Scribd
Upload
7 views20 pages

Chapter Three

The document discusses the role of children as eyewitnesses in court, highlighting their increasing presence and the challenges associated with their testimony. It outlines effective interviewing techniques tailored to children's cognitive abilities and emphasizes the importance of creating a supportive environment during interviews. Additionally, it addresses factors that influence children's memory and the potential for deception, particularly in sensitive cases such as sexual abuse.

Uploaded by

shimelisw12
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
7 views20 pages

Chapter Three

The document discusses the role of children as eyewitnesses in court, highlighting their increasing presence and the challenges associated with their testimony. It outlines effective interviewing techniques tailored to children's cognitive abilities and emphasizes the importance of creating a supportive environment during interviews. Additionally, it addresses factors that influence children's memory and the potential for deception, particularly in sensitive cases such as sexual abuse.

Uploaded by

shimelisw12
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 20

CHAPTER THREE

Children as Eyewitness
▪Do children serve as witness in court?
▪Do children provide credible witness?
▪Do children lie?
▪Is it possible to take oaths from
children?
▪How children should be interviewed?
Beginning in the 1980s

Children have
increasingly served as
witnesses in the criminal,
civil, and family courts

Currently, >100 000


children appear in
court each year in USA.
Why Are Children More Suggestible Than Adults?

Social Compliance or Social Pressure

Changes to the Cognitive System


Interviewing children
Children under five years of age can be interviewed effectively
but this requires consideration of the interviewer’s skills and
any assumptions being made about the child’s language ability.
Shepherd (2007) gives a great deal of advice on this.
1. Interviewing younger child witnesses can bring greater
problems for the interviewer.
2. However, children under five years of age can be
interviewed effectively but this requires consideration of
the interviewer’s skills and any assumptions being made
about the child’s language ability.
3. Don’t expect young children to tell adults that they do not
understand what they are telling them.
4. The interviewer has the responsibility of making sure that
the child understands what the interviewer is saying to
them.
5. Children prefer to say something in an interview
irrespective of what that something is.
6. Asking a child whether he/she understands is a weak
way of checking comprehension. Instead, Shepherd
suggests that the interviewer asks the child what the child
thinks the interviewer means repeatedly throughout the
interview.
7. While frequently children do not understand what
adults are saying to them, children do not know that they
don’t understand.
Saywitz (1994) also had a number of practical guidelines for
interviewing very young children under the age of seven years.
Nevertheless, they also contain lessons for interviewing older
children:
1. Avoid complex grammatical constructions such as double
negatives (e.g. ‘You’re not saying you didn’t steal the apple, are
you?’).
2. Avoid questions requiring counting ability if the child is too
young to be able to count. Similarly, time, linear measurements
and similar concepts may be beyond the child’s cognitive ability.
3. Avoid using personal pronouns (him, her, they, she) in favour of
proper names (such as Darren or Sue). Personal pronouns can
cause confusion about what they actually indicate during speech.
4. Children may appear to be uncooperative and uninformative
because of their emotional and psychiatric states. Social
withdrawal, as a consequence of abuse, should not be confused
with uncooperativeness, for example.
Concrete terms are better than abstract ones (e.g. ‘gun’ is better
than ‘weapon’).
5. Jargon words should not be used (e.g. legalese such as
‘sentence’ and ‘charge’ which also have more obvious meanings).
6. Make it absolutely clear to what you are referring (e.g. ‘When did
your mother go to work?’ is better than ‘When did that
happen?’).
7. The passive voice should be avoided (e.g. the active voice ‘Did
Adam steal the money?’ is clearer than the passive voice ‘Was
the money stolen by Adam?’).
8. Use short sentences. Break down compound or overloaded
questions into several simple questions.
9. Use short words rather than longer ones (e.g. ‘mend’ rather than
‘repair’).
10. Use simple verb constructions. Avoid complex verb structures
(e.g. ‘Do you think it possibly could have been?’).
With younger children, concrete, imaginable and observable things
are better than abstract ones.
▪A growing body of scientific literature on the
psychological and physiologic consequences of
children witnessing and experiencing violence, as
well as appearing in court, has supported
modifications of courtroom procedures.
▪To decrease the stress experienced by children
appearing in courts, various accommodations
were developed, ranging from allowing children to
hold comforting objects to being accompanied by
a support person while testifying.
▪These accommodations have been challenged
legally, particularly those attempting to allow
children to testify outside the presence of the
accused.
The purpose of child testimony in court is to
provide trustworthy evidence. The qualifications
for a child to provide testimony include the
following:
▪sufficient intelligence, understanding, and
ability to observe, recall, and communicate
events;
▪an ability to comprehend the seriousness
of an oath; and
▪an appreciation of the necessity to tell the
truth.
Children’s Remembering Ability
▪Children remember activities performed better than
those imagined, both immediately and after an eight
week delay.
▪Activities performed interactively with another person
were remembered better than those performed alone
after the delay.
▪Children provided fewer responses to open-ended than to
specific questions, but their responses to open-ended
questions were more likely to be correct.
▪Responses to questions about events that did not occur
were quite good initially but accuracy decreased
significantly in response to follow-up probes.
Deception in Children
▪Children may also give false reports in these
situations for a variety of reasons, and research
suggests that adults are relatively poor at detecting
such lies.
▪Both intentional and non-intentional
▪Children’s unintentional false reports due to repeated
or suggestive questioning, children’s memory of
events, and children’s ability to distinguish fact from
fantasy.
▪Children may conceal or fabricate a report about an
alleged event at the behest of an adult or because
they are fearful of the effects their truthful testimony
might have, such as upsetting or disappointing loved
ones.
Interviewing Children in Sexual Abuse Cases
▪ Forensic interviews provide children a safe place
to tell their story to experts who will listen to
them, protect them, and help them heal.
▪ The interview typically involves a child speaking
with a Forensic Interviewer while Team
members observe the interview through a one-
way mirror.
Some suggestions for an interviewer's
approach are to be:
▪ Sensitive to the child's level of
development
▪ Flexible
▪ Objective
▪ Empathetic
Interview Guidelines
▪ Phrase the question so the child understands
▪ Talk about what children understand
▪ Help children deal with questions they do not
understand
▪ Be objective and avoid suggesting answers
▪ Provide a nonjudgmental atmosphere
▪ Begin the interview with broad, open-ended
questions
▪ Avoid leading questions
▪ Help children overcome their anxieties
▪ Understand children's emotional reactions
Factors that Affect Children as
Eyewitness
▪ Cognitive
▪ Biological
▪ Social
SLIDE END

You might also like