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| Amicus
Brief for the
Case of State of New Jersey v. Michaels Presented by Committee of Concerned Social Scientists |
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PREPARED BY MAGGIE BRUCK & STEPHEN J. CECI |
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In the past decade, there has been an exponential increase in research on the accuracy of young children's memories and the degree to which young children's memories and reports can be molded by suggestions implanted by adult interviewers. Although some of these studies document the strengths of young children's memories, increasing numbers of studies highlight their weaknesses when they are interviewed under certain conditions. As will be explained, these same interview conditions, which have a high risk of contaminating young children's reports, characterize the available investigative interviews carried out with the 20 child witnesses in the Kelly Michaels case. In this brief, we present a summary of the pertinent social science research that addresses the issues of children's suggestibility. Our primary focus is on the conditions under which preschool children are most suggestible. Referring to interviews used with Wee Care children, we conclude that the procedures of interviewing these children were so faulty that they may have substantially increased the risk that the children's subsequent reports were mere reflections of the interviewers' suggestions. This brief also contains a summary
of some of
the conditions which have been shown to increase the reliability of
young
children's reports, and which act as a safeguard against the production
of false reports. The Wee Care children were not interviewed
under
these safer conditions. Finally, we will argue that the failure to
record
the initial interviews with any of the child witnesses rules out the
possibility
of ever reaching any firm conclusion as to whether any abuse actually
occurred.
In other words, the primary evidence has been destroyed. A. Research on Children's Suggestibility Children's suggestibility has been a focus of research since the turn of the twentieth century. There have been many studies that examine the influence of a single misleading suggestion on children's recall of an event; generally, these studies indicate that in a variety of conditions, young children are more suggestible than adults with preschoolers being more vulnerable than any other age group (see attached article by Ceci and Bruck, 1993a for the most recent review of this literature). In the past 5 years, there has been a major paradigmatic shift in this research in an attempt to make it more forensically relevant. As more and more children are called to court to provide uncorroborated testimony, especially in cases involving child sexual abuse, social scientists have turned their attention from studying the effects of a single misleading question on children's recall of neutral, nonscripted, and often uninteresting events, to examining the accuracy of children's testimony under a range of conditions that are characteristic of those that bring children to court. One important area of study concerns the effects of different interviewing techniques on the reliability of children's reports. These studies go beyond the examination of how a single misleading question influences children's reports; rather, they examine the effects of a host of implicit and explicit suggestive techniques that can be woven into the fabric of the interview through the use of bribes, threats, repetitions of certain questions, and the induction of stereotypes and expectancies (Ceci & Bruck, 1993a). It is important to understand that this is a rapidly expanding area of inquiry. Reviews of the literature that were published only a few years ago, are now out-of-date. For example, in 1989, Cornell University hosted an international conferences which called together major researchers in the area of child testimony (J. Doris ed. 1991). At that conference some researchers made the following types of statements: |
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(m)ost research on children as eyewitnesses has relied upon situations that are very different from the personal involvement and potential trauma of sexual abuse. Researchers have used brief stories, films, videotapes or slides to simulate a witnessed event. A few have used actual staged events but these events are also qualitatively different from incidents of child abuse (Goodman & Clarke-Stewart, p. 92-93). |
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As will become clear in our presentation, this statement no longer characterizes the relevant research. Researchers have developed paradigms to examine children's reports of salient and personally-experienced events that involve their own bodies. No longer do older maxims hold that when children are inaccurate in their reporting about such events it is because they make errors of omission (i.e, they fail to report important events) rather than errors of commission (i.e. they insert inaccurate details). Rather the newer research indicates that under certain conditions, young children also make errors of commission about personally experienced events involving their own bodies. In the
section below, we summarize some of the
major findings of this area of research. We also provide examples
of how different suggestive interview techniques were used in the
investigative
interviews with the Wee Care children. 1. The Effects of Interviewer Bias on Children's Reports A review of interviews of children suspected of sexual abuse reveals that some interviewers blindly pursue a single hypothesis that sexual abuse has occurred. In such interviews, the interviewer typically fails to rule out rival hypotheses that might explain the behavior of the child and as a result often concludes that the child was sexually abused. Some investigative and therapeutic interviewers claim that such techniques are necessary because sexually abused children are so scared or embarrassed that they will never willingly or spontaneously tell any interviewer, including their own parents of the past abuses. Therefore, they claim, it is necessary to use all available strategies to get the child to reveal sexual abuse. These strategies include the use of repeated leading questions, repeated interviews, bribes or threats, and the induction of stereotypes and expectancies (Ceci & Bruck, 1993a). Such strategies may prove successful when the child has been sexually abused; that is, the interviewer will be successful in drawing out a report of sexual abuse from the child. However, as we document below when interviewers have strong preconceived impressions of what happened, these biases can also result in the generation of false confessions from children. The following three studies show that interviewers, who are given false information about certain events, often shape children's reports to be consistent with their inaccurate beliefs about what happened through the use of leading questions and other implicit suggestive techniques. Clarke-Stewart,
Thompson and Lepore (1989) conducted
a study in which 5- and 6-year-olds viewed a staged event that could be
construed as either abusive or innocent. Some children interacted
with a confederate named Chester as he cleaned some dolls and other
toys
in a playroom. Other children interacted with Chester as he
handled
the dolls roughly in a mildly abusive manner. Chester's dialogue
reinforced the idea that he was either cleaning (e.g., "This doll
is dirty, I had better clean it"), or playing with the doll in a rough
suggestive manner (e.g., "I like to play with dolls. I like to
spray
them in the face with water").
The
child was then questioned about this event
several times, on the same day, by different interviewers who differed
in their interpretations of the event. The interviewer was either
1) accusatory in tone (suggesting that the janitor had been
inappropriately
playing with the toys instead of working), 2) exculpatory in tone
(suggesting
that the janitor was just cleaning the toys and not playing), or 3)
neutral
and non-suggestive in tone. In the first two types of interviews,
the questions changed from mildly to strongly suggestive as the
interview
progressed. Following the first interview, all children were asked to
tell
in their own words what they had witnessed (this is referred to as
"free
recall"). They were then asked some factual questions (e.g., "Did
the janitor wipe the doll's face?"), and some interpretive questions
regarding
the janitor's activities (e.g., "Was the janitor doing his job or was
he
just being bad?"). Then, each child was interrogated by a second
interviewer who either reinforced or contradicted the first
interviewer's
tone. Finally, children were asked by their parents to recount
what
the janitor had done. When questioned by a neutral interviewer,
or
by an interviewer whose interpretation was consistent with the activity
viewed by the child, children's accounts were both factually correct,
and
consistent with the janitor's script. However, when the
interviewer
contradicted the script, children's stories quickly conformed to the
suggestions
or beliefs of the interviewer; by the end of the first interview, 75%
of
children's remarks were consistent with the examiner's point of view,
and
90% answered the interpretive questions in agreement with the
interviewer's
point of view, as opposed to what actually happened. Children
changed
their stories from the first to second interviews only if the two
interviewers
differed in their interpretation of the events; thus, when the second
interviewer
contradicted the first interviewer, the majority of children then fit
their
stories to the suggestions of the second interviewer. If the
interviewer's
interpretation was consistent across two interviews, the suggestions
planted
in the first session were quickly taken up and mentioned by the
children
in the second session. Moreover, when questioned by their
parents,
the children's answers were consistent with the interviewers'
biases.
Finally, although the effects of the interviewers' interpretations were
most observable in terms of the children's responses to the
interpretive
questions about what the janitor had done, 20% of the children also
made
errors on the factual questions in the direction suggested by the
biased
interpretation, even though no suggestions had been given regarding
these
particular details. On a more practical level, these results suggest
that
if children experience an ambiguous event (e.g., touching), depending
on
the interviewers' beliefs about the touching, and how these beliefs get
translated into questions, children may relate that it was good
touching
("my teacher was only rubbing my back"), or bad touching ("my teacher
was
rubbing my bum").
Pettit, Fegan and Howie (1990) examined how interviewers' beliefs about a certain event affects (a) their style of questioning children about those events and (b) the accuracy of children's subsequent reports. Two actors, posing as park rangers, visited the classes of preschool children to ask them to help a bird find a nest for her eggs. During the presentation, one of the rangers accidently knocked a cake onto the floor. When the cake fell and shattered on the floor, there was an abrupt silence and a halt to all activities. Seven children, who were members of the class, did not view this event but had been taken to other parts of the school. Two weeks later, all children were questioned about the event. Interviewers' beliefs about the event were manipulated. Some interviewers had full accurate knowledge of the event. Some were given inaccurate information (i.e. false beliefs). Other interviewers were given no information about the event. The interviewers were told to question each child until they found out what happened, and to avoid the use of leading questions. Despite the warning to avoid leading questions, 30% of all interviewers' questions could be characterized as leading, and half of these were misleading. Interviewers with inaccurate knowledge (false beliefs) asked four to five times as many misleading questions as the other interviewers. Overall, children agreed with 41% of the misleading questions, and children who were interviewed by biased interviewers gave the most inaccurate information. Thus if an interviewer's belief is contrary to what the child actually experienced, the interview is characterized by an overabundance of misleading questions which results in children providing highly inaccurate information. A similar finding was reported by Ceci, Leichtman & White (in press). Here, preschoolers were exposed to a touching-game, and then were interviewed one month later. The interviewer was given a one-page report containing information about what might have occurred. Some of the information was accurate and some was inaccurate. The interviewer was asked to conduct an interview to determine how much information the child could, in fact, still recall. The only instruction given to the interviewer was that she should begin by asking the child for a free narrative of what had transpired, avoiding all forms of suggestions and leading questions. Following this, the interviewer was instructed to use whatever strategies she felt necessary to elicit the most factually accurate report from the child. When the interviewer was accurately informed, she got children to recall correctly most of the events that had transpired. Importantly, there were no false reports when the interviewer was correctly informed. However, when she was misinformed, 34% of the 3- to 4-year-olds and 18% of the 5- to-6-year-olds corroborated one or more false events that the interviewer erroneously believed had transpired. Thus, in the misinformed condition, the children made errors of commission. After two such interviews, children continued to give detailed, but false, accounts of bodily touching (e.g., some falsely claimed that their knees were licked and that marbles were inserted into their ears). Finally, the children in the misinformed condition seemingly became more credible as the interview unfolded. Many initially stated details inconsistently, or with reluctance or even denial, but as the interviewer persisted in asking about nonevents, some children abandoned their denials and hesitancy. These studies provide important evidence that interviewers' beliefs about an event can influence their style of questioning, which in turn can affect the accuracy of children's testimony. The data highlight the dangers of having only one hypothesis about the event in question--especially when this hypothesis is incorrect. Interviewers' biases, their blind pursuit of a single hypothesis, and their failure to test alternate, equally believable, explanations of the children's behavior are rife in the interviews conducted with the Wee Care children. These biases are revealed in the interviewers' persistently maintaining one line of inquiry (through the use of repeated leading questions, bribes and threats) even when children consistently replied that the questioned events never occurred. Interviewers' biases are also revealed in their failure to follow-up on some of the children's inconsistent or bizarre statements, for doing so might disconfirm their primary hypotheses. A long section of interaction shown on pages (PUT IN CORRECT NUMBERS circa 38-41) illustrates some of these claims as do the following shorter pieces of dialogue in which the interviewer (Q) engages one child (A) in the following interactions during one of the initial investigatory interviews. Q: Do you think that Kelly was not good when she was hurting you all? A: Wasn't hurting me. I like her Q: I can't hear you, you got to look at me when you talk to me. Now when Kelly was bothering kids in the music room A: I got socks off -------------------------- Q: Did she make anybody else take their clothes off in the music room? A: No Q: Yes A: No -------------------------- Q: Did you ever see Kelly have blood in her vagina? A: This is blood Q: Kelly had blood in her vagina A: Yeah Q: She did? Did you ever get any of that blood on your penis? A: No. Green blood Q: Did you ever see any of your friends get blood on their penis from her vagina? A: Not green blood but red blood -------------------------- Q: Tell me something, tell me about the piss box. The piss box that's in the music room? A: No, up there. All the way up there Q: Is the piss box the bench at the piano? When you open up the bench: is that the piss box? A: Yeah Q: It is? A: Yeah Q: And what happened, she would open it up? A: And, popped it up A: She popped it up and then what would you do? A: Jump in it? Q: Jump in it? A: Yeah Q: And would you have to pee in it? AL Yeah (about 10 questions later, the topic comes up again) Q: So the pee-pee box is the bench at the piano and you flip it open? A: No Q: What is the pee-pee box? A: This is the pee-pee box Q: That's not a pee-pee box. That's a crayon box -------------------------- Q: Did Kelly ever make you kiss her on the butt? A: No Q: Did Kelly ever say--I'll tell you want. When did Kelly say these words? Piss, shit, sugar? A: Piss, shit sugar? Q: Yeah, when did she say that, what did you have to do in order for her to say that? A: I didn't say that. Q: I know, she said it, but what did you have to do? -------------------------- (In this section, the child is asked to use anatomically detailed dolls and different utensils) Q: Okay, I really need your help on this. Did you have to do anything to her with this stuff? A: Okay. Where's the big knife at. Show me where's the big knife at. Q: Pretend this is the big knife because we don't have a big knife A: This is a big one Q: Okay, what did you have to do with that? What did you have to... A: No..take the peanut-put the peanut butter Q: You put what's that, what did you put there? A: I put jelly right here Q: Jelly A: And I put jelly on her mouth and on the eyes Q: You put jelly on her eyes and her vagina and her mouth A: On her back, on her socks Q: And did you have to put anything else down there? A: Right there, right here and right here and here Q: You put peanut butter all over? And where else did you put the peanut butter? A: And jelly Q: And jelly? A: And we squeezed orange on her. Q: And you had to squeeze an orange on her? A: Put orange juice on her Q: And did anybody--how did everybody take it off? How did she make you take it off? A: No. Lick her all up, eat her all up and lick her all up Q: You had to lick her all up? A: And eat her all up Q: Yeah? What did it taste like? A: Yucky Q: So she made you eat the peanut butter and jelly and the orange juice off of the vagina too? A: Yeah Q: Was that scary or funny? A: Funny, funny and scary. -------------------------- This interview is one of many that shows how interviewers did not seriously consider any evidence that was contrary to their primary beliefs. Thus when children's responses contained discrepant, inconsistent, incomprehensible or no information, the investigators only considered these responses to be consistent with the fact that abuse had taken place or else they chose to ignore these statements. We are struck by the inconsistencies and the bizarre statements made by the children in response to the interviewers' questions. Most adults interacting with children in these situations would try to figure out just what the child was thinking about or why the child might be so confused to make such statements. Yet this simply did not happen. The children were never asked common sense questions such as: "Did this happen to you or are you just pretending that it happened to you?" or "Did you see this happen or did someone tell you that it happened?" Children were never challenged about their statements, "Are you sure that this happened or are you telling me a joke?" Competent investigative interviewers would have used such techniques in order to understand how the alleged acts could actually be carried out in a short period of time in a very public place. Our contention that the Wee Care interviewers held preconceived biases that these children were abused is not an inference, but is based on their statements justifying the use of their interviewing procedures. These interviewers believed that their major objective was to get the children to admit to sexual abuse. Dr Susan Esquilin, a child therapist, presided over two heavily attended parent meetings when allegations were first made. She conducted five group therapy sessions with the Wee Care children and eventually assessed or treated 13 of the 20 child witnesses. She stated that her goal was to induce the children to discuss sexual abuse. In the first group therapy session, she told the children that they were assembled together because of some of the things that had happened at the Wee Care and with Kelly. Based on courtroom testimony, it seems that 4 children made allegations after their contacts with Esquilin. (5C, 11C, 14C, and 20C) Lou Fonolleras, an investigator from the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), conducted 82 interviews with Wee Care children and 19 interviews with Wee Care parents, between May 22 and July 8 1985. At trial, Fonolleras described his interviewing techniques as follows, "The interview process is in essence the beginning of the healing process." To rationalize his use of persistent questions with the children, he stated, "because it is my professional and ethical responsibility to alleviate whatever anxiety has arisen as a result of what happened to them." Fonolleras justified his telling children about other children's allegations by saying, " children who needed some reassurance...(that) they were not alone". Finally one other detail is of importance in understanding the bias and pursuit of a single hypothesis in Fonolleras' interviews. He himself had been abused as a child. And in at least one recorded interview he uses this to lead the child's testimony. At least 10 children made initial allegations after their interviews with Fonolleras. Eileen Treacy, an expert for the prosecution, also interviewed these children several times between November 1985 and February 1987. At trial she testified on her interviewing techniques, "So you open the interview in an effort to disempower Kelly of these super powers that she allegedly has or that the kids thought she had and also to let the children know that telling about these things was okay and they would be safe." Finally, we do not limit our consideration of interviews to those held between children with legal and therapeutic professionals, but also extend these to conversations between parents and their children. Although we do not have any recordings or descriptions of the structures of these conversations, parents were soon instilled with the belief that abuse had taken place. Two weeks after 16C made the initial allegation, Peg Foster a sex abuse consultant told the parents at a school meeting that three children had been abused and urged them to discover whether their own children had been abused. Having documented that interviewer
expectancies
lead preschoolers to respond in ways that are compatible with these
expectancies,
and that the Wee Care interviewers possessed strongly held expectancies
that the children were abused, we now review the components of
suggestive
biased interviews that have the largest impact on producing inaccurate
reports from young children. 2. The Effects of Repeated Questions A number of studies have shown that asking children the same question repeatedly within an interview and across interviews, especially a yes/no question (e.g., Poole & White, 1991), often results in the child changing her original answer. Preschoolers are particularly vulnerable to these effects. Children often do this because they seem to reason, "The first answer I gave must be wrong, that is why they are asking me the question again. Therefore I should change my answer". At other times, children may change their answer to please the adult who is questioning them; they reason that the "adult must not have liked the first answer I gave so I will give another answer". At other times, children's answers may change because the interviewer's previous suggestions become incorporated into their memories. For example, Cassel and Bjorklund (1993) questioned children and adults about a videotaped event they had viewed one week earlier. The subjects were asked leading questions and if they did not fall sway to the lead, then they were asked a more suggestive follow-up question. Kindergarten children were most affected by this manipulation. As expected, compared to adults and older children, they were most inaccurate in answering the first misleading questions; but also when the second more suggestive question was asked, they were more likely than older subjects to change their answers and to incorporate the desired answer into their second responses. Interviewers of the Wee Care children frequently repeated questions. They repeated questions when a child denied abuse or when then the the child's answer was inconsistent with what the interviewers believed. Although there are instances when children tenaciously rejected the interviewer's persistent suggestive questions, upon repetition of a question children often changed their answers to ones that were consistent with sexual abuse. Q: When Kelly kissed you, did she ever put her tongue in your mouth? A: No Q: Did she ever make you put her tongue in her mouth? A: No Q: Did you ever have to kiss her vagina? A: No Q: Which of the kids had to kiss her vagina? A: What's this? Q: No that's my toy, my radio box. Which kids had to kiss her vagina? A: Me 3. The Effects of Repeating Misinformation across Interviews In most earlier studies of children's suggestibility, misinformation was planted only one time. However, our review of available transcripts reveals that not only is misinformation repeated within interviews, but it is commonly repeated across many different interviews. A number of studies show that if children are repeatedly given misleading information in a series of interviews, this can have serious effects on the accuracy of their later reports (for a review, see Poole & White, in press). Not only can the misinformation become directly incorporated into the children's subsequent reports (they use the interviewers' words in their inaccurate statements), but it can also lead to fabrications or inaccuracies which do not directly mirror the content of the misleading information or questions. For example, Bruck, Ceci, Francouer & Barr, (submitted) found that children will give highly inaccurate reports about a previous visit to a pediatrician's office if they are given multiple suggestions in repeated interviews. The children in this study visited their pediatrician when they were five years old. During that visit, a male pediatrician gave each child a physical examination, an oral polio vaccine and an inoculation. During that same visit, a female research assistant, talked to the child about a poster on the wall, read the child a story and gave the child some treats. Approximately one year later, the children were re-interviewed four times over a period of a month. During the first three interviews, some children were falsely reminded that the pediatrician showed them the poster, gave them treats, and read them a story, and that the research assistant gave them the inoculation and the oral vaccine. Other children were given no information about the actors of these events. During the final interview, when asked to recall what happened during the original medical visit, children who were not given any misleading information were highly accurate in their final reports. They correctly recalled which events were performed by the pediatrician and by the research assistant. In contrast, the misled children were very inaccurate; not only did they incorporate the misleading suggestions into their reports, with more than half the children falling sway to these suggestions (e.g., claiming that the female assistant inoculated them rather the pediatrician), but 45% of these children also included non- suggested but inaccurate events in their reports by falsely reporting that the research assistant had checked their ears and nose. None of the control children made such inaccurate reports. Thus, when suggestions are implanted and incorporated, young children use these in highly productive ways to reconstruct and distort reality (see Chester Study above by Clarke-Stewart et al., and Sam Stone Study below by Leichtman & Ceci for similar results). Unfortunately, we do not have any of the initial interviews with the Wee Care children and thus we cannot ascertain the degree to which the allegations that emerge in much later taped investigatory interviews reflect earlier implanted suggestions. It is also possible that some of the allegations that occurred in these investigatory interviews reflect suggestions implanted from earlier conversations with parents who were urged by professionals and by other parents to look for signs of abuse in their children. It is also important to note that the suggestive interviews did not end in July 1985 with the completion of Fonelleras' investigation. Children were interviewed before they appeared before the grand jury. Children were questioned by therapists, and they were questioned by members of the prosecutors' office leading up to trial. These children were also questioned by the prosecution and the defense attorneys at the trial. (FOOTNOTE. We have no precise figures on the number of times that each child was interviewed between May 1, 1985 and the present time. Appendix 1 represents an attempt to
reconstruct
the interviewing schedule for each child. These figures are
clearly
underestimates). A consideration of the research findings
suggests
that if the children had not been abused, then this magnitude of
repeated
suggestive interviews could have the effect of increasing and cementing
false reports. 4. Emotional Tone of the Interview Children are quick to pick up on the emotional tones in an interview and to act accordingly. There is much information that can be conveyed in the emotional tone including, implicit or explicit threats, bribes, and rewards. For example, in some studies when an accusatory tone is set by the examiner, (e.g. "we know something bad happened", or "it isn't good to let people kiss you in the bathtub", or "you'll feel better once you tell", or "don't be afraid to tell"), then children in these studies are likely to fabricate reports of past events even in cases when they have no memory of any event occurring. In some cases, these fabrications are sexual in nature (see review in Ceci & Bruck, 1993b). For example, four years after children played with an unfamiliar research assistant for five minutes while seated across a table from him, Goodman and her colleagues asked these same children to recall the original experience, and then asked them a series of questions, including abuse-related suggestive questions about the event (Goodman, Wilson, Hazan & Reed, 1989; also described in Goodman & Clarke-Stewart, 1991). At this time, the researchers created what they described as "an atmosphere of accusation", by telling the children that they were to be questioned about an important event and by saying such things as, "Are you afraid to tell? You'll feel better once you've told". Although few children had any memory for the original event from four years earlier, their performance on the suggestive abuse questions was mixed. Five out of the fifteen children incorrectly agreed with the interviewer's suggestive question that they had been hugged or kissed by the confederate, two of the fifteen agreed that they had their picture taken in the bathroom, and one child agreed that she or he had been given a bath. The important conclusion of this study is that children may begin to give incorrect information to misleading questions about events for which they have no memory, when the interviewer creates an aura (emotional tone) of accusation. There are many other studies in the social science literature to show that reinforcing children for certain behaviors regardless of the quality of the behaviors also increases the frequency of these types of behaviors. Telling children "you are a really good boy" is one of example of this. In some situation, when used appropriately, these types of supportive statements make children feel at ease and make children more responsive and accurate than when they are provided with no feedback or support (e.g., . Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, & Aman, 1990). However, if used inappropriately, these types of statements can also produce inaccurate statements. Thus, it has also been found that when interviewers are overly supportive of children, then children tend to produce many inaccurate as well as many accurate details (e.g., Geiselman, Saywitz & Bornstein, 1990). Certainly, there appears to be some trade-off in the effect of positive and neutral support on the accuracy of children's reports. Although the quality and quantity of positive support and reinforcement provided in many of the research studies exemplify good interviewing techniques, ones that most interviewers would use, the types of "encouraging" statements made by some of Wee Care children's investigators would never be considered as acceptable examples of how children should be encouraged in an interview: McGrath: Do you want to sit on my lap? Come here. I am so proud of you. I love big girls like you that tell me what happened -- that aren't afraid because I am here to protect you. Did you ever see what's this right here?...You got such pretty eyes. You are going to grow to be a beautiful young lady. I'm jealous, I'm too old for you. Detective McGrath rationalized this behavior by saying "this way she may feel more comfortable and more at ease." However, these statements may have far greater consequences; they may change the balance of accuracy in children's reports. Threats and bribes also influence the emotional tones of interviews. However, these elements have never been systematically investigated, because it would be ethically impermissible to include such statements in research interviews with young children. But from everything we know about the principles of child development and about principles of punishment and reward, these statements should dramatically decrease the accuracy of children's statements. In the Wee Care interviews, there are numerous examples of bribes. Some children were given police badges in exchange for their incriminating statements. Sometimes the bribe took the form of promises to terminate the interviews ("Well, we can get out of here real quick if you just tell me what you told me last time we met" or, " Tell me what Kelly did to your hiney and then you can go."). Sometimes uncooperative children were explicitly threatened ("Now listen you have to behave" or, "You are acting like a baby"). The Wee Care interviewers often created an atmosphere of conspiracy and tried to enlist the children's cooperation. For example: Your mommy tells me that you guys are interested in busting this case wide open with us, is that right? --------- That's why I need your help, especially you older kids...because you can talk better than the younger kids...and you will be helping to keep her in jail longer so that she doesn't hurt anybody. Not to mention that you'll also feel a lot better once you start. --------- These statements on the part of the
Wee Care interviewers
reflect their biases and their attempts to get children to admit
abuse.
And as we have argued, such statements may have deleterious effects on
the subsequent accuracy of young children's reports. 5. The Effects of Peer Pressure or Interaction on Children's Reports The effects of letting children know that their friends have "already told" is a much less investigated area in the field of children's testimonial research. In addition, suggestions or misleading information may also be planted by peers. However, there are at least three relevant studies. First, Binet (1900) found that children will change their answers to be consistent with those of their peer group even when it is clear that the answer is inaccurate. In the Pettit et al study described above, there were seven children who were absent from their classrooms when the target event (the cake falling off the piano) occurred. Yet when questioned two weeks later, six of these children indicated that they were present. One presumes that these six children gave false reports so that they would feel they were part of the same group as their friends who did participate. Importantly, this study also shows how the peer group's actual experiences in an event can contaminate non-participants reports or fabricated memories of the event. Finally, Pynoos and Nader (1989) studied people's recollections of a sniper attack. On February 24, 1984, from a second story window across the street, a sniper shot repeated rounds of ammunition at children on an elementary school playground. Scores of children were pinned under gunfire, many were injured, and one child and passerby were killed. Roughly l0% of the student body, 113 children, were interviewed 6 to l6 weeks later. Each child was asked to freely recall the experience and then to respond to specific questions. Some of those children who were interviewed were not at the school during the shooting, including those already on the way home and those on vacation. Yet, even the non witnesses had memories: "One girl initially said that she was at the school gate nearest the sniper when the shooting began. In truth she was not only out of the line of fire, she was half a block away. A boy who had been away on vacation said that he had been on his way to the school, had seen someone lying on the ground, had heard the shots, and then turned back. In actuality, a police barricade prevented anyone from approaching the block around the school." (p. 238). One assumes that children heard about the event from their peers who were present during the sniper attack and they incorporated these reports into their own memories. The investigators constantly told the Wee Care children that their friends had already told. "All the other friends I talked to told me everything that happened. 29C told me. 32C told me... And now it's your turn to tell. You don't want to be left out, do you?" ----------------------------------- "Boy, I'd hate having to tell your friends that you didn't want to help them" Parents also told their children
that they had
been named as victims by other children. Child 1C finally
disclosed
to his mother after she had told him that others had mentioned him as a
participant. The above evidence suggests that this strategy may
co-opt
children into making false reports. 6. The Effects of being Interviewed by Adults with High Status Young children are sensitive to the status and power of their interviewers and as a result are especially likely to comply with the implicit and explicit agenda of such interviewers. If their account is questioned for example, children may defer to the challenges of the more senior interviewer. To some extent, it is this power differential and its recognition by the child that is one of the most important explanations for children's increased suggestibility. Children are more likely to believe adults than other children, they are more willing to go along with the wishes of adults, and to incorporate adults' beliefs into their reports. This fact has long been recognized by researchers since the turn of the century and has been demonstrated in many studies (Ceci & Bruck, 1993a for review). The Wee Care children were interviewed by law enforcement agents or by social workers who made reference to their connection to law enforcement agents. The children were explicitly made aware of the status of their interviewers by such comments as: "I'm a policeman, if you were a bad girl, I would punish you wouldn't I? Police can punish bad people" ------------------------- "I'm going to introduce you to one of the men who arrested Kelly and put her in jail." A recent study by Tobey and Goodman (1992) suggests that interviews by high status adults who make such statements may. have negative effects on the accuracy of children's reports. In their study, 4-year-olds played a game with a research assistant who was called a "baby-sitter". Eleven days later, the children returned to the laboratory. Half of the children met a police officer who said |
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"I am
very concerned that something bad might
have happened the last time that you were here. I think that the
babysitter you saw here last time might have done some bad things and I
am trying to find out what happened the last time you were here when
you
played with the babysitter. We need your help. My partner
is
going to come in now and ask you some questions about what happened."
|
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A
research assistant dressed-up as a police officer
then questioned these children. The other children never met the
police officer; they were only questioned by a neutral interviewer
about
what happened with the baby-sitter. When the children were asked to
tell
everything they could remember, the children in the police condition
gave
fewer accurate statements and more inaccurate statements than children
in the neutral condition. Two of the 13 children in the police
condition
seemed to be decisively misled by the suggestion that the baby sitter
had
done something bad. One girl said to her mother, "I think the
baby-sitter
had a gun and was going to kill me." Later, in her free recall, the
same
child said, "That man he might try to do something bad to me....really
bad, yes siree." The second child inaccurately reported his ideas of
what
something bad might be, by saying "I fell down, I got lost, I got hurt
on my legs, and I cut my ears." Goodman (1993) summarizes these
findings
as follows:
|
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"One should be concerned not only with the actual questions but also with the context of the interview. An accusatory or intimidating context leads to increased errors in children's reports (p. 15)." |
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(FOOTNOTE.
Note the discrepancy between
Goodman's interpretations of her own results and that of the district
attorney
(see p. 45 supplemental brief).
Another
feature of some of the Wee Care interviews
was that there was often more than one adult questioner present in the
interview. One might argue that this might be a safe-guard to
ensure
that the child tells the truth--especially if one of the adults is the
child's parent. However, it also seems that additional adults
merely
multiply the number of questions that the child is asked about the same
theme-"Tell us how you were sexually abused by Kelly". And these
increased questions may increase children's willingness to defer to the
adults' agenda rather than to their own memories of whether an event
actually
occurred.
In the
following 13C is interviewed by Fonelleras
(L) and Detective Mastroangelo (R)
L:
What little girls
did she do that to? 7.
The Effects of Stereotype Inducement
As we
have argued above, suggestions do not have
to necessarily be in the form of an explicit (mis)leading question such
as, "Show me how she touched your bottom." One component of a
suggestive
interview involves the induction of stereotypes. That is, if a
child
is repeatedly told that a person "does bad things", then the child may
begin to incorporate this belief into his or her reports. As the
following two studies demonstrate, stereotype induction can have a very
powerful effect on children's subsequent reports.
In the
first study (Lepore & Sesco, in press),
children ranging in age from 4- to 6-years old played some games with a
man called Dale. Dale played with some of the toys in a
researcher's
laboratory room and he also asked the child to help him take off his
sweater.
Later, an interviewer asked the child to tell her everything that
happened
when Dale was in the room. For half the children, the interviewer
maintained a neutral stance whenever they recalled an action. For
the remaining children, the interviewer re-interpreted each of the
child's
responses in an incriminating way by stating, "He wasn't supposed to do
or say that. That was bad. What else did he do?" Thus, in
this
incriminating condition, a negative stereotype was induced. At
the
conclusion of these incriminating procedures, the children heard three
misleading statements about things that had not happened ("Didn't he
take
off some of your clothes, too?", "Other kids have told me that he
kissed
them, didn't he do that to you?" and, "He touched you and he wasn't
supposed
to do that, was he?") All children were then asked a series of direct
questions,
requiring "yes" or "no" answers, about what had happened with Dale.
Children
in the incriminating condition gave many
more inaccurate responses to the direct yes-no questions than children
in the neutral condition. Interestingly, 1/3 of the children in
the
incriminating condition embellished their responses to these questions,
and the embellished responses were always in the direction of the
incriminating
suggestions. The question that elicited the most frequent
embellishments
was: "Did Dale ever touch other kids at the school?"
Embellishments
to this question included information about who Dale touched (e.g., "He
touched Jason, he touched Tori, and he touched Molly."), where he
touched
them (e.g., "He touched them on their legs."), how he touched them
(e.g.,
"....and some he kissed....on the lips"), and how he took their clothes
off ("Yes, my shoes and my socks and my pants. But not my
shirt.").
When they were re-interviewed one week later, children in the
incriminating
condition continued to answer the yes/no questions inaccurately and
they
continued to embellish their answers.
The
second study also demonstrates the powerful
effects of stereotype inductions especially when these are paired with
repeated suggestive questioning. A stranger named Sam Stone paid
a two-minute visit to preschoolers (aged 3 to 6 years) in their daycare
center (see Leichtman & Ceci, in press). Following Sam
Stone's
visit, the children were asked for details about the visit on 4
different
occasions over a 10-week period. During these 4 occasions, the
interviewer
refrained from using suggestive questions. She simply encouraged
children to describe Sam Stone's visit in as much detail as
possible.
One month following the fourth interview, the children were interviewed
a fifth time, by a new interviewer who asked about two "non-events"
which
involved Sam doing something to a teddy bear and a book. In
reality,
Sam Stone never touched either one. When asked in the fifth
interview:
"Did Sam Stone do anything to a book or a teddy bear?" most children
rightfully
replied "No." Only 10% of the youngest (3 to 4-year- old) children's
answers
contained claims that Sam Stone did anything to a book or teddy bear.
When
asked if they actually saw him do anything to the book or teddy bear,
as
opposed to "thinking they saw him do something," or" hearing he did
something,"
now only 5% of their answers contained claims that anything
occurred.
Finally, when these 5% were gently challenged ("You didn't really see
him
do anything to the book/the teddy bear, did you?") only 2.5% still
insisted
on the reality of the fictional event. None of the older (5 to
6-year-old)
children claimed to have actually seen Sam Stone do either of the
fictional
events.
A second
group of preschoolers were presented
with a stereotype of Sam Stone before he ever visited their
school.
Each week, beginning a month prior to Sam Stone's visit, these children
were told a new Sam Stone story, in which he was depicted as very
clumsy.
For example:
Following
Sam Stone's visit, these children were
given 4 suggestive interviews over a ten-week period. Each
suggestive
interview contained two erroneous suggestions, one having to do with
ripping
a book and the other with soiling a teddy bear (e.g., "Remember that
time
Sam Stone visited your classroom and spilled chocolate on that white
teddy
bear? Did he do it on purpose or was it an accident?" and "When Sam
Stone
ripped that book, was he being silly or was he angry?"). Ten weeks
later,
when a new interviewer probed about these events ("Did anything happen
to a book?" "Did anything happen to a teddy bear?"), 72% of the
youngest
preschoolers claimed that Sam Stone did one or both misdeeds, a figure
that dropped to 44% when asked if they actually saw him do these
things.
Importantly, 21% continued to insist that they saw him do these things,
even when gently challenged. The older preschoolers, though more
accurate, still included some children (11%) who insisted they saw him
do the misdeeds.
Stereotype
induction was rampant in the initial
Wee Care interviews. The interviewers explicitly repeated in
various
interviews that Kelly was bad. Based on analyses of the existing
interviews, the investigator told 15 of the 34 interviewed children
that
Kelly was in jail because she had done bad things. The
investigators
told the children that they needed their help to keep Kelly in
jail.
The investigators also promoted fear by asking leading questions about
whether Kelly had threatened them or their families if they were to
tell
on her. Sometimes the investigators suggested that she had
claimed
to have supernatural powers ("Kelly said a lot of things to some kids
and
I think that she might have said them to you too, like she had some
special
powers like she can come through a wall and she could lift our bed and
stuff like that..."). The investigators constantly told the
children
that they were now safe and could talk because Kelly was in jail.
It is
interesting that despite these statements
that pervaded the interviews, in the early interviews at least, the
children
did not completely incorporate the suggested stereotypes of
Kelly.
Sixteen of the 34 children never said they were afraid of her and the
remaining
children never volunteered that information. Some children
claimed
that Kelly was bad, but these claims were never completely justified by
the children. For example, in one of the few examples we have of
two transcribed interviews for the same child, we see that in the first
of the transcribed interviews (but not the first interview) the child
is
repeatedly asked about bad things that Kelly did. She denies that
Kelly did anything bad to her. In the next (transcribed)
interview,
the following exchange takes place:
Q: Was Kelly a good girl or a bad girl? A: She was a bad girl. Q: She was a bad girl. Were there any other teachers who were bad? A: No Q: Kelly was the only bad girl? What did Kelly do that made her a bad girl? A: She readed Q: She what? A: She readed and she came to me and I said no, no, no. Q: Did she hurt you? A: I hurted her. Q: How did you hurt her? A: Because I didn't want to write and she write and I said no, no, no, no and I hit her. When
other children made statements that Kelly
was bad, it is impossible to tell whether these statements reflect the
fact that Kelly actually did bad things or whether these reports
reflect
the children's adoption of the interviewers' suggested stereotypes of
Kelly,
an indeterminacy exacerbated by the general absence of recorded initial
interviews.
8.
The Use of Anatomically Detailed Dolls
Anatomically
detailed dolls are frequently used
by professionals, including child therapists, police, child protection
workers, and attorneys, when interviewing children about suspected
sexual
abuse. They were used repeatedly in the interviews with the Wee
Care
children. One rationale for the use of anatomical dolls is that
they
allow children to manipulate objects reminiscent of a critical event,
thereby
cuing recall and overcoming language and memory problems. Another
rationale is that their use is thought to overcome motivational
problems
of embarrassment and shyness. The dolls have also been used as
projective
tests. Some professionals claim that if a child actively avoids
these
dolls, shows distress if they are undressed, or shows unusual
preoccupation
with their genitalia, this is consistent with the hypothesis that the
child
has been abused (see Mason, 1991). The use of anatomically detailed
dolls
has raised scepticism, however, among researchers and professionals
alike.
Two related arguments are frequently invoked against their use.
The
first is that the dolls are suggestive, that they encourage the child
to
engage in sexual play even if the child has not been sexually abused
(e.g.,
Gardner, 1989; Terr, 1988). A child, for instance, may insert a
finger
into a doll's genitalia simply because of its novelty or "affordance,"
much the way a child may insert a finger into the hole of a
doughnut.
Another criticism is that it is impossible to make firm judgments about
children's abuse status on the basis of their doll play because there
are
no normative data on nonabused children's doll play. Over the
past
several years, researchers have conducted a number of studies to
address
these concerns.
In
several studies, researchers have compared
the doll play of children suspected of having been sexually abused with
children not suspected of having been abused. In addition, there
have been a score of studies examining the doll play of non-abused
children.
Reviews of this literature (Berry & Skinner, 1993; Ceci &
Bruck,
1993a; Wolfner, Faust, & Dawes, 1993) indicate that many of the
studies
are methodologically inadequate and do not allow for firm
interpretations
about the potential usefulness or risks of using dolls.
Furthermore,
other data indicate that some of the play patterns thought to be
characteristic
of abused children, such as playing with the dolls in a suggestive or
explicit
sexual manner, or showing reticence or avoidance when presented with
the
dolls, also occur in samples of nonabused children.
More
recent studies have focused on how accurately
young preschoolers use dolls to represent themselves. For
example,
DeLoache (1993) used dolls to interview 2.5-, 3-, and 4-year-old
children
about a play session they had had with a male experimenter. The
dolls
did not help the children report their experiences. The younger
children
in particular gave fuller and more accurate accounts of where they had
been touched without the dolls than they did with the dolls. When
asked to place stickers on the doll in the same places that stickers
had
been placed on their own bodies, the younger children were not very
successful.
Indeed, many of the children did not seem to realize that they were
supposed
to treat the doll as a representation of themselves. Further,
several
children in this and a subsequent on-going study rejected the
suggestion
that they "pretend that this doll is you." This last finding is
important,
since a reluctance to play with dolls in forensic or therapeutic
interview
sessions is often taken as a possible indicant of abuse.
Generally
these results indicate that very young children may not have the
cognitive
sophistication to use a doll to represent their own experiences.
Hence, the use of dolls may actually impede or distort, rather than
facilitate
and clarify, their ability to provide accurate testimony.
Two
studies have examined how accurately non-abused
children use the dolls to show how they were touched during a pediatric
visit. In both studies, half the children received genital
examinations
and half did not. If the dolls provide children with a tool that
will allow them to overcome their shyness, and embarrassment concerning
sexual matters, then reports of genital touching should be more
accurate
when children are allowed to re-enact events with the dolls. The
results of both studies fail to support this hypothesis. The
first
study included 5- and 7-year old girls (Saywitz, Goodman, Nicholas
&
Moan, 1991). When the children were asked for a verbal report of
their genital examination, 78% of the children who had received a
genital
examination failed to disclose genital touching. When given the
opportunity
to provide the same information with the dolls ("Show me with the dolls
what happened"), 83% of these children failed to disclose genital
touching.
However, when the experimenter pointed to either the genitalia or
buttocks
of the doll and asked a direct question, "Did the doctor touch you
here?",
only 22% of the responses were incorrect denials. Children who
did
not receive a genital examination never made a false report in the
verbal
free recall or doll enactment conditions. However, when the
experimenter
pointed to the genital or anal region of the doll and asked, "Did the
doctor
touch you here?", 9% of these children inaccurately claimed that they
had
been touched. These results indicate that regardless of
interviewing
technique, 5- and 7- year old children rarely make false reports about
genital touching. These data also indicate that the dolls do not
assist the children to divulge potentially embarrassing material,
unless
the interviewer uses highly directive questioning. As the next
study
shows, however, a very different pattern of results is obtained for
younger
children.
Three-year
old children visited their pediatrician
for their annual check-up (Ceci & Bruck,1993b). Half the
children
received a genital examination where the pediatrician gently touched
their
buttocks and genitals. The other children were not touched in
these
areas. Immediately after the examination, an experimenter pointed
to the genitalia or buttocks of an anatomically detailed doll and asked
the child, "Did the Doctor touch you here?" Only 45% of the children
who
received the genital exam correctly answered yes; and only 50% of the
children
who did not receive a genital exam correctly answered "No" (i.e. 50% of
these children falsely reported touching). When the children were
simply asked to "Show on the doll" how the doctor had touched their
buttocks
or genitalia, accuracy did not improve. Now only 25% of the
children
who had received genital examinations correctly showed how the
pediatrician
had touched their genitals and buttocks. Accuracy decreased in
part
because a significant number of female subjects inserted their fingers
into the anal or genital cavities of the dolls; the pediatrician never
did this. Only 45% of the children who did not receive genital
examinations
were accurate by not showing any touching. That is 55% of the
children
who did not receive genital examinations falsely showed either genital
or anal touching when given the dolls. Thus these data indicate
that
three-year-old preschool children are inaccurate when reporting how and
where they were touched, even when the touching occurred five minutes
prior
to the interview. Children who were not touched demonstrated on
the
dolls that they were touched and children who were touched either
refused
to admit that they were touched, or at the other extreme they showed
penetration
when none had occurred. The use of the dolls increases this type
of inaccurate reporting in three-year-old children.
The
interview procedures in this study also elicited
a number of other behaviors that adults might interpret as
sexual.
When the children were given a stethoscope and asked to show what the
doctor
did with it, some children incorrectly showed that he used the
instrument
to examine their genitals. The children were also shown a small
spoon
and asked whether the doctor had used it (the doctor had not used a
spoon).
A number of the children were inaccurate, stating that he had given
them
medicine with it. The children were then asked one time, "How
might
he use this spoon?" A small but significant number of children (18%)
inserted
the spoon into the genital or anal openings or hit the doll's genitals.
These
"sexualized" behaviors do not reflect three-year-old
children's sexual knowledge or experiences but two other factors.
First, the types of questions and props used in the interviews (asking
children to name body parts, including genitals, showing children
anatomically
detailed dolls and asking children to manipulate these dolls) make the
children come to think that it is not only permissible but it is
expected
to respond to the interviewers' questions using these same terms.
Second, the children insert fingers or objects into the dolls openings
for the same reasons they would insert a finger into the hole of a
doughnut;
it is there, it is something to manipulate. In the initial interviews
with
the Wee Care children, anatomically detailed dolls were shown to the
children
before they said anything about abuse in 24 of the 39 interviews.
Most of the leading and suggestive aspects of the transcribed
interviews
involve the interviewers' interactions with the dolls and their asking
children sexualized questions in the contexts of the demonstrations
with
the dolls. In 17 of the 39 sessions silverware was given to the
children
with dolls. The children were asked such questions as:
Interviewer: Did Kelly ever do anything to you with a knife that hurt you ? Child: No. Interviewer: Did she ever do bad things or hurt you with a spoon? Child: No. Interviewer: Did she ever do bad things or hurt you with a knife? Child: No. Interviewer: Okay. What about a wooden spoon? Child: No. Children were asked to speculate about how silverware could have been used. Interviewer: Why don't you show me how you think a little girl can be hurt by the fork? And Interviewer: Why don't you show me what Kelly did with the big wooden spoon. Interviewer: Can you think of a way somebody might have used this to hurt little girls? Child: (indicates the tummy) Interviewer: Where else do you think a little girl could have gotten hurt with a wooden spoon? Child: The belly button. Interviewer: Where else do you think a little girl might get hit with a wooden spoon? How do you think Kelly used this fork to hurt little girls? Child: Belly button. Interviewer: Where else? (finally after many more persistent questions) Child: Bottom. Researchers
Bruck & Ceci, were much more successful
than the Wee Care interviewers in eliciting sexualized reports from
children
when they were first asked how one might use a spoon! Remember, the
three-year-old
children in the Bruck and Ceci study were only asked one time about how
a spoon might be used. There are difficulties in drawing parallels
between
the behaviors of children in research studies and the behaviors of
children
in actual forensic contexts or clinical settings. Transcripts of
some of these sessions with children suspected of having been sexually
abused reveal the following practices by interviewers: naming the
dolls after defendants (In 12 of the transcribed interviews, Wee Care
investigators
named a doll Kelly rather than allowing the child to do so); berating
the
dolls for alleged abuses against the child (e.g., shaking a finger at
the
male doll who has been named after the defendant, and yelling:
"You
are naughty for hurting Jennifer!"); assuming the role of fantasy
characters
in doll play; creating a persistent atmosphere of accusation; and
asking
a stream of suggestive questions that reflect the sexual knowledge of
the
adult interviewer (ROBERT PUT IN EXAMPLES OF THESE). Non-abused
children
in research studies were never subjected to such highly suggestive
experiences;
they were never given prior motivation to play with the dolls
suggestively
or aggressively. If they had been, it is possible that their play
with the dolls would contain many explicit sexual events, reflecting
prior
interviewing techniques rather than sexual abuse.
Because
the initial interviews with the Wee Care
children were not recorded, we cannot determine how Wee Care children
were
first interviewed with the dolls and how they responded to their
introduction.
But we do know from comments in the later transcribed interviews that
children
had interacted with the dolls on previous occasions. This raises
the issue of whether any sexualized behavior or sexualized reports in
the
transcribed interviews reflects the children's prior exposure to the
dolls
rather than their attempt to demonstrate how they were sexually
abused.
That is, the dolls may serve as a nonverbal suggestive device which
promotes
subsequent sexualized play and sexualized verbalizations, none of which
are accurate indicators of past abuse. These concerns are raised
by the behavior of one non-abused child who served as a pilot subject
in
a study of young children's interactions with anatomically detailed
dolls
(described in Ceci, in press and Ceci & Bruck1993b). A
three-and-a-half
year old non-abused girl was examined by a pediatrician. She was
not given a genital examination. Immediately after the
examination,
when interviewed by the experimenter, she correctly said that the
doctor
had not touched her genitals or buttocks. Furthermore, when shown
an anatomically detailed doll and told to show how the doctor had
touched
her genitals and buttocks, she correctly stated that he had not touched
her. Three days later, the same child was given an anatomically
detailed
doll and asked to show all the things that the doctor had done in her
previous
visit. This time, she inserted a stick into the vagina of the
doll
and said that this had happened at the doctor's office. However,
upon further questioning, she said that the doctor did not do
this.
Three days later, the child was asked to use the anatomically detailed
doll and to show her father everything that had happened at the
examination.
This time, she hammered a stick into the doll's vagina and then
inserted
a toy earscope into the doll's anus. When asked if this really
happened,
she said "Yes it did." When her father and the experimenter both tried
to debrief her with such statements as, "Your doctor doesn't do those
things
to little girls. You were just fooling. We know he didn't
do
those things", the three-year-old tenaciously clung to her prior claims
that she had just demonstrated on the doll (a videotape of this child's
doll play is enclosed with the brief. maybe). Thus, repeated
exposure
to the doll, with minimal suggestions, resulted in highly sexualized
play
for this one 3-year-old subject. Although this pilot observation
calls for more systematic research on the influence of repeated
exposure
to anatomically detailed dolls in interviews with sexual themes, the
dramatic
and startling results of this one subject demonstrates vividly the
potential
suggestiveness of anatomical dolls with non-abused 3-year-olds.
Wolfner and his colleagues (993) concluded their recent review article on the use of anatomical dolls with the following statement: |
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evidence
available that would justify clinical
or forensic diagnosis of abuse on the basis of the dolls. The
common
counter is that such play is "just one component" in reaching such a
diagnosis
based on a "full clinical" picture....[Doll] play cannot be validly
used
as a component, however, unless it provides incremental validity and
there
is virtually no evidence that it does."(Wolfner, et al., p. 9).
|
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Since
this statement was written, we now have
data on three-year-old children's interactions with anatomically
detailed
dolls (Ceci & Bruck, described above). If replicated, these
data
would appear to suggest that dolls ought not be used in interviews with
young children, as their use promotes sexualized behavior and false
reports
in non-abused children.
9.
Less Invasive Methods Source Attribution
Errors
In the
previous sections, we have presented some
of the elements of interviews that may produce inaccurate
reporting.
To a large extent, these elements are quite salient; their presence can
be easily isolated in recorded interviews. Some authors of this
brief
have recently conducted three different types of studies that
illustrate
how suggestions that are delivered in a much milder and less detectible
manner can also have repercussions on children's memories and reports.
These three studies focus on the theoretical construct of "source
attribution
error". This refers to the problems that both children and adults
have in separating the sources of their memories. In some cases,
this may be particularly problematic for some children. For
example,
6- and 9- year-old children make more errors than adults when
discriminating
between actions they performed and actions they merely imagined
themselves
performing (Foley & Johnson, 1985). When asked to remember
which
of two people said what, preschool children have a more difficult time
than adults, if the two people speaking share similar physical
characteristics
(Foley & Johnson, 1985; Lindsay, Johnson, & Kwon, 1991).
Zaragoza
and her colleagues (Ackil & Zaragoza,
1993) have used some of these same techniques to explore the basis of
children's
suggestibility. In these experiments, subjects viewed a
videotape,
after which the experimenter read them a summary of the video which
contained
events that were part of the video as well as events that were not part
of the video. Sometime later, subjects were given a surprise
memory
test; here they were read a list of events and asked to say whether
they
remembered seeing the event on the video, or hearing the event from the
summary, or both. The youngest children (6-year-olds) were most
prone
to confusing actually viewed with suggested (heard) events. These
findings suggest that suggestibility effects reflect young children's
susceptibility
to serious memory errors, namely the tendency to believe they
remembered
seeing details that were only suggested to them. The next two
experiments
take this paradigm closer to the field of children's testimony in the
forensic
context.
In the
following experiment, Poole and Lindsay
(unpublished) demonstrated how source attribution errors may occur
through
subtle interventions, such as parents reading a book to their
child.
In this study, preschoolers played with "Mr. Science" for 16 minutes in
a university laboratory. During that time the child participated
in four demonstrations (e.g, lifting cans with pulleys). Four
months
later, the parents were mailed a story book which was specially
constructed
for each child. It contained a biographical description of their
child's visit to Mr. Science. However, not all of the information
was accurate; the story described two of the experiments that the child
had seen and it also described two that the child had not seen.
Furthermore,
each story finished with the following fabricated account of what
happened
when it was time to leave the laboratory, "Mr Science wiped (child's
name)
hands and face with a wet-wipe. The cloth got close to (child's
name)
mouth and tasted really yuckie."
The
parents read the story to their children three
times. These young children were very susceptible to source attribution
errors. When later interviewed by the experimenters, the children
reported that they had participated in demonstrations which had only
been
mentioned in the stories read to them by their parents. When
asked
whether Mr. Science put anything "yuckie" in their mouths, more than
half
of the children inaccurately replied "yes", and these children
elaborated
their "yes" answers. Moreover, inaccurate reports of having
something
"yuckie" put in their mouths increased on repeated questioning; when
asked,
"Did Mr. Science put something yuckie in your mouth or did your Mom
just
read you this in a story?", now 71% of the children said that it really
happened. This study demonstrates how very subtle suggestions can
influence children's inaccurate reporting of non-events which can have
a sexual interpretation. The next study, conducted by Ceci and his
colleagues
(Ceci, Crotteau, Smith & Loftus, in press) was designed to pursue
the
question of whether preschoolers exhibit source misattributions when
they
are repeatedly encouraged to think about events that never
occurred.
Each week for 10 consecutive weeks, an interviewer asked preschoolers
to
think about both actual events that they had experienced in their
distant
past (e.g., an accident that eventuated in stitches) and fictitious
events
that they had never experienced (e.g., getting their hand caught in a
mousetrap
and having to go to the hospital to get it removed; seeing an alligator
on a bus with an apple in its mouth). Each of these events and
non-events
was wri=06 on a separate card. The child selected a card, the
interviewer
would read it aloud, and then ask if the event ever happened. For
example, when the child selected the card that read: "Got finger
caught in a mousetrap and had to go to the hospital to get the trap
off",
the interviewer would ask: "Think real hard, and tell me if this
ever happened to you. Can you remember going to the hospital with
the mousetrap on your finger?" (This study will be henceforth referred
to as "The Mousetrap Study".)
After 10
weeks of thinking about both real and
fictitious events, these preschool children were interviewed by a
second
interviewer. Initially, the interviewer asked: "Tell me if
this ever happened to you: Did you ever get your finger caught in
a mousetrap and have to go to the hospital to get the trap off?"
Following
the child=D5s reply, the interviewer asked for additional details
(e.g.,
"Can you tell me more?").
When exposed to these very mild manipulations, 58% of the preschool children produced false narratives to one or more of these fictitious events; 25% produced false narratives to the majority of them. Furthermore, the children's reports did not solely contain one word responses; their narratives contained elaborated and embellished descriptions of events that never occurred. Some accounts were internally coherent, containing not only details and sequences of events that never occurred but also containing descriptions of the child's affect during these non-events (see enclosed videotape, maybe). MAKE
THIS WHOLE PARAGRAPH A FOOTNOTE: It
should be noted that subsequent work with same paradigm indicates that
the same quality of false report can be produced in half the time as
the
original experiment. Furthermore, similar patterns of results
have
been recently reported for adult subjects (e.g., Hyman et al., 1993;
Loftus,
1993). END OF FOOTNOTE. These
data indicate that children can come to
make false reports about non-occurring events, even ostensibly painful
bodily events, when suggestions are mildly made in the course of a
conversation
or a story-telling activity. If children are repeatedly asked by
investigators, therapists, and parents to try to remember "how someone
touched you" or "if someone touched your vagina", will children
eventually
come to make statements that they had been sexually abused, when abuse
had never taken place? Furthermore, when parents or therapists read
books
with abuse themes to children, do children come to believe what
happened
in the book actually happened to them? (For example, Dr. Susan Esquilin
read Where the Wild Things Are to some the the Wee Care children.
One of the pictures contains a monster with a fork running after a
child.
After reading this book, some children began reporting abuse with
utensils.
ROBERT IS THIS CORRECT??) There are no data on these important
issues.
However, the results of the studies that we have just reviewed provide
a theoretical and empirical framework for suspecting that such
activities
lead to significant source misattributions.
Summary We have presented a number of features that, when present in interviews or interactions with young children, may greatly compromise the accuracy of their reports. These factors include: biased beliefs of the interviewer, the use of repeated questions, the repetition of misleading information, the use of rewards, bribes, and threats. children's reports are at risk for being tainted if they are interviewed by an intimidating adult, such as a police office. Other important factors that contribute to children's unreliable reports include the use of peer pressure, the use of anatomically detailed dolls, and stereotype induction. Finally, some very recent evidence indicates that merely asking children to repeatedly think about whether an event occurred may have a profound negative effect on their subsequent memories. These features characterize many of the interviews of the Wee Care children. The following excerpted interview, along with our annotated comments, summarizes many of the points made in this section. The interviewer, an experienced social worker, is denoted I, and he is interviewing one child, denoted C. Occasionally a police detective (P) joins the interview. I:
We have gotten a lot of other kids to
help us since I last saw you.
C: No. I don't have to. I: Oh come on. Did we tell you she is in jail? C:
Yes. My mother already told me.
Comment: It is obvious that this interviewer was not neutral regarding the defendant's guilt, insinuating that because she is now jail he need not be afraid of he r, although it is not clear that this child was ever afraid. Also note the use of peer pressure. I:
Well, we can get out of here real quick
if you just tell me what you told me last time.
Comment: There is no desire on the part of this interviewer to test an alternative hypothesis; rather he desires the child to reaffirm on tape what he said in an earlier interview through the use of a bribe. C: I forgot. I: No you didn't, I know you didn't. C: I did, I did. I: No, come on. C: I forgot. I: I thought we were friends last time. C: I'm not your friend any more. I: How come? C: Because I hate you. I:
Is it because we are talking about stuff
you don't want to talk about? What are you a monster now? Huh? ....
Comment: This interviewing borders on being coercive. There is little respect for the child's wish not to discuss this matter. I:
We talked to a few more of your buddies
- we talked to everybody now. And everyone told me about the nap room,
and the bathroom stuff, and the music room stuff, and the choir stuff,
and the peanut butter stuff, and nothing surprises me any more.
Comment: Again, further evidence that no alternative hypothesis is being te sted. The interviewer essentially tells the child that his friends already told on th e defendant, and that he, the child, should do the same. C: I hate you. I: No you don't... You just don't like talking about this, but you don't hate me. C: Yes, I do hate you. I: We can finish this real fast if you just show me real fast what you showed me last time. C: No. I: I will let you play my tape recorder....Come on, do you want to help us out? Do you want to help us keep her in jail, huh? ...Tell me what happened to (three other children). Tell me what happened to them. Come on.....I need your help again, buddy. Come on. C: No. I: You told us everything once before. Do you want to undress my dolly? I:
Let's get done with this real quick so
we could go to Kings to get popsicles....Did (defendant) ever tell you
she could get out of jail?
Comment: The interviewer comes close to bribing the child for a disclosure, by implying that the aversive interview can be terminated as soon as the child repeats what he said earlier. Popsicles and playing with a tape recorder are offere d as rewards. Police: She could never get out. C: I know that. Police: Cause I got her... She is very afraid of me. She is so scared of me. I:
She cries when she sees him (indicating
the police detective) because she is so scared... What happened to
(another
child) with the wooden spoon? If you don't remember in words, maybe you
can show me.
Comment: Note the authoritative statements of the policeman. There is no attempt to test the hypothesis that the defendant did not do what they believed she did. Instead, we see further attempts to vilify the defendant to make it more likely the chi ld will confirm their hunch about her. C: I forgot what happened, too. I: You remember. You told your mommy about everything, about the music room, and the nap room. And all the stuff. You want to help her stay in jail, don't you? So she doesn't bother you any more...Your mommy told me that you had a picture of yourself in your room and there was blood on your penis. Who hurt you? C:
(child names the defendant).
I: So, your penis was bleeding, oh. Your penis was bleeding. Tell me something else: was your hiney bleeding, too? C:
No.
Comment: The child never says to this investigator that his penis was bleeding. The investigator provides this misleading information to the child. I: Did (defendant) bleed, too? C: No. I: Are you sure she didn't bleed? C: Yes.... I saw her penis, too. I: Show me on the (anatomical) doll....you saw that? Oh. C: See doodied on me...She peed on us. I: And did you have to pee on her at all? C: Yeah. I: You did? And who peed on her, you and who else? C: (child names a male friend) I: Didn't his penis bleed? C: Yes. I: It did? What made it bleed? What was she doing? C: She was bleeding. I: She was bleeding in her penis? Did you have to put your penis in her penis? Yes or No? C: Yeah...And I peed in her penis. I: What was that like? What did it feel like? C: Like a shot. I: Did (friend) have to put his penis in her penis, too? C: Yes, at the same time. I: At the same time? How did you do that? C: We chopped our penises off. I: So, she was bleeding in her penis and you had your penis and your friend's inside her penis. C:
At the same time. Comment:
This type of exchange is
very common in these transcripts : When t he child says
something
that is not part of the interviewer's hypothesis (in this case, that
the
children chopped off their penises), the interviewer ignores it.
There is no attempt to pursue it, probably out of fear that the child
may
embellish this claim with even more incredible claims.
Furthermore,
in this last section, the child finally begins to make allegations
after
much initial resistance. Previous research indicate s that when
children
want an interview to end, they often increase the quantity of false
statements
(Pettit et al.)
At this
point the child and interviewer began
discussing a stream of events in which the child alleged that the
defendant
urinated in his mouth and he urinated in her mouth; he and others were
made to walk in her urine and slide on the classroom floor in her
urine.
Nowhere in this interview, or numerous others by this and other mental
health professionals is there any evidence that an alternative
hypothesis
was being tested. Specifically, there is no attempt by this
interviewer
to try to get the child to assent to an incompatible hypothesis, e.g.,
one in which the child's pediatrician put his penis in the child's
mouth,
or the sheriff made him drink his urine, or that he was just teasing
about
the defendant bleeding. As can be seen, there is no attempt to
encourage
the child to deny that any of this happened. Although it is not
possible
to know how much of what the child is reporting is factually accurate,
there is a certain suspiciousness about his disclosures -- and this is
even more troubling in the interviews of some of his classmates.
Partly, this is due to the heavy-handed use of coercive tactics ("If
you
tell me real quick, we can go get popsicles") refusal to believe that
the
child has forgotten or has a legitimate motive for not wanting to
repeat
an earlier remark he allegedly made to his mother, (e.g., the child may
realize the former statement is false), but partly there is an absence
of incredulity on the part of the interviewer which may reflect some
interviewers'
confusion between taking everything the child says seriously, vs.
believing
everything a child says.
To
summarize, a consideration of the nature of
the interviews conducted with the Wee Care children raises a
possibility
that their statements were in response to highly suggestive and
coercive
interviewing techniques. Our analyses of the transcripts of the
initial
interviews with the Wee Care children also reveal that despite all
examples
of coercive and suggestive interviewing practices, the children made
relatively
few accusations of sexual abuse, and when these did occur, for the most
part, these were one word responses to investigator's suggestive
questions.
It is rare to find any elaborated account by a child even after all the
suggestive interviewing practices. (An instructive exercise to support
this conclusion involves reading only the child's portions of the
interviews,
deleting all of the interviewers' questions and comments).
B. Children's Credibility
<> Although
children's reports may be highly influenced
by a number of suggestive influences, this does not necessarily mean
that
the children will appear credible when they parrot interviewers'
erroneous
suggestions. Of particular concern is whether a juror, or a child
development researcher, or a child therapist can differentiate children
whose reports are accurate from those whose reports were a product of
suggestive
interviews. The existing evidence suggests that one cannot tell
the
difference between these two kinds of children. The evidence is
based
on some of the results from studies already discussed in this brief.
It will
be recalled that in the Pettit et al study,
there were seven children who were absent from the classroom when a
major
event occurred, and yet six of these children later reported that they
were present. On closer analysis, these researchers found that
the
reports of three of these six absent children were indistinguishable
from
those of their classmates who actually did view the events.
Some
researchers have opined that the presence
of perceptual details in reports is one of the indicators of an actual
memory, as opposed to a confabulated one (Schooler, Gerhard, &
Loftus,
1986; Raskin & Yuille, 1989). However, in the Sam Stone study
for example, the presence of perceptual details was no assurance that
the
report was accurate. There was a surprising number of fabricated
perceptual details that children in the combined stereotype plus
suggestion
condition provided to embellish the non-events (e.g, claiming that Sam
Stone took the teddy bear into a bathroom and soaked it in hot water
before
smearing it with a crayon; claiming that there was more than one Sam
Stone;
claiming that they saw Sam Stone go to the corner store to buy
chocolate
ice cream).
It is
one thing to demonstrate that children can
be induced to make errors and include perceptual details in their
reports,
but it is another matter to show that such faulty reports are
convincing
to an observer, especially a highly trained one. To examine the
believability
of the children's reports, videotapes of their final interviews were
shown
to approximately 1,000 researchers and clinicians who work on
children's
testimonial issues (Leichtman & Ceci, in press). These
researchers
and clinicians were told that all the children observed Sam Stone's
visit
to their daycare centers. They were asked to decide which of the
events reported by the children actually transpired and then to rate
the
overall credibility of each child.
The
majority of the professionals were highly
inaccurate. Experts who conduct research on the credibility of
children's
reports, who provide therapy to children suspected of having been
abused,
and who carry out law enforcement interviews with children, generally
failed
to detect which of the children's claims were accurate and which were
not,
despite being confident in their judgments. The highly credible
yet
inaccurate reports obtained from the children may have resulted from a
combination of repeated interviews with persistent and intense
suggestions
that built on a set of prior stereotypes. Similarly, it may
become
difficult to separate credibility from accuracy when these children,
after
repeated interviews, give a formal video-taped interview or testify in
court.
Similar
results were obtained when psychologists
who specialize in interviewing children were shown videotapes of the
children
in the Mousetrap study (Ceci, in press). Recall that these
children
had been simply asked to repeatedly think about whether a fictitious or
real event had actually happened. Again, professionals could not
reliably detect which of the events in the children's narratives were
real
and which were not. One reason for their difficulty may be that
they
cannot imagine such plausible, internally coherent narratives being
fabricated.
In addition, the children exhibited none of the tell-tale signs of
duping,
teasing, or tricking. They seemed sincere, their facial
expressions
and affect were appropriate, and their narratives were filled with the
kind of low-frequency details that make accounts seem plausible, as
shown
in the following account:
My
brother Colin was trying to get Blowtorch (an
action figure) from me, and I wouldn't let him take it from me, so he
pushed
me into the wood pile where the the mousetrap was. And then my finger
got
caught in it. And then we went to the hospital, and my mommy, daddy,
and
Colin drove me there, to the hospital in our van, because it was far
away.
And the doctor put a bandage on this finger (indicating)
Some
researchers are developing techniques that
may ultimately be used to detect when children's reports are accurate
and
when their reports are inaccurate. These involve fine-grained
analyses
of the linguistic content of the statements, the gestures, voice
quality,
and other affective measures. However, these techniques have not
yet been validated on children who have undergone repeated and highly
suggestive
interviews. Furthermore, even if such techniques were available,
they could only be used by highly trained professionals, not by jurors,
or even by specialists in child development. These techniques are
being developed precisely because of the difficulty that professionals
and non-professionals all share in distinguishing between children's
reliable
and unreliable reporting.
To
summarize, when children have undergone suggestive
interviewing or are exposed to some of the components of suggestive
interviews,
they frequently appear highly credible when they are inaccurate, even
to
well-trained professionals.
C.
The Time-Course of Suggestibility
Effects
How
long-lasting are the effects of suggestions?
Perhaps it could be argued that suggestive interviewing techniques
change
children's reports but only for a short time; and sometime after
suggestive
interviews have ceased, then children's reports revert to accurate
accounts.
Following this line of reasoning, if children's accounts of events are
consistent over long periods of time even after the cessation of
suggestive
interviews, then these reports must be faithful versions of what
actually
happened to the children. This is a difficult but important issue
to address. Based on some anecdotal and scientific evidence,
however,
we argue that misleading suggestions can indeed have long lasting
effects;
indeed, they can sometimes give rise to life-long illusory
beliefs.
The longevity of the suggestibility effects is primarily influenced by
the overall strength of the suggestions. Thus the same factors
that
increase the risk of erroneous reports also increase the longevity of
these
reports and beliefs. To repeat these include such factors
as:
the forcefulness of the suggestions, the perceived authority of the
provider
of the suggestions, the use of threats and bribes, reinforcement for
reports
of abuse, negative reinforcement or ignoring denials, retractions, or
implausible
reports, creation of an accusatory atmosphere, peer pressure, and the
suggestive
use of anatomically detailed dolls. Further aspects of the social
and mental life of the child may serve to solidify and strengthen their
false reports and false beliefs long after the interviews are
over.
That is, if the children continue to think about the suggested events
and
to talk about them and to hear others around them talk about them,
their
beliefs in the reality of these events may solidify.
These arguments are supported by numerous anecdotes of long-lasting but erroneous memories of childhood events (e.g., see Lindsay & Read, in press). Perhaps the most famous of these involves the inaccurate memory of one of the great developmental psychologists Jean Piaget (Piaget, 1962).
The
false memories were with Piaget for at least
a decade. A second piece of evidence to support the contention that
some
children maintain their beliefs about fabricated stories that are a
product
of suggestive interviews, long after the suggestions of ceased, comes
from
the "mousetrap" study. Several weeks after the last interview,
one
of the subjects who had told about his finger being caught in the
mousetrap
was re-interviewed. When his mother brought him to the lab, she
told
the experimenters that both she and her husband thought that the study
was completed, and therefore two days earlier they explained to their
son
that the story about the mousetrap was fictitious and had never
happened.
She said that her son initially refused to accept this debriefing,
claiming
that he remembered it happening when the family lived in their former
house.
She and her husband continued to explain that the whole story was just
in his imagination, that nothing like this ever happened. Despite
the debriefing, the experimenters decided to re-interview the
child.
When asked if he ever got his finger caught in a mousetrap, the child
stated
that he remembered this happening, and he proceeded to supply a
richly-detailed
narrative. When the interviewer challenged him, asking him if it
was not the case that his mother had already explained that this never
happened, the child protested, "But it really did happen. I remember
it!"
While this child's insistence, in the presence of his mother, is not
proof
that he believed what he was saying about this fictitious event, it
does
suggest that he was not duping the adults for any obvious motive, given
that the demand characteristics were all tilted against his claiming
that
he remembered this.
This
child provides a vivid example of the long-last
effects of suggestions. His pattern of behavior is also common in
other children involved in Mousetrap studies. That is, there are
also other children who hold on to their original beliefs even when
their
parents debrief them and tell them that the events were only imagined
(Ceci,
Crotteau, Smith & Loftus, in press). And, there are children
who continue to say that the events occurred even when they are told
right
before the final memory test that the experimenter had it wrong (e.g.
Ceci,
Loftus, Leichtman & Bruck, in press; Lindsay, Gonzales & Eso,
in
press).
These
data suggest that the effects of suggestions
may be extremely long-lasting. Some children hold onto their
beliefs
long after the suggestions have terminated. Thus, if the Wee Care
children's
testimony was a product of suggestive interviewing techniques, then
their
false allegations might persist long after the interviews had
terminated.
It is also important to note that these suggestive interviews continued
for a long time and still may be continuing to the present. That
is, although the investigative interviews ceased in July of 1985, all
but
one of the 20 child witnesses were seen in therapy (IS THIS CORRECT? );
some may still be in therapy. The children were interviewed (and
coached??) by the prosecutor's office before appearing as witnesses at
trial. Each child was interviewed two to three times by Eileen Treacy
before
the trial; as we show below, the interviews with Treacy were more
suggestive
and coercive than those conducted at the beginning of the investigation.
ET: Let me ask you this; did she touch boys, did she touch girls, did she touch dogs? 3C: She touched boys and girls ET: Did she touch them with telephones? Did she touch them with spoons? What kinda spoons? 3C: Teaspoons ET: Can you make a mark where she hurt you? ....Make a mark. Just show me where Kelly hurt you. Then I can show that to the judge ET: Tell me about 7C. What happened to 7C? 3C: I don't know ET: 7C told me about some of the stuff that happened to you 3C: (no response) ET: She cares about you. Some of the kids told me that things happened with knives at Wee Care. Do you remember anything like that? ET: I see and did the kids want Kelly to do that peanut butter stuff? 3C: I didn't even think that there was a peanut butter ET: Well what about licking the peanut butter? 3C: There wasn't anything about peanut butter. -------------------- ET: (brings out dolls). Ok now what about the private areas? What happened in the private areas? 4C: I don't know ET: That's harder to talk about? 4C: Yeah ET: Does it make you embarrassed? 4C: I don't know ET: Did you ever see Kelly's private spots? 4C: I am not too sure ET: What about her boobies? 4C: I don't even really know about.. ET: There's some pictures that Sara (McArdle, the prosecutor) has 4C: What kind of pictures? ET: Kelly like doin something to 2C and I was so surprised. What was she doing? 4C: Um, I forgot but I know she did it. ET: She do something with a fork to 2C? 4C: Sara would know though ET: Now when Kelly was touchin the kids with the spoons and the knives, did she touch them inside of their private spots or outside? 4C: I don't remember. ET: Did Kelly ever put her elbow on your private spots? 4C: Um...maybe ----------------- ROBERT CAN YOU PUT IN THE SECTION FOR 5C THAT IS SUMMARIZED ON P. 35 AT THE BOTTOM OF DAN'S SUMMARIES OF EACH CASE. IT STARTS ET LEADS LEADS LIKE CRAZY NOW. (after some questioning, Treacy gets 6C to say that Kelly's private parts were the same as little girls) ET: Did Kelly have hair? 6C: Nah, I know cause it's grown ups... I know about that ET: So I guess that means you saw her private parts huh? Did Kelly ask the kids to look at her private parts, or to kiss her private part or.. 6C: I didn't really do that....I didn't even do it.. ET: But she made you 6C: She made me. She made me .. But I couldn't do it...So I didn't even really do it. I didn't do it. ET: Did it smell good? 6C: shhh ET: Her private parts? 6C: I don't know ET: Did it taste good? Did it taste like chocolate? 6C: Ha, ha. No, I didn't even do it. ET: You Wee Care kids seem so scared of her 6C: I wasn't. I'm not even. ET: But while you were there, were you real scared? 6C: I don't know ET: What was so frightening about her, 6C, what was so scary about her? 6C: I don't know. Why don't you ask her? ET: Did she drink the pee pee? 6C: Please that sounds
just crazy.
I don't remember about that. Really don't. In
addition to the suggestions provided by mental
health and forensic professionals, it is possible that the parents of
these
children continue to subtly suggest Kelly's guilt to these
children.
Thus if Wee Care children indeed continue to report past incidents of
sexual
abuse, it is possible that these reports reflect the long-lasting
effects
of much earlier suggestions, or that these reports reflect the effects
of past and current suggestions which have been maintained over the
period
of years (1985-to the present). If the children were not abused, the
beliefs
of the legal authorities, the therapists, and the parents may provide a
permanent architecture of suggestion to maintain the children's false
allegations
and beliefs. In other words, living in an environment where the
primary
belief is that "Kelly abused children" provides a constant source of
suggestion
to these children; as a result these children's reports and beliefs may
be permanently tainted.
D. The Argument That Children Are Not Suggestible Or E.
How To Obtain Reliable Reports From
Children
Some critics may argue that this brief contains a biased presentation of the literature; that there are a number of studies that show that children are not suggestible, or that they are no more suggestible than adults. It is true that we have focused on those studies that emphasize the weaknesses of children's memories, because the conditions in those studies have the most relevance to the interviewing conditions of the Wee Care children. Other studies that emphasize the strengths of young children's memories (e.g, see Goodman, Batterman-Faunce & Kenney, 1992 for a review) do not contain the same types of suggestive interviewing procedures as described above. What characterizes many such studies is the neutral tone of the interviewer, the limited use of misleading questions (for the most part, suggestions are limited to a single occasion) and the absence of the induction of any motive for the child to make a false report When such conditions are present, it is a common (although not a universal) (FOOTNOTE
For example Ornstein and his colleagues
(Baker-Ward et al., 1993; Gordon et al., 1990) found that when children
were later questioned on one occasion about their memories of the visit
to the pediatrician, 3-year-olds were more prone than 6-year-olds to
make
false claims in response to suggestive questions about silly events
involving
body contact (e.g., "Did the nurse lick your knee?"). Similarly, after
one interview, Oates and Shrimpton (1991) found that preschoolers were
more suggestible than older children about previously experienced
events
that involved body touching.
END OF FOOTNOTE) finding
that children are much more immune to
suggestive influences, particularly about sexual details. Hence
studies
of children's strengths were not cited in the main part of this brief
because
the interviewing conditions of these studies do not typify those under
which the Wee Care children were interviewed and therefore they have
limited
relevance to the issues in this case. However, there are two
important
implications of the studies which focus on the strength of children's
reports.
The first point is that although children are mainly highly accurate in
studies in which they are interviewed by a neutral experimenter, asked
minimal leading questions, and not given any motivation to produce
distorted
reports, there are nevertheless a few children in such studies who do
give
bizarre or sexualized answers to some leading questions. For
example,
in the Saywitz et al. study of children's reports of their medical
examinations,
one child, who never had a genital exam, falsely reported that the
pediatrician
had touched her buttocks and on further questioning claimed that it
tickled
and that the doctor used a long stick. In a study of children's
recalls
of their visit to a laboratory (Rudy & Goodman, 1991) one small
child
claimed that he had seen bones and blood in the research trailer (see
Goodman
et al., 1992 , for additional examples). Thus, children do
occasionally
make spontaneous, strange, and unfounded allegations. However, as
Goodman and her colleagues point out, many of these allegations can be
understood by sensibly questioning the child and parents further.
Often these allegations reflect the child's source confusions or his
anxieties.
One can
only imagine what would have happened
were these few rare spontaneous allegations followed-up in the same way
as they were in the Wee Care investigations. Perhaps
participating
researchers and adults would have ended up being falsely accused of
many
heinous acts. Also one can only imagine what would have happened
in the Wee Care case if the child's initial allegation that "Kelly took
my temperature" was investigated with the same sensitivity and
understanding
that Goodman and her colleagues showed in trying to understand their
subjects'
bizarre statements. A second important implication of studies that
emphasize
the strength of children's memories is that they highlight the
conditions
under which children should be interviewed if one wishes to obtain
reliable
reports. Again, when children are interviewed by unbiased,
neutral
interviewers, and when leading questions are kept to a minimum, and
there
is the absence of threats, bribes and peer-pressure, then children's
reports
are less at risk for taint. It is not our intention to write a section
on "good interviewing" practices in this brief. There have been
several
guidelines for the interviewing of children in sexual abuse cases.
(e.g,
White, Santilli, & Quinn, 1986; Yuille, Hunter, Joffe &
Zaparniuk,
1993; also see section in the Appeal document that examines New Jersey
interviewing procedures) At the most general level, all these
guidelines
share the following common elements. Interviewers are told to encourage
the child to say as much as he or she can in his own words about what
happened
(Can you tell me about what happens at naptime?) Then more general
questions
to prompt recall are asked (Can you tell me anything else?).
Following
this the child might be asked more specific (not leading) questions to
elaborate on the previous description (e.g., Who is in the room at
naptime?;
Do people do anything special at naptime?). And some interviewers
advocate the use of leading questions as a last resort, if the child
provides
no information in the interview (Did anything scary happen at naptime?
Did anyone ever touch you in a bad place at naptime?). The
available
Wee Care interviews indicate that interviews do not unfold in this
way.
Rather, after establishing some rapport with the children, the
interviewers
jump to specific and leading questions.
Even those researchers who emphasize the strengths of children's memories are highly critical of the interviewing tactics used with the Wee Care children: Although
there may be times when one needs to
ask specific questions of children, several important caveats must be
heeded.
First, in actual practice, leading questions should be avoided when
possible:
Even if the child can maintain an accurate report, his or her and the
interviewer's
perceived credibility are likely to suffer. Second, there is a
broad
range of suggestion and coercion that can characterize an interview,
and
probably almost everyone would agree that some interviewers and parents
go too far. Browbeating a child through repeated suggestive
questioning
is quite different from asking a few questions (Goodman, 1993, p. 15).
F. Missing First Interviews The first allegation in this case was made on April 30, 1985. On May 1, 1985, the Essex County Prosecutor's office initiated an investigation: between May 2 and May 8, they interviewed five children and four parents. There are no electronic copies of these interviews. Between May 22 and July 8, 1985, Lou Fonolleras, an investigator from DYFS, conducted 82 interviews with Wee Care children and 19 interviews with their parents. None of the interviews were taped before June 19; less than half of the children's interviews and none of the parents' interviews were recorded. In addition, most of the other interviews are not recorded (1985-present). There are no recorded interviews with 16C, the child who made the initial allegation. Many of Treacy's interviews were not recorded. The failure to have audio- or video-taped records of the initial interviews with these children makes it impossible to determine the accuracy of the children's subsequent statements. There is scanty information concerning how these children were initially questioned, and also concerning how many times they were questioned. Summaries of these missing interviews and electronic recordings of later interviews in which children do make allegations do not substitute for the missing original interviews. Written summaries of unrecorded interviews are subject to a number of distortions, especially if the interviewer is questioning a number of children and parents daily, as was the case. It is a well documented fact in the psycholinguistic literature that when asked to recall conversations, most adults may recall the gist, but they cannot recall the exact words used, nor the sequences of interactions between speakers. This linguistic information rapidly fades from memory, minutes after the interactions have occurred (see Rayner & Pollatsek, 1990, for a review). In the case of child witnesses, it
is crucial
to document the details by which their reports were obtained. For
example, we must know whether and how often the interviewer asked the
child
leading questions. We most know whether the interviewer prodded the
child's
reports with the use of anatomically detailed dolls, etc. We also
must know the verbatim statements and questions of the interviewer as
well
as the verbatim responses of the children. Because this verbatim
information fades most rapidly from memory (within a matter of
minutes),
it is crucial that it be electronically recorded. Without this
information,
one cannot begin to evaluate the reliability of the children's
allegations.
It is also the case, that the gist of previous interviews may be
inaccurately
summarized in later reports due to certain biases or misperceptions of
the interviewer. If the investigator has a bias that the child
was
sexually abused, then this can color his interpretations of what the
child
said or did; and it is this interpretation that appears in the summary
rather than a factual account of what transpired. Finally, although
there
are some examples of taped interviews (e.g., 3C) in which there seem to
be few leading questions and in which the child gives coherent reports
of abuse, this is not the first interview and it is impossible to
evaluate
the reliability of these statements without knowing about the details
of
the first interview. If in the first interview, this child had
been
subjected to the same techniques that occur in the taped interviews,
then
the reliability of this child's statements would be highly suspect.
G. Generalizing from Research to the Real World A consideration of the nature of the interviews conducted with the Wee Care children raises the possibility that their statements were in response to highly suggestive and coercive interview techniques. The social science research has documented how even subtler forms of these techniques can produce highly inaccurate reports in children. It is true that no study mirrors all of the influences operating in any particular real-world case. Indeed, many aspects of the interviewing procedures in the Wee Care case will never be examined in research studies, because researchers and their institutional review boards would deem the practices that occurred in the interviews with the Wee Care children grossly unethical, whether they be used on naive research subjects, on children suspected of sexual abuse, or on children with confirmed diagnoses of sexual abuse. So, this brings us to the question
of how much
weight we should attach to the social science literature, given that no
study perfectly mimics the constellation of variables observed in the
Wee
Care interviews. As little as 3 or 4 years ago, experts in this
area
would have had little empirical evidence upon which to base an
opinion.
However, as is clear from our review of the literature, in recent years
a number of researchers across North America have conducted studies
that
share many of the features of the Wee Care case. This recent
research
indicates that suggestive interviewing procedures can lead young
children
to give false reports of real-life experiences which include erroneous
claims about interactions involving physical contact between an adult
and
a child. The research also shows that very few young children
would
fabricate detailed claims of bizarre sexual abuse in response to one or
two mildly leading questions. And, as we have seen, many of the
Wee
Care children initially appeared to resist repeated and forceful
suggestions
before capitulating to the interviewers' insinuations. The
research
also shows, however, that with more powerful and persistent methods of
suggestion, such as those described in this brief, a substantial
percentage
of children can be led to make false reports of events that never
occurred,
including events that involve their own bodies and that would have been
quite traumatic had they occurred. Based on this literature, and
based on our analyses of the Wee Care interviews, it is our opinion
that
the constellation of factors operating in the Wee Care case would
constitute
an extraordinarily powerful suggestive atmosphere, one that is far
stronger
than those that have given rise to false reports in the research
studies
that we have described in this brief. Most scientists admit to being
"fallibilists",
that is, to recognizing that knowledge is incremental, and therefore,
while
we may never possess perfect knowldge about a phenomenon, we must base
our inferences on the most scientifically rigorous evidence we have
available.
Thus, even though there is not one study that reflects all the
variables
that were operative in the Wee Care interviews, we do have
scientifically
adequate knowledge about most of these, and this knowledge leads
prudent
scientists to conclude that if a study did include the sum total of the
variables that were operative in Wee Care, we would obtain a large
numbers
of erroneous reports by preschoolers. In fact, many of us believe
that the available evidence is such that we anticipate even larger
numbers
of erroneous reports than were reported in the research reviewed
earlier
in this brief. In sum, although there is always some risk when
generalizing
from scientific studies to real world analogs, scientists believe that
the best basis for doing this is to extrapolate from the corpus of
research
that comes closest to matching the constellation of variables that
operate
in the real world, even if the match is less than perfect. The
alternative
is to eschew insights, predictions, or hypotheses gained from
systematic,
controlled studies in lieu of anecdotes, personal opinions, and
ideological
views. Summary We have argued that the investigation of child sexual abuse allegations is a complex matter fraught with problems. Scientists have begun to contribute important insights to these problems, though clearly more research is needed. Regardless of the complexities of the research, the present state of scientific knowledge permits us to make the following general statements about the reliability of the testimony of the child witnesses. 1. There are reliable age effects in children's suggestibility, with preschoolers being more vulnerable than older children to a host of factors that contribute to unreliable reports. 2. Although young children are often accurate reporters, some do make mist akes --particularly when they undergo suggestive interviews; and these errors can involve not only peripheral details, but also central, predictable (i.e., scripted) events t hat involve their own bodies. It is also the case that suggestive questioning not only distorts children' s factual recall, but it also has a strong influence on their interpretation of events. 3. Measures can be taken to lessen the risk of suggestibility effects. To date, the factors that we know most about concern the nature of the interview itself--its frequency, degree of suggestiveness, and demand characteristics. A child's report is less likely to be distorted, for example, after one interview than after several interviews (the term "interviews" here includes informal conversations between parents and child about the target events). Interviewers who ask non-leading questions, who do not have a confirmatory bias (i.e., an attachment to a single hypothesis), and who do not repeat close-ended yes/no questions within or across interviews, are more likely to obtain accurate reports from children. Interviewers who are patient, non-judgmental, and who do not attempt to create demand characteristics (e.g., by providing subtle rewards for certain responses) are likely to elicit the best quality reports from young children. Thus, at one extreme we can have more confidence in a child's spontaneous statements made prior to any attempt by an adult to elicit what they suspect may be the truth. At the other extreme, we are more likely to be concerned when a child has made a statement after prolonged, repeated, suggestive interviews. 4. Finally, it is also important that the court appreciate the complexity of the interrelationships of the factors affecting children's suggestibility. As in most areas of social science, effects are rarely as straightforward as one might wish. Even though suggestibility effects may be robust, the effects are not universal. Results vary between studies and children's behavior varies within studies. Thus, even in studies with pronounced suggestibility effects, there are always some children who are highly resistant to suggestion. We have seen this in our own studies as well as in the transcripts of the Wee Care interviews: in some cases, no matter how much an interviewer may try to suggest that an event occurred, some children will consistently resist and not incorporate the interviewer's suggestion or point of view. On the other side, although suggestibility effects tend to be most dramatic after prolonged and repeated interviewing, some children incorporate suggestions quickly, even after one short interview (e.g., Clarke-Stewart, et al., 1989 ). The authors of this brief are fully aware of the immense obstacles that face those who are charged with investigating and reporting suspected child maltreatments. In no way do we want to convey the attitude that we deny the seriousness of the problem of child sexual abuse in today's society. The focus of our research and our arguments, however, is that unless one is very careful in the interviewing procedures that one uses with young children suspected of abuse, that one may never make an accurate determination of whether or not abuse occurred. This is because there are a number of interviewing procedures that have the potential to make non-abused children look like abused children. These are the same conditions that were used in the interviews with the Wee Care children. Given our present state of scientific knowledge, there are no valid scientific tests to determine which of the children's reports were accurate. The fact that these children underwent extremely suggestive interviews makes the determination of accuracy impossible. The authors of this brief also wish
to convey
their deep concern over the children in this case. Our concern is
that if there were incidents of sexual abuse, the faulty interviewing
procedures
make it impossible to ever know who the perpetrators were and how the
abuse
occurred. Thus poor interviewing procedures make it difficult to
detect real abuse. But we have further concerns. And these
involve the interviewing techniques which we view as abusive in
themselves.
After reading a number of these interviews, it
is difficult to believe that adults charged with the care and
protection
of young children would be allowed to use the vocabulary that they used
in these interviews, that they would be allowed to interact with the
children
in such sexually explicit ways, or that they would be allowed to bully
and frighten their child witnesses in such a shocking manner. No
amount of evidence that sexual abuse had actually occurred could ever
justify
the use of these techniques especially with three- and four-year-old
children.
Above and beyond the great stress, intimidation, and embarrassment that
many of the children so obviously suffered during the interviews, we
are
deeply concerned about the long-lasting harmful effects of persuading
children
that they have been horribly sexually and physically abused, when in
fact
there may have been no abuse until the interviews began. The
authors
of this brief will be permanently disturbed that children were
interviewed
in such abusive circumstances regardless of the ultimate guilt of the
accused. |
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