FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE Assessment and Testifying in Child Abuse Cases Sample Case 14 year old girl Claims father sexually molested her from ages 9 12 Did not tell anyone while it was happening or for 2 years later Upon disclosure to a friend at school DSS now DCF had father leave the home allegation Father adamantly denies abuse Mother is very upset does not know who to believe Brother had no clue After father leaves and after investigation has been substantiated daughter recants o Means there s sufficient evidence according to DSS to suspect that some form of abuse has taken place Daughter has been having various problems a year and a half before disclosure Would want to know what did she say happened vs Dad s version Along with many other things o Nightmares general o Problems at school o Depressed o Started becoming very sexually active o Attitude problems Child Abuse Evaluations Very often done for child sexual abuse CSA o Harder to substantiate o More clearly criminal Never in a Vacuum DCF involvement Physical exam o Lots of abuse that doesn t leave physical evidence o Also hard to tell the difference between physical evidence of consensual sexual acts and sexual acts of abuse o Want to use interviews for legal reasons more than investigative reasons Persecutors Police Children s Advocacy Centers CAC Specialized staff Multi disciplinary team Minimize stress on the child o Could re traumatize child Memory deterioration o Problematic Age affects how children can talk about what happened o Different developmental stages Interview as few times as possible to avoid the problems mentioned above o Only do one main interview o Minimizes stress side effects Interviewers are trained to maximize accuracy and consistency Interviewers are generally female o Research shows that children feel more comfortable when the interviewers are female Many cases don t go beyond this they cases get plead out Conducting Evaluations Indicators Approach not by distinguishing from someone who has not been abused diagnostic in nature look for indicators of abuse to see if it truly happened or o Indicators include Inappropriate sexual knowledge Physical indicators STDs physical genital damage Consistency of disclosure Details that were unique to the abuse Sexualized play Developmentally appropriate vs developmentally inappropriate Behavioral or emotional response consistent with abuse Could be due to onset of mental illness independent of abuse Grooming approach of abuser I ll buy you this if you come with me etc Threatening approach of abuser o Some of these are difficult to determine the developmental line of appropriateness and some are indicative of abuse but not who the perpetrator is o Some of these are difficult because you can have these without having been sexually abused o Typical abuse experiences don t quite exist Extremely variable o There are victims of abuse who are non reactive 10 15 of those abused o To some degree more effective if we re talking about a constellation of o Statement Validity Analysis symptoms like the VRAG without statistical support abuse are measurable there s a measurable difference between how what is disclosed in real abuse versus how what is closed in a false accusation statements about real abuse versus false Criterion Based Content Analysis CBCA an attempt at essentially determining the quality structure information in statements in the disclosure and actually scoring it to determine whether you have a true disclosure or not 19 different things o Rate consistency o Rate degree of inappropriate sexual knowledge Results can be absent present or strongly present Hasn t worked very well o 1st problem lots of the criteria wouldn t come up in any of the cases o 2nd problem not consistent o 3rd problem horrible inter rating reliability different people scored differently for the same case the focus is not on the disclosure but how professionals Standards Approach conduct the interview o Age appropriate language o Developmental capacities Broad anchors for time for younger children Was it warm or was it cold etc o Types of questions Open vs focused vs specific vs leading Open what did you do today o Hard for younger kids Focused what did you do at school today o Focused on school o Better for younger kids Specific was your teacher there today Leading your teacher was there wasn t she o Younger kids are more susceptible to younger kids I don t know as an option Younger kids are more susceptible to social desirability they want to give you the answer you re looking for o Suggestibility vs Social Desirability Child memory is more suggestible you can implant things into Suggestibility suggests that I put it into your head and now it s in their memory your memory More likely to be social desirability Kids give you the answer they think you want to hear Avoid leading questions and letting them know I don t know is an answer then it avoids this as much as possible o Doing things to maximize accuracy Anatomical Dolls Lots of debate Show instead of tell Has to have already been a disclosure to use them Too suggestive Child needs to have representational insight o Representational insight supposed to represent themselves o Doesn t develop until age 5 the child needs to understand that the doll is Can be helpful in the interview but doesn t necessarily hold up forensically Helpful in getting some of the details about the abuse Manual exploration of the dolls vs what is normal of abused children Recanting In cases of true abuse Delayed disclosure Incremental disclosure abuse o Recanting 22 o Reaffirmation 93 of those that recanted of the 22 as time goes on you get more information about the Factors that contribute to likelihood of recanting o Relationship to offender o Non supportive family o Child s placement child was removed from the home o Evidence of direct pressure to recant Types of Expert Testimony 1 Social Frameworks Testimony o Giving jury judge information on the veracity of disclosure o Provide framework for providing evidence o Don t speak to case specifically general for sexual abuse cases 2 Substantive Evidence Testimony o Actually talking about what the research says o Specific to the case at hand o Can t say I think the child is telling the truth o Backdoor way of speaking to the veracity of the disclosure Ultimate Issue o Need to evaluate the alleged victim to do this o Have to be a licensed clinician 3 Rehabilitative Evidence Testimony o Essentially 1 o BUT