Location description in forensic interviews with abused children

Abstract

Forensic interviews in child sexual abuse cases involve several challenges, such as how to obtain sufficient specific details to correctly understand the alleged aggression. This study looks at the influence of victim age and the type of question on the kind of words used to describe the location in which the aggression took place. A content analysis was performed on 75 interviews with alleged victims aged between 3 to 12 years. All interviews followed the NICHD protocol. As expected, the findings suggest that location description becomes richer and more detailed as the child ages. Vocabulary and the use of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions increase with age, which greatly improves the accuracy of testimony. These results illustrate the effect of the development of cognitive capacities, language, and attention skills on the quality of the description. Closed-ended questions generally lead to vaguer answers than open-ended questions, especially with the youngest children. This observation supports experts' recommendations that open-ended questions should be given priority to order to obtain the most complete information.