Child forensic interviewing in Children's Advocacy Centers: Empirical data on a practice model

Abstract

Objective

Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) aim to improve child forensic interviewing following allegations of child abuse by coordinating multiple investigations, providing child-friendly interviewing locations, and limiting redundant interviewing. This analysis presents one of the first rigorous evaluations of CACs’ implementation of these methods.

Methods

This analysis is part of a quasi-experimental study, the Multi-Site Evaluation of Children's Advocacy Centers, which evaluated four CACs relative to within-state non-CAC comparison communities. Case abstractors collected data on investigation methods in 1,069 child sexual abuse cases with forensic interviews by reviewing case records from multiple agencies.

Results

CAC cases were more likely than comparison cases to feature police involvement in CPS cases (41% vs. 15%), multidisciplinary team (MDT) interviews (28% vs. 6%), case reviews (56% vs. 7%), joint police/child protective services (CPS) investigations (81% vs. 52%) and video/audiotaping of interviews (52% vs. 17%, all these comparisons p < .001). CACs varied in which coordination methods they used, and some comparison communities also used certain coordination methods more than the CAC with which they were paired. Eighty-five percent of CAC interviews took place in child-friendly CAC facilities, while notable proportions of comparison interviews took place at CPS offices (22%), police facilities (18%), home (16%), or school (19%). Ninety-five percent of children had no more than two forensic interviews, and CAC and comparison differences on number of interviews were mostly non-significant.

Conclusions

Relative to the comparison communities, these CACs appear to have increased coordination on investigations and child forensic interviewing. The CAC setting was the location for the vast majority of CAC child interviews, while comparison communities often used settings that many consider undesirable. CACs showed no advantage on reducing the number of forensic interviews, which was consistently small across the sample.

Introduction

One of the primary goals of Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) is to improve child forensic interviewing following allegations of child sexual abuse. They aim to coordinate law enforcement, child protective, medical, and other agencies, and typically use a single interviewer to provide information to every investigator involved in the case. CACs have spread rapidly, as enrollment in the National Children's Alliance (NCA), the membership organization of CACs, has grown from 22 in 1992 to over 650 accredited or associate centers in 2007 (National Children's Alliance, 2007). In 2004, NCA member CACs served more than 148,000 children (National Children's Alliance, n.d., a), and that number has undoubtedly increased. Many communities, however, do not have a CAC and may use more traditional methods of investigative interviewing in which agencies work independently.

Traditional methods for interviewing children have often been criticized as ineffective in assessing the truth and unnecessarily stressful for children (see, e.g., Ceci & Bruck, 1993; Whitcomb, 1992). Three specific criticisms of these methods are that (1) investigation activities and decision-making are not coordinated across the multiple agencies involved, (2) children are interviewed too many times by too many interviewers and have to “tell their story over and over again,” and (3) children are interviewed in stressful or compromising locations that disturb them further and make it difficult to talk. CACs have aimed to change the practice of forensic child interviewing by coordinating multiple investigations, limiting the number of interviews and interviewers children have, and providing “child friendly” locations for interviews. Methods to promote these outcomes are codified as accreditation standards by the National Children's Alliance (NCA), the membership organization for CACs (National Children's Alliance, n.d., b). Given the contrast of the accreditation standards with traditional methods, forensic interviewing should differ in CACs from communities without CACs. Few studies, however, have compared CAC and non-CAC methods. Given the substantial effort devoted to creating CACs, the promise ascribed to them, and child victims’ needs for protection and support, it is essential that the child abuse professional field evaluate CACs to see whether they can really implement positive changes in investigation.

This analysis focuses on investigative or forensic interviews by police, child protective services and other professionals to assess the truth about a suspicion of child abuse following an official report. It should be noted that children may be questioned several times by parents, teachers, pediatricians, or counselors who suspect abuse before an official investigation begins, but such informal interviews are beyond our scope. Below we discuss several practice problems that affected child forensic interviewing and the ways in which CACs are thought to remedy these problems. The problems link directly to the research questions discussed below.

One complaint about the traditional response is that multiple agencies fail to collaborate – not sharing information and not coordinating their decision-making and communication with the family (see, e.g., Sheppard & Zangrillo, 1996). With uncoordinated investigations, agencies can miss out on crucial information from each other, make decisions at cross-purposes, and give mixed and confusing messages to families. Lack of coordination may also make it easier for one agency to shift the burden of an investigation to another agency (Brad Russ, personal communication, December 2003; see also Cross, Finkelhor, & Ormrod, 2005). Because CACs aim to increase interagency coordination over traditional investigations and have multiple coordination methods, we expected that CACs would exceed non-CAC communities in use of methods of coordination.

Most CACs increase coordination by conducting multidisciplinary team interviews. In this method, one professional interviews the child while other professionals observe through a one-way mirror or closed-circuit television system. The team also shares information and decision-making, and coordinates communication with the family. CACs also promote coordination through joint CPS-police investigations (see, e.g., Cross et al., 2005; Tjaden & Anhalt, 1994). Thus Smith, Witte, and Fricker-Elhai (2006) found greater police involvement with CPS in CAC cases versus non-CAC comparison cases. Another method of coordination is the use of interagency case reviews to facilitate collaborative decision-making during the CAC's involvement. Finally, most CACs videotape interviews. Practice and research literature suggest that that this facilitates coordination by increasing sharing of information among professionals involved with the case, and promotes interviewer accountability and training (Broderick, Berliner, & Berkowitz, 1999; California Attorney General's Office, 1994; Elstein et al., 1996; MacFarlane & Krebs, 1986).

Perhaps the biggest concern is the number of interviews that a child can be subjected to following a disclosure (see, e.g., American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, 2002; Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence, 1984; Cronch, Viljoen, & Hansen, 2006; Whitcomb, 1992). If working on separate, uncoordinated investigations, police, protective caseworkers, physicians, and others can interview children separately, putting children in the position of having to “tell their story” over and over. The number of interviews also can be a problem when the same interviewer meets with a child a number of times, sometimes in a zealous effort to “uncover the truth” (Ceci & Bruck, 1993).Estimates of children having 11 or 12 interviews (see Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence, 1984; McGough, 1994; Whitcomb, 1992, Wyatt, 1999) seem not to be based on empirical data (Myers, 1995). What empirical data exist have been imprecise. In Tedesco and Schnell's (1987) survey of 49 victims, the modal number of interviews was three, with a range of 1–40. In Jaudes and Martone's (1992) sample, 50% had three or more investigative interviews, and 76% experienced interviews by two or more professionals. Gray (1993) found that the average number of child interviews in 16 jurisdictions ranged from “three to four” to “many.” Santtila, Korkman, and Sandnabba's (2004) study of a Finnish sample found a mean of 2.19 interviews, but the sample size was only 27.

The biggest objection to redundant interviewing is that it could make children re-live the trauma of the abuse in the retelling. In limited research, a greater number of interviews has been associated with more child distress (Berliner & Conte, 1995; Henry, 1997; Jaudes & Martone, 1992; Tedesco & Schnell, 1987). Repeated interviewing could make children think that people do not believe them or are unwilling to help. Children could change their answers because they think they got it “wrong” the first time (Ceci & Bruck, 1993), or may become frustrated and recant their statements to stop the interviews. Santtila et al. (2004) found that repeated interviewing was associated with more suggestive questioning. Repeated interviewing also gives perpetrators and their sympathizers time to influence the child, obstruct the investigation, or flee. Avoiding redundant interviewing is considered best practice, but experts have also warned against making one interview an ideal in and of itself (American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, 2002). Some professionals have reported that many children need multiple interviews, preferably with a single interviewer, in order to disclose abuse (Carnes, Nelson-Gardell, Wilson, & Orgassa, 2001; Sorenson & Snow, 1991).

Multiple interviewers may be what makes questioning of children repetitive more than multiple interviews. Multiple interviewers often ask redundant questions, placing children in a situation of repeating “their story.” The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) (2002) states that a single interviewer is “preferable.”

CACs’ use of a single interviewer in a team interview - usually a child forensic interview specialist for the CAC - eliminates the need for separate interviews and interviewers. Two studies found that multidisciplinary teams reduced the number of interviews per child in their child abuse investigation programs (California Attorney General's Office, 1994; Jaudes & Martone, 1992). Another study (Henry, 1997) found children from a community with greater coordination were interviewed fewer times on average than those from a community with less coordination. On the other hand, two studies of CACs found no differences on number of interviews between CAC and non-CAC cases (Hicks, Stolfi, Ormond, & Pascoe, 2003; Steele, Norris, & Komula, 1994). It remains an open question whether CACs reduce the number of forensic interviews and interviewers, and we test that hypothesis here.

For many years, child advocates have expressed concern about customary locations for child interviews: police stations, child protective service offices, schools, and homes (see, e.g., Whitcomb, 1992). Interviews at police stations may frighten children, especially if the alleged perpetrator is interviewed there too, and may reinforce their belief that they have done something wrong (Simone, Cross, Jones, & Walsh, 2005). Children and families may similarly fear child protective services, because they believe that CPS will remove children from their home. Schools may lack privacy, though they may be the location of choice if there is no supportive caretaker to take the child to a more private interview location. A child's home is often a compromised location; offenders or others supporting them may be there or nearby. Because of such concerns, APSAC (2002) recommends interviewing children in a “neutral environment whenever possible … private, informal and free from unnecessary distractions.”

CACs develop child-friendly locations designed to be better environments for interviewing. Waiting rooms will have decorations and play things designed for children Alleged offenders are not allowed, interview rooms are private, and CAC staff or volunteers are available to support and monitor children. Often CACs are independent centers separate from other institutions or agencies, making it easier to build a child-friendly setting. When CACs are components of larger agencies like a prosecutor's office, they often have separate wings or entrances. To test the hypothesis that CACs have more child-friendly locations than comparison communities, we contrast interviewing locations in the CAC and comparison community.

Thus this paper examines (1) whether CAC cases have more interagency coordination in relation to interviewing than comparison samples, (2) whether CAC cases have fewer investigative interviews and interviewers than comparison sample cases, and (3) how the location of interviews in the CACs compares to the non-CAC communities. Using a sample of 1,069 child sexual abuse cases, this analysis compares data on forensic interviewing from four CACs to case data from within-state comparison communities that lacked CACs.