The Empirical Basis of the Forensic Evaluation Protocol

The Competence of the Child to Describe Actual Events

Reluctance

Reluctance is commonplace and difficult to overcome in suspected child sexual abuse cases. In a laboratory study (Saywitz, Goodman, Nicholas, & Moan, 1991) children exhibited reluctance to acknowledge even socially sanctioned genital touching by a doctor. Although children's reluctance and embarrassment in discussing sexual material pose a challenge to interviewers, these factors also create a deterrent against false allegations. Lyon (1995) points out that those pressures that discourage true abuse reports, also operate to discourage false reports. In fact, research has shown children are far more likely to deny or fail to report abuse that has occurred (Lawson & Chaffin, 1992, Faller, 1988).

As discussed above, the NCAC forensic evaluation protocol was designed to be conducted over time to give children the needed safety and non-pressured pace, in accordance with data showing that some children tend to disclose over time (Sorenson & Snow, 1991). The model was specifically designed to help reluctant children overcome their reluctance, fear, embarrassment, and avoidance coping. Thus, it begins with sessions of rapport building, developmental evaluation and social and behavioral assessment before directly addressing the more threatening topics pertaining to abuse.

Memory issues

The complex issues of memory acquisition, storage and retrieval have been widely studied in the laboratory. One salient finding in the research literature is that preschoolers need different cues for retrieval than do school age children (Fivush, 1993). Preschool children do not do well on free-recall tasks, and require specific external cues to direct their attention to specific interview topics. The NCAC protocol employs abuse specific, non-leading questioning procedures to inquire about such topics as care routines, substance abuse, domestic violence and physical and sexual abuse.

The focused questioning techniques are based upon the work of Walker (1994) and others, to be developmentally appropriate and non-suggestive. Abuse is approached obliquely, without direct leading. While detractors would describe almost any focused question as leading, for the purposes of practice and research using the Forensic evaluation protocol, a leading question means a question in which the answer is suggested, for example, "He touched your privates, didn't he?" or "Didn't he make you touch his pee-pee?"

School aged children can respond to more open-ended techniques for memory retrieval, therefore, the Cognitive Interview (Saywitz, Geiselman and Bornstein, 1992), and Narrative Elaboration (Saywitz, Snyder, & Lamphear, 1996) procedures are employed in the model when questioning older children given there has been an acknowledgment by the child of an abuse incident. In laboratory studies, these techniques increase accuracy and quantity of detail by providing memory retrieval cues without being leading or suggestive.