Facilitating child witness interviews' understanding of evidential requirements through prosecutor instruction

Prosecutors report that the evidential usefulness of child witness statements about abuse is often limited by unnecessary interview content and excessive length. Prior research indicates that this limitation may be attributed to a mismatch between interviewers' and prosecutors' understandings of the legal requirements of an interview. The aim of this study is to examine whether differences in the evidential qualities that are perceived as important by prosecutors and interviewers can be reduced through simple instruction. Five prosecutors and 33 interviewers completed a written exercise wherein participants were required to identify what aspects of information required follow-up in five hypothetical narrative accounts of abuse. Twenty of the interviewers had (prior to completing the exercise) received prosecutor instruction on the requirements of interviews in terms of the elements and particulars of sexual offences, and the manner in which necessary information is best elicited in an interview (from a legal perspective). The responses to the exercise of interviewers who had and had not received prosecutor instruction were compared. The results indicated that interviewers who had received instruction were more consistent with prosecutors in their responses to the exercise. The importance of these findings, and directions for future research, are discussed.

Resistance and reconstruction: Older women talk about childhood sexual abuse

Research which explores the experiences of women, who have experienced childhood sexual abuse is, in the main, focused on young and middle aged women. The perspectives of older women is often absent or hidden in the literature. This study explores the experiences of 16 Australian women aged 57 years and older who have experienced childhood sexual abuse. It aims to privilege their views and highlight their particular contexts in order to redress professional assumptions regarding the notions of recovery. Additionally, in discussing their experiences, the women contribute to insights regarding the patterns of inequality which are produced as a result of dominant discourses that promote ageist and sexist prescriptions in the construction of the self. These insights demonstrate how the women have resisted a range of oppressive patterns in their everyday lives. The study follows a feminist research framework and aims to contribute to the fields of social work practice and critical feminist gerontology.

Police officers' strategies for coping with the stress of investigating internet child exploitation

Research shows that Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) investigators cope well with the range of stressors their work exposes them to, but little is known about how they manage to cope. The current study attempts to expand knowledge and address the limitations of prior research by using a broad, open-ended anonymous interviewing strategy that differentiates between individual and organizational coping resources in the first study conducted with Australian investigators. Participants were 32 ICE investigators from all nine Australian jurisdictions. Results were organized thematically in the following headings: selection of ideal applicants, indicators of poor coping and coping strategies. The overriding conclusions and their implications for police managers are discussed. © 2014 American Psychological Association.

Witness recall across repeated interviews in a case of repeated abuse.

In this illustrative case study we examine the three forensic interviews of a girl who experienced repeated sexual abuse from ages 7 to 11. She disclosed the abuse after watching a serialized television show that contained a storyline similar to her own experience. This triggered an investigation that ended in successful prosecution of the offender. Because this case involved abuse that was repeated on a weekly basis for 4 years we thus investigated the degree to which the child's narrative reflected specific episodes or generic accounts, and both the interviewer's and child's attempts to elicit and provide, respectively, specific details across the 3 interviews collected in a 1 month period. Across the 3 interviews, the child's account was largely generic, yet on a number of occasions she provided details specific to individual incidents (episodic leads) that could have been probed further. As predicted: earlier interviews were characterized more by episodic than generic prompts and the reverse was true for the third interview; the child often responded using the same style of language (episodic or generic) as the interviewer; and open questions yielded narrative information. We discuss the importance of adopting children's words to specify occurrences, and the potential benefits of permitting generic recall in investigative interviews on children's ability to provide episodic leads. Despite the fact that the testimony was characterized by generic information about what usually happened, rather than specific episodic details about individual occurrences, this case resulted in successful prosecution.

The effect of complainant age on outcomes in the criminal justice system: case tracking from report to conviction

 The thesis explored child sexual abuse in the criminal justice system and how victim age predicted case outcomes, including disclosures, charges and convictions. The findings highlighted that adolescent victims may experience unique challenges. Further, the relationships between victim age, case characteristics and evidence are crucial to explaining case outcomes.

Resistance and reconstruction: older women talk about childhood sexual abuse

 This research explores personal stories of 16 Australian women aged 57 years and older who have experienced childhood sexual abuse. It privileges their views and examines how they managed the impact during their lives. The project contributes to professional knowledge by developing anti-ageist practices for social work and human services.

"Because she's one who listens": children discuss disclosure recipients in forensic interviews

The current study examined investigative interviews using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Investigative Interview Protocol with 204, five- to thirteen-year-old suspected victims of child sexual abuse. The analyses focused on who children told, who they wanted (or did not want) to tell and why, their expectations about being believed, and other general motivations for disclosure. Children's spontaneous reports as well as their responses to interviewer questions about disclosure were explored. Results demonstrated that the majority of children discussed disclosure recipients in their interviews, with 78 children (38%) explaining their disclosures. Only 15 children (7%) mentioned expectations about whether recipients would believe their disclosures. There were no differences between the types of information elicited by interviewers and those provided spontaneously, suggesting that, when interviewed in an open-ended, facilitative manner, children themselves produce informative details about their disclosure histories. Results have practical implications for professionals who interview children about sexual abuse.

When she refuses to settle: reading adolescent female sexuality and sexual abuse in the poetry of Genna Gardini and Kate Lilley

This essay compares the representations of adolescent sexual abuse and female sexuality in the poetry of South African poet Genna Gardini and Australian poet Kate Lilley. It explores Sabine Sielke's contention that differences in sexuality have predominantly constructed female sexuality as victimisation. In contrast, contemporary poets like Gardini and Lilley unsettle such alignment, demonstrating not only its constitutive limits but also providing a counter-discourse of radicalised agency.

Affordances of using multiple videoed events to construct a rich understanding of adult-child book readings

This paper explores the affordances of using video-based research to capture a multiplicity of events, along with multimodal representations when producing data related to adult–child book readings. In doing this we answer two questions: (1) why more than one event is needed when seeking a comprehensive collection of information for the purpose of analysis; and (2) why one mode of data production alone (e.g. audio recordings or note taking) is insufficient to record practice or interviews when richness is of priority. This research used three videoed events to produce data. These included videoing: (1) caregiver–child interactions during four shared book reading sessions, (2) interviews with caregivers immediately following each of the reading sessions and (3) video-stimulated discussions with caregivers within two months of the final shared book reading. In this paper, I contribute to discussions that highlight the affordances of using video-based research as a means of capturing the multimodal elements of an experience, which can contribute to the analysis and interpretation of data. I expand on this, however, to suggest that when coupled with a multiplicity of events, video-based research can be a means of pursuing richness via a method that has been criticized for its narrow subjectivity.

Police perceptions of interviews involving children with intellectual disabilities: a qualitative inquiry

This study employed a qualitative method to explore the experiences of 20 police officers when interviewing children with intellectual disabilities. Three main themes were interpreted as representing challenges to the officers when interviewing special-needs children: police organizational culture, participants' perceptions of these children as interviewees, and prior information. Participants in this inquiry mentioned poor organizational priority within the police force for child abuse cases and children with intellectual disabilities, as well as inadequate support for interviewing skills development and maintenance. Participants also attempted to equalize these children by interviewing them in the same way as their mainstream peers. Finally, participants viewed interview preparation as influential in determining an interview's successful outcome, but recognized that preparedness could bias their interviewing techniques. Increased attention towards these issues will provide a basis for developing strategies to minimize such challenges and thus improve the quality of interviews with children with intellectual disabilities.

An examination of the limitations in investigative interviewer's use of open-ended questions

Best-practice guidelines in the area of investigative interviewing of children specify the importance of using open-ended questions. However, use of open-ended questions per se does not maximise interview outcome; open-ended questions can vary markedly in quality. The aim of this study was to identify the nature of investigative interviewers' limitations when using open-ended questions, and to compare how representative these limitations are in three distinct interview paradigms. These interview paradigms include: (a) interviews in which trained actors played the role of a 5-6-year-old child; (b) interviews where 5-6-year-old children recalled an innocuous event that was staged in their school; and (c) actual field interviews where child witnesses aged 5 to 7 years recalled an abusive event. Overall, several common problems that would restrict children's opportunity to provide elaborate and accurate narrative accounts of events were identified and described. Our identification of these problems (using a dichotomous rating scale) was found to be consistent with an independent expert, and their presence was not limited to those interviewers who used a low frequency of open-ended questions. The implications of the findings for researchers and trainers in the area of investigative interviewing of children are discussed.