* Original Message Posted via CHILD_ABUSE_ISSUES
 * Date: 11 Jun 95  00:42:01
 * From: Rick Thoma @ 1:271/124
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 APA News Release
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 Date: June 2, 1995
 Contact: Doug Fizel
 Public Affairs Office
 (202) 336-5700
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 New Book Examines Controversy Over Children's Testimony
 Offers Information and Advice for Parents, Investigators, Therapists,
 Attorneys, Expert Witnesses and Judges
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 WASHINGTON -- More than 200,000 children may be involved in the legal
 system in any given year; upwards of 13,000 of them --
 disproportionately preschool-age -- may be testifying in sexual abuse
 trials. But according to the authors of a new book, Jeopardy in the
 Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, published by
 the American Psychological Association (APA), while even preschool-age
 children are quite capable of providing accurate testimony, they are
 also more vulnerable to having their testimony and their memories
 distorted to the point that, in some cases, the truth may never be
 known.
 Award-winning developmental psychologists Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., of
 Cornell University, and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D., of McGill University, say
 they wrote the book in an attempt to educate professionals who deal
 with child witnesses, including mental health professionals who assess
 and/or treat children suspected to have been sexually abused, forensic
 investigators who interview child witnesses, attorneys and judges. It
 is also intended for nonprofessionals who have become captivated by
 highly publicized cases involving accusations of childhood sexual
 abuse. While the book focuses on children's testimony in sexual abuse
 cases, its message is relevant for the entire range of cases involving
 children as witnesses, including acrimonious custody decisions,
 neglect proceedings and witnesses to crimes.
 Public and professional opinion about the credibility of children as
 witnesses in sexual abuse cases has been sharply divided, the authors
 note. One side contends that when children disclose details of sexual
 abuse, no matter what techniques were used to obtain their disclosure,
 they must be believed because children do not generate false reports
 of their own sexual victimization. The other side depicts children as
 helpless sponges who soak up interviewers' suggestions and regurgitate
 these suggestions in court.
 In the authors' view, "such extreme positions about children's
 credibility are more appropriately categorized under the rubric of
 'partisan advocacy' than under the heading of 'scientifically derived
 insights.'"
 Drs. Ceci and Bruck base their conclusions on a thorough review of the
 entire body of scientific literature on children's suggestibility and
 memory and they illustrate many of their points with excerpts from the
 records of actual cases which involved children's testimony; cases as
 old as the Salem Witch Trials and as recent as the Little Rascals Day
 Care case in Edenton, North Carolina, in which two convictions were
 overturned on appeal in early May.
 Among their conclusions:
      While preschool-age children are capable of providing
      forensically relevant testimony, they are more suggestible than
      older children who are, in turn, more suggestible than adults.
      Through suggestive interviewing techniques and repeated
      questioning, children can be led to get wrong not only peripheral
      details, but the central gist of events they experienced, even
      events affecting their bodies that could have sexual
      implications.
      There is no "Pinocchio Test" (scientifically acceptable test or
      procedure analogous to Pinocchio's nose growing longer when he
      didn't tell the truth) to determine whether allegations that
      emerge after repeated interviews using suggestive techniques are
      accurate or merely the product of the suggestive interview
      procedures.
      Whenever possible (and as soon as possible) interviews with
      children in cases where sexual abuse is suspected should be
      electronically preserved (audio- or videotaped), ideally from the
      first interview on -- not just transcripts or notes and not just
      from the point when a child begins to disclose.
      Although anatomically detailed dolls are seen by some therapists
      and investigators as useful tools in helping young children who
      were sexually abused describe what happened to them, the authors
      conclude: "We feel at this point that there has been sufficient
      concern raised in the literature and enough evidence of potential
      misuse, without sufficiently counterbalanced evidence to the
      contrary, to urge that dolls not be used diagnostically, at least
      not with very young children."
 The authors examine in detail the constellation of factors, gleaned
 from laboratory research and elsewhere, that can affect children's
 testimony. These include:
      Interviewer bias -- when the interviewer (parent, therapist,
      investigator) believes he or she knows what happened and attempts
      to get the child to confirm it, ignoring anything the child says
      that does not conform with the interviewer's bias and encouraging
      anything that does.
      Repeated questions -- children, especially younger children, are
      more likely to change their answers when asked the same yes or no
      question repeated during a single interview. Answers from
      children to yes or no questions repeated over several interviews
      are likely to become more firm and confident, regardless of
      whether they are correct.
      Stereotype induction -- children's reports can be influenced by
      stereotypes suggested by the interviewer (or by others before the
      interview takes place). An interviewer telling a child that "[the
      suspect] is a bad man who does bad things" is an example of
      stereotype induction. Similarly, children can come to assume and
      report bad things about someone they had previously heard
      described in negative terms.
      Encouragement to imagine and visualize -- when asked to "think
      real hard" about or to visualize events they don't remember,
      children can come to "remember" and then present a detailed,
      coherent narrative of events that never occurred.
      Peer pressure -- children's reports can be influenced by the
      application of peer pressure ("Johnny told me all about it, and
      he said you were there, too.") Studies also show that children
      can incorporate into their own memories experiences that their
      peers told them about, but which they did not witness themselves.
      Authority figures -- children tend to regard adults generally as
      all- knowing and trustworthy, which can influence how they
      respond to questioning by adults. But they may also be sensitive
      to status and power differentials among adults -- an important
      issue when children are interviewed by police officers, judges
      and medical personnel.
 Much of what has been learned about the influence of suggestive
 interviewing techniques on children has come from laboratory research,
 which the authors acknowledge is not a perfect analog to real-life
 sexual abuse and real-life questioning. However, they also note that
 it would be ethically impermissible to interview children in the
 laboratory as intensively as they have been in real cases, much less
 to sexually abuse them in the name of science.
 In a chapter on ethical and professional issues, the authors discuss
 the roles of mental health professionals as therapists, forensic
 interviewers and expert witnesses in cases involving children's
 testimony. They recommend that each of those roles be occupied by
 different people in a given case as each has a distinctly different
 job to do.
 For expert witnesses, they offer suggestions on how both mental health
 professionals and social scientists can be most helpful to judges and
 juries (as opposed to the prosecution or defense), recommending that
 they thoroughly familiarize themselves with the relevant literature
 but learn only enough about the case at hand to assure that their
 expertise is relevant.
 They note that studies have found very little agreement and very low
 rates of accuracy among expert witnesses who are asked to evaluate
 cases and make a judgment about whether children were or were not
 abused, and urged that attorneys and judges "put their feet to the
 coals, forcing them to provide scientifically adequate evidence for
 their interpretations. In light of the research, to do otherwise would
 seem akin to accepting the testimony of a forensic astrologer."
 Book: Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's
 Testimony by Stephen J. Ceci, Ph.D., and Maggie Bruck, Ph.D.,
 Published by the American Psychological Association (Item No. 4318350,
 ISBN: 1-55798-282-1 Available from the APA Order Department, P.O. Box
 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784-0710 or 1-800-374-2721; Price: $29.95
 List/$24.95 for APA Members)
 (Bound galleys for media available from the APA Public Affairs
 Office.)
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 The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is
 the largest scientific and professional organization representing
 psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association
 of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 132,000
 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through
 its divisions in 49 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 58
 state and territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works
 to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of
 promoting human welfare.
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