The Role Of Forensic Interviews On Children 's Capacities And Limitations

In the spring of 1990 in Edenton North Carolina seven people including the owners and the staff members of the Little Rascals Day Care Center had been arrested and charged with sexually abuse. The mother Audrey Stever, who was concerned about her 3 year old Kyle reported the details of the abuse to authority. Seven staff members that worked in the Little Rascals day care were innocently accused of sexually abusing the majority of the children that attended the Little Rascals day care. This is a witch hunt because the co-workers were blamed. Put to jail, and judged for a crime they never committed.

One of the worst things a parent can hear is that their child has been molested; learning those responsible is your child’s daycare provider is even harder to come to terms with. In August of 1983 the mother of a 2 year old boy reported her son told her he had been sexually abused by a day care provider. The accused was Ray Buckey, 31, the daycare’s only make employee and son of its owner. (Debenedictis, 1990) The trial became the longest and most expensive trial in American history. The trial left in its path 369 children claiming to have been molested in some way, along with Ray Buckey serving 5 years in jail throughout the 6 year trail which cost the American government more than 15 million dollars. (Reinhold, 1990) This trial brought light to whether a young child can actually be considered an expert witness, and ruined the lives of many of the day care’s workers. (Debenedictis, 1990)

The Effect of Hearsay Witness Age in a Child Sexual assault case” from the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, authors Jonathan M. Golding, Mary C Alexander, and Terri L. Stewart discuss how jurors view hearsay witnesses and if the age of the hearsay witness effects their perception of the credibility of hearsay witness. A study was done with male and female participants, who read a fictional court case summary about a sexual assault. The court case summary involved a 7, 16, or 25-year-old hearsay witness testifying on behalf of a 6 or 15-year-old victim. (Golding, Alexander, Stewart, 1999) The case included the testimony of one primary witness, a hearsay witness, or a clinical psychologist. (Golding, Alexander, Stewart, 1999) The authors begin by explaining the purpose of child hearsay testimonies and when hearsay witnesses are permitted, “a child’s words are hearsay if (a) the child’s words were intended by the child to describe something that happened, (b) the child’s words were spoken prior to the court proceeding at which the words are repeated by someone who heard the child speak, and (c) the child’s words are offered in court to prove that what the child said actually happened.” (Golding, Alexander, Stewart, 1999) hearsay isn’t always permitted in order to keep the trail from becoming unfair. The authors discuss different studies that have been done on hearsay testimonies and whether these studies have shown hearsay to be reliable and warranted. One study that is described ended with jurors believing the hearsay witness just as much as the victim testifying on her own behalf, the reasons for this, as the article explains, is “the mock jurors may have seen the hearsay witness as a ‘surrogate who is simply retelling the child’s story’” (Golding, Alexander, Stewart, 1999) second jurors may feel the need to punish someone because sexual assault is seen as such a horrible crime, third the hearsay

“There are generally three parties to child abuse: the abused, the abuser and the bystander,” according to Louise Penny, author of A Fatal Grace. In this case, however, there was no bystander. That is the reason that this case’s verdict was so hard to reach. Seven years and $15 million later, that verdict was reached. It was the influenced words of the children versus the words of the accused.

Although eyewitness testimony can be significant when displaying it to a judge or a jury, years of supportive social science research has sustained that eyewitness identification is often unreliable. As the Innocence Project website illustrates, studies show that the human mind is nowhere near like a ‘tape recorder’ and we as humans do not record events exactly as we see them. Instead, witness recollection is just like any other evidence at a crime scene and must be preserved carefully and sensibly retrieved or it can be considered as contaminated.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.” These are the words every juvenile hears as they are being taken into custody. Many juveniles do not understand or misinterpret the Miranda warning they are given. Juvenile are treated with a lesser degree of harshness from wording to punishment when dealing with law enforcement in comparison to adults. But while being interrogated, in some states juveniles are treated the same as adults once they waive their Miranda rights. Juveniles giving false confessions due to the psychological techniques that are used on adults is a concern of the juvenile courts. The severity and sort of the questions causes them to admit crimes that they didn’t commit because they may be trying to give the answer that they think the interrogator desires. This paper will discuss how interrogation worked before many important cases took place and Miranda rights were placed. Next, the type of techniques police officers use when interrogating a juvenile currently. Lastly, the Reid Method on interrogations’ and the reasons behind juveniles giving false confessions.

In “Bloodlines,” Prentiss tells a crime survivor that she’s going to assist her to recall details by using a “cognitive interview.” This forensic technique focuses on the retrieval of information from memory. Its aim is to mentally reinstate the context of the incident in order to assist a witness to recall every possible detail in the right order (Cambell, John, and DeNevi, 2004). To start such an interview, the interview invites free recall with an open-ended question. When the witness is finished, the interviewer returns to

This research paper investigates children’s testimony in judicial proceedings throughout the past few decades. An increase in child abuse allegations in the 1980s resulted in mass allegations throughout the United States. As a result, a child is interviewed by law enforcement and social workers regarding what happened during specific incidents. Tactics to acquire the testimony of the children has been up for debate by the judicial system and psychologists. These tactics include suggestibility, repeated questions, or stereotyping that may alter the testimony of children to accommodate interviewers biases, knowingly and unknowingly, resulting in false arrests and imprisonments. Psychological research has initiated a growing concern

The court treats sex abuse cases, where young children are victims differently. In 1990, the case Maryland v. Craig permitted young children to testify by the use of one-way, closed circuit televisions out of the courtroom, under certain circumstances. The Supreme Court concluded that children’s psychological well-being outweighed the accused entitlement to face-to-face confrontation (Parise, 1991, p. 1099).

When I began practicing law in 1987, it was not unusual for parents to bring their children to court, unprepared, to testify. Due to the harm that the children experienced, our committee that passed the first Rules of Procedure for Family Law Cases included a rule that limited children’s involvement in court proceedings.

Children can be victims of different types of maltreatment such as neglect, medical abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse (Maschi, Bradley, & Ward, 2009). “On average, nationally, there is a report of child maltreatment every 5 seconds, and child maltreatment is substantiated every

From time immemorial, man has been fascinated with behavioral deviations from the normative particularly in the context of crime, or more generally, morality. In fact, classical playwrights and novelists such as Shakespeare and Dostoevsky owe their literary success to their incredible ability to glare into socially and morally deviant minds and weave stories around them. We see a similar trend today. Much of primetime television is filled with shows that have experienced psychoanalysts chasing sophisticated and grossly deviant criminals or some variation of this general theme. The general public tends to relate to the job of a forensic psychologists to that of a cat chasing a mouse. Forensic psychology, however, is a far less

Forensic psychology professionals play a very important role in juvenile court systems. They are used to help the courts determine competency, treatment needs, adjudication decisions, and appropriate sentences for defendants under the age of eighteen. A forensic psychology professional may be asked to evaluate a minor defendant in order to assess any developmental issues they may have, to make a best educated diagnosis if need be. The evaluator needs to know both childhood and legal procedures well. They need to be able to determine if the defendant is where they should be developmentally and if there is any brain disorder or mental illness. It is more difficult to make a diagnosis for a child than an adult because diagnostic symptoms look very different from adults’. There is a large chance a diagnosis could be wrong especially because there is no diagnostic manual for children. This is largely due to the fact that a test cannot be normed for children because they all develop at in different environments and at different rates. Clearly, there is a lot that needs to be taken into consideration when determining what is best for any given

Child abuse in American today is amongst the most saddened topics of mankind. Many children are subjected to neglect and abuse on a daily basis. The sex and age of child makes no difference when it comes to child abuse.. Boys and girls are equally likely to suffer maltreatment. The problem is how often child abuse goes unreported. Millions of children across the world are abused in some way, whether it is verbal, emotional, physical or sexual. Child abuse has been happening all over the world to young children, however many children keep this a secret because of fear of what could happen. Child Abuse consists of any act of commission or omission that endangers or impairs a child’s physical or emotional health and development. It can be

Since the 1970s, the plight of victims in the criminal justice system has become of significant interest and now plays a prominent role in the construction of domestic and international laws. In particular, in 1999, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (YJCEA hereafter) radically transformed the traditional adversarial trial model for receiving evidence from vulnerable and child witnesses by advocating a panoply of special measures to be utilised during criminal court proceedings. The purpose of such measures is to enhance the quality of children’s testimony through the use of screens to block the view of the perpetrator (s.23), the removal of wigs and gowns (s.26), help of intermediaries (s.29) and the use of video links to give evidence (s.21). Most significantly, following the recommendations in the 1989 report of the Home Office Advisory Group on video evidence - the 'Pigot Report ', s. 27 and 28 YJCEA made provisions for pre-recorded cross-examination-in-chief and pre-recorded cross-examination respectively. After all, the cross-examination of a child who is a victim of a crime, particularly a sexual crime, is arguably one of the most challenging courtroom ordeals. However, s. 28 of the YJCEA has never been brought into force and still remains to be “the most controversial of all” measures within the 1999 Act (Hoyano & Keenan, 2010). As a result, although children may be given the opportunity to pre-record the first part of their evidence, they must still