ABSTRACT

This article contextualizes new knowledge about forensically interviewing and assessing children when there are concerns about child abuse. The article references the impact of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and the circumstance in the 1980s where investigators and clinicians had little guidance about how to interview children about alleged sexual abuse. It further speaks to the consequences of lack of interview guidelines and how videotaped interviews in the McMartin Pre-school cases served as the catalyst for the backlash against child interviewers and their interview techniques. Painful as the backlash was, it led to research and evidence-based practice in interviewing children about child sexual and other abuse. Principal among the practice innovations were forensic interview structures to be used when there is alleged child sexual and other abuse and the strong preference for one interview by a skilled interviewer, who is nevertheless a stranger to the child. Although these innovations satisfied many professionals in the child maltreatment field and critics of child interviewers, the new practices did not address a number of abiding issues: 1) how to meet the needs of children who are unable to disclose maltreatment in a single interview, 2) how to determine which children are suggestible in a forensic interview, and 3) how decisions are made about the likelihood of abuse, based upon the child’s information during the interview. The articles in this special section address these cutting-edge issues.

摘要

本文对有关虐待儿童的法医采访和评估儿童的新知识进行了背景介绍。本文引用了《防止虐待儿童法》的影响以及1980年代的情况，在这种情况下，调查人员和临床医生对于如何就所谓的性虐待问题采访儿童一事无成。它进一步说明了缺乏访谈指南的后果，以及麦马汀学前班案例中的录像采访如何导致对儿童采访者及其采访技巧的强烈反对。由于强烈的反抗，这很痛苦，这导致了针对儿童性虐待和其他虐待问题采访儿童的研究和循证实践。在实践创新中，最主要的是在涉嫌儿童遭受性虐待和其他虐待时使用的法医访谈结构，以及强烈希望由熟练的访调员进行一次访谈，但对孩子来说却是陌生的。尽管这些创新使儿童虐待领域的许多专业人士和儿童访调员的批评者感到满意，但新做法并未解决许多长期存在的问题：1）如何满足无法在一次访谈中披露虐待的儿童的需求，2 ）如何确定在法医访谈中建议哪些儿童，以及3）如何根据访谈期间儿童的信息来决定虐待的可能性。本特殊部分中的文章解决了这些前沿问题。