow-up statement such as "tell me about school" is highly encouraged. Having children provide narratives early in an interview directs them to access memory known as free recall.

Free recall is a complex form of memory that children retrieve when describing the context of an event. In contrast, recognition memory is a more elementary form of memory. Recognition memory is typically accessed when children respond with one word to direct questions. Suspect identification procedures direct children to recognition memory when they are asked to "recognize" an individual in a witness line-up.

Encouraging children to produce free recall is desirable since laboratory studies indicate that information found in narratives has a high degree of accuracy. While continued debate rages about generalizing laboratory data to real life circumstances, it remains undisputed that several sentences of description about an event is more desirable than a one word response. The central feature of best practice interview models, therefore, is encouraging narratives about the alleged crime.

All aspects of the interview must be conducted in a developmentally sound and unbiased manner. The interview components will be briefly applied to the case of Katie.

Katie, an 8-year-old female, wrote the following note to her teacher, "Daddy does bad things to me at night. He comes in my room and touches me." Katie's teacher reported the incident to local police who requested a forensic interview of Katie. Katie was accompanied to a child advocacy center where a forensic interview was conducted in a child-friendly environment. The interview was taped in its entirety.

Rapport was developed with Katie by explaining the purpose of the interview. In an effort to make Katie feel more comfortable, she was told the interviewer has talked with many girls who have had something happen to them. Katie was told the interview would be taped. She was also encouraged to inform the interviewer if she did not understand questions or if the interviewer repeated something incorrectly. During the rapport-building phase, it was established that Katie lived at home with her parents and two dogs. An assessment of Katie's capacity to provide a narrative was made by asking, "Tell me about your pets." Katie responded in narrative fashion, so an attempt was made to obtain uninterrupted speech about the alleged crime.

The interviewer directed Katie to the central task of the interview with, "I understand something may have happened to you. Please take a minute and think back to what happened ... the sounds, smells, what you were feeling and thinking. Help me understand everything that happened from beginning to end." Katie responded:

"Last night my dad came into my room and touched my privates. He thought I was asleep but I wasn't. I was under the covers and staying really still. I didn't know what he was doing 'cause he never done (sic) that before. It hurted (sic) and I tried not to cry. He just got under the covers and started doing it."

Katie was prompted to continue with, "And then what happened?" Once Katie's description reached a logical conclusion, direct questions were asked to clarify information she provided in her narrative. Many direct questions were still required, such as what her father touched Katie with, where specifically she was touched and how the acts were perpetrated. Once the event was fully understood the closure phase of the interview involved answering any questions from Katie. While she did speak freely with the forensic nurse, several other scenarios could have occurred during the interview.

Katie could have described chronic sexual abuse in her initial narrative. If so, the interviewer would need to structure questions about particular episodes of abuse in order to facilitate complete descriptions about specific incidents. Questions such as "tell me about the last time something happened" or "tell me about a time you remember most clearly" assist children in specifying information necessary for criminal charges to be filed. Direct questions would then be asked to clarify any information Katie provided. But what if Katie did not respond at all to the interviewer's request for a narrative?

Some children are unclear about the topic to be discussed when presented with a broad, open-ended request from the interviewer. In such circumstances, cue questions can be helpful in clarifying the topic or cueing retrieval of memory. Cue questions include a specific, relevant word that that more clearly identifies the topic to be discussed. For example, in Katie's circumstance, the note she wrote about the abuse could be used as a cue. An interviewer could inquire, "I heard something about a note. Tell me about that so I would understand."

Some children, however, might still be unwilling or unable to answer an interviewer's questions. Others face cultural barriers that may inhibit their interactions with forensic interviewers. With reluctant children, switching tasks from talking to writing or drawing might be productive. Follow-up questions would still be required for children to fully explain their experiences.

As you can see, skillful forensic interviewers need to be flexible in their approaches with children. The exact questions asked of children may differ based upon a variety of factors such as the type of crime alleged, passage of time between the interview and commission of a crime as well as the individual responses of children. In spite of our best efforts, for some children, best practice interview strategies may be utterly inadequate. For these circumstances, there is no easy answer. Forensic nurses, however, have the ability to forge ahead with creative, developmentally sound techniques that afford children every opportunity to relate their experiences.

Tascha Spears, PhD, RN, is an associate professor in nursing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has conducted more than 3,000 forensic interviews of children reporting abuse.

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