Forensic interview with a child victim of sexual abuse

running head: Forensic Interview Of A Child With Sexual Abuse Forensic Interview Child with Sexual Abuse Submitted to [Pick the In the given scenario, the victim is a considerably older child i. e. Sally, who is able to respond to questions being asked. There are various strategies used in this interview that have been declared appropriate for being used while interviewing children experiencing sexual abuse. Techniques like open-ended questions, touch survey and truth-lie discussions were employed that prompted the child to respond to the questions effectively (Cronch, Viljoen & Hansen, 2006). Open-ended approach with cued invitations helped Sally respond in the desired direction. However, limited development building made it difficult for Sally to trust the detective as interviewer quickly moved towards the questions.
A critical analysis of child’s responses helped in understanding that she was more comfortable with explaining her schema or how she perceived the situation to be. This is precisely the reason why Sally was more relaxed with drawing an image. Asking direct questions at the end made her uncomfortable and she asked for her caregiver. It was apparent that where interviewer was well-versed with the techniques available for forensic interviewing of such child, he had higher expectations regarding amount of information that could have been retrieved which made him highly assertive at the end of the interview (Cordisco, n. d). Perhaps, instead of shifting from open-ended to close ended questions, use of cognitive interviewing and anatomical dolls would have been better.
Since the child was performing accidental disclosure through questions of the detective and was earlier comfortable with defining her imagery, she would have been more at ease with anatomical dolls. Since Sally is a considerably older child who is able to provide details that she could remember about specific events, use of cognitive interviewing would have been more appropriate although some of the techniques were used in the earlier part of the interviewer however further interview was not built on it. Therefore, it can be suggested that the interviewer needed to build more rapport and lead the interviewer in an open-ended manner along with having limited expectations from the child experiencing sexual abuse (Larsson & Lamb, 2009).
References
Cordisco S. L. (n. d.). Interviewing preschool children [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www. nationalcac. org/training-videos/linda_steele/index. html
Larsson, A. S., & Lamb, M. E. (2009). Making the Most Of Information-Gathering Interviews With Children. Infant and Child Development, 18, pp. 1–16.
Lindsay, C. E., Viljoen, J. L. & Hansen, D. J. (2006). Forensic Interviewing in Child Sexual Abuse Cases: Current Techniques and Future Directions. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11(3), pp. 195-207.