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Topic: Under what circumstances should children be allowed to testify in criminal cases?

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Can the Child Testify?: On Childhood, Testimony, and the
Cultural Construction ofthe Child as Political Subject
—Julia Emberley

In February 2009, the English playwright Caryl

Churchill presented her work. Seven Jewish Children: A

Play for Caza, at the Royal Court in London, England.

Her ten-minute play, directed in this performance by

Dominic Cooke, was staged free of charge. The play

consists of seven events in Jewish history, including,

for example, the Holocaust, the establishment of the

Israeli state, the first intifada, and the expropriation

of water supplies, and concluding with the recent

Israeli onslaught in Gaza in January of 2009. Each

scene in this production was performed by a different

actor. Churchill has made the text of the play and a

performance directed by Elliot Smith readily available

on the Internet. In Smith’s production, the play is

performed by one woman, Jennie Stoller. In performing

all parts, Stoller is seen and heard speaking in a series

of oppositional imperative sentences, as if she is talking

to another adult or other adults, telling them what to

say or not to say to an absent Jewish female child in

order to explain the meaning of each of the events.

Churchill’s directorial comments in the text of the play

made available on the web through the Royal Court

Theatre are as follows:

No children appear in the play. The speakers are

adults, the parents and if you like other relations of

the children. The lines can be shared out in any way

you like among those characters. The characters are

different in each small scene as the time and child

are different. They may be played by any number of

actors.

Here is an excerpt from the play, taken from the part

where Jewish settlers are living in the former Palestinian

territory. The adult voice exhorts the listener to instruct

the child in the following manner:

Don’t tell her she can’t play with the children

Jeunesse: Toung People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009) 159

Don’t tell her she can have them in the house.

Tell her they have plenty of friends and family

Tell her for miles and miles all round they have

lands of their own

Tell her again this is our promised land.

Don’t tell her they said it was a land without people

Don’t tell her I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.

Tell her maybe we can share.

Don’t tell her that.

The text is performed on the basis of this dialogic

tension, “tell”/”don’t tell.” What conditions the

rhetorical action of the play is the way the audience

is positioned as witness to the crisis of Jewish

individuals who, visibly torn by internal and external

pressures of censorship, desire to say one thing

but are compelled to say another. What becomes

apparent in the oscillation between the sayable and

the unsayable is that “truth” is overdetermined in the

sense that a regime of veridiction exists due not only

to historical realities, but also to the fear of violence.

The play incited a good deal of controversy (see

Henry; Jacobson); charges of anti-Semitism, rebuttals,

and defences abounded, including the making of

another play, titled Seven Other Children: A Theatrical

Response to “Seven Jewish Children,” by Richard

Stirling. As with Ghurchill’s play, Stirling’s response was

performed free of charge in London, England during

May 2009. Stirling’s intent was to demonstrate the

“distorted education of many Palestinians about Israel,

Israelis and Jews” (qtd. in Nathan).

Churchill’s play “works” on the basis of an absent

child, gendered female, about whom the ostensible

instructions are directed. (In Stirling’s adaptation,

the child is male.) This absent child constitutes a

subject position that may be filled by the promise of

a better future or by the overdeterm i nations of fear

and suffering as they are made to continue into the

present and future of Palestinian and Israeli political

relations. This rhetorical figure of absence is a powerful

subject position, in part because it is the figure of

the child, in all its connotations of fragility and

vulnerability, that is being recalled here, being female

making such vulnerability all the more extreme. But

what happens when the figure of the child no longer

signifies a conflict between a potential absence of

ethical consciousness and the possibility of a dissenting

voice? Can “the child” testify in the context of such

overdeterminations? I would argue that the figure of

the child as testifier is being deployed in contemporary

testimonial practices for purposes related to the

meaning and even the loss of childhood in a world of

genocidal atrocities.

Consider the following words from Three Wishes:

Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak, edited by

Deborah Ellis:

I just want to go to school. I don’t want to blow

160 Julia Emberley Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009)

Can ‘the child’ testify
in the context of such

overdeterminations?

anything up. The soldiers don’t see me as a child. They see me as an

enemy. I don’t like them, but I’m not their enemy. I just want to go

to school. (46)

These are the words of an eleven-year-old Palestinian girl named

Mona, who was living in Palestinian territory between Jerusalem and

Ramallah around 2004. Mona’s understanding that she is perceived

as an enemy, and not a child, indicates the degree to which she sees

herself as a child under siege whose childhood has been usurped

by a military presence in her everyday life. The condition of military

occupation has forced a transformation of her identity from child

to enemy, a transformation that she does not welcome. In another

testimonial narrative, Mahmoud, Mona’s schoolmate, also expresses

a desire to maintain, or perhaps protect, his childhood against the

insurgency of militarized violence, suffering, and pain when he

describes playing war with his friends and the real rules of war:

When I play with my friends, we play Israeli and Palestinians, and

we pretend to shoot each other. Everyone wants to be Palestinians,

of course, but we trade off, to make it fair. We have toy machine

guns and rifles, but we also make our own guns out of sticks and

things, so that there are enough guns to go around. We play around

the ruins of buildings that have been bombed, jumping out at each

other. In our game, the Palestinians always win. I play games where

we shoot the Israelis, but the guns aren’t real, and no one really gets

hurt. I wouldn’t want to hurt anybody for real. Also, we Palestinians

are forbidden by the Israelis to have guns. They want to keep all the

guns for themselves. (Ellis 50)

Jeunesse: Toung People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009) Julia Emberley 161

Mahmoud insists, with unwitting irony, that his

playing at war is done in the fairest way possible.

Everyone has to play both parts, and there have to be

enough guns to go around. In the real war, however,

Palestinians are forbidden to use guns and are thus

overrun by Israeli military forces. Even playtime in

Palestine, Mahmoud is telling us, is more ethical that

the rules of war in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In

their testimony, Mahmoud and Mona bear witness to

the loss of their childhood and the traumatic shift in the

boundary between the child and the adult, fantasy and

reality, that they are forced to undergo. They are more

than aware of how ideas associated with childhood,

such as play, innocence, friendship, and love, are not

givens, but are the privileges of others whose lives are

not curtailed and limited by military occupation.

The figure of the child as a site through which

to mediate across national boundaries is not a new

phenomenon in English literature. The rise of boys’

adventure narratives during the late-nineteenth and

early-twentieth centuries laid the groundwork for

representational mechanisms that could cross the divide

between the empire and the colonies. The child as a

figure of transcultural mobility entered literary modes

of territorial ization in such notable works as Rudyard

Kipling’s Kim and Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little

Savages. Along with J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Ran: or. The

Boy Who Wouldn’t Crow Up, boys’ adventure stories,

in conjunction with the rise of youth movements such

as the Boy Scouts, introduced the child into the imperial

imaginary as a figure of transcultural mobility, whose

agential powers included always being prepared to “go

native” when and if need be.̂

In the disciplinary formation of English Literature,

the figure of the child occupied a central position

as an object of study in the context of genre studies

such as children’s literature. While J. K. Rowling’s

successful Harry Potter series injected new material

into the somewhat staid and predictable course

curriculum during the 1990s, other literary texts were

making use of the figure of the child, turning it to other

purposes not necessarily aimed at children’s reading

pleasure. I have in mind Marjane Satrapi’s graphic

novel, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, in which

Satrapi deploys the figure of the child in a comic-book

format in order to create a narrative perspective of

her childhood experience of the Iranian Revolution in

the late 1970s (see Emberiey, “This Is Not a Game”).

For Satrapi, the figure of the child makes it possible to

redraw the boundaries between reality and fantasy and

to highlight the ironic tensions between cultural and

political representations.

In both the Harry Potter books and Satrapi’s graphic

novel, it is the trope of the knowing child that comes

to the fore. This is the child of experience, whose

innocence has been tampered with and destroyed by

the forces of evil, as in the case of Harry Potter, or at

the hands of autocratic political forces, such as Islamic

162 Julia Emberiey Jeunesse: Toung People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009)

The institutional
and discursive

politicization of the
child and childhood is
an important topic for

cultural studies.

religious fundamentalism in Iran during the 1978 and 1979 revolution

and counter-revolution. An anticipatory moment in the genealogy of

the knowing child can be found in the Romantic literary tradition,

where William Blake, for instance, in his poetic sequence. Songs of

Innocence and Experience, shifted the focus from the idealized figure

of the innocent child of English bourgeois Christian construction to

the newly visible industrial class of child labourers. Blake’s uncanny

use of the figure of the knowing child is being reconfigured today by

a complex set of hegemonic interests including identity formations,

institutional pedagogical practices, and transnational economic and

political pressures.

This genealogy of the figure of the child provides some

historical contextualization through which to trace the significance

of industrialization and imperialism in the making of this figure,

and to situate the current hegemonic fluctuations permeating the

representations of children today, including the specificities involved

in the mobilization of childhood as a highly contested political terrain.

Nowhere, I think, is the mobilization of the child as a political subject

more troubling than in the field of testimonial studies.

Ellis’s book, for example, was also met with controversy. In

discussing this book, and the controversy surrounding it, I argue

that the testimony of children who experience the trauma of

military violence is important to the contemporary politicization

of the child and to the meaning and memorialization of childhood

(Emberley, “A Child”). The politicization of the child and childhood

is occurring in a wide range of public institutions, including human-

rights organizations such as Amnesty International, with its current

emphasis on child soldiers; and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools

Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will be involved in

Jeunesse: Toung People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009) Julia Emberley 163

collecting testimony from indigenous people on their

childhood memories ofthe abuses and deaths that

occurred in the residential school system (Emberley,

Defamiliarizing; “Indigenous”). The institutional and

discursive politicization ofthe child and childhood is

an important topic for cultural studies. The figure of

the child and the meaning of childhood are products

of representational technologies and techniques to

the extent that even nations, continents, and other

politically circumscribed spaces have “childhoods.” As

both concepts and metaphors, “the child” circulates

through the national imaginary and “childhoods”

become the domain of state regulation and control,

but none of this would be possible without the

production of the figure of the child and the ways in

which value and meaning are ascribed to childhood

and childhood experience. In addition, the making of

the child as a political subject not only serves to fill

an apparent gap of lost innocence, but also has the

uncanny effect of blocking from sight the actual loss

of children’s lives due to war, disease, and oppressive

labour and domestic practices, and the exploitative

reproductive and sexual violence in the trafficking

of children globally. Civen the historical, cultural,

political, and representational overdeterminations

that exist in the rhetorical and cultural construction

ofthe child and childhood, 1 wonder, can “the child”

bear witness to exploitation, abuse, and death due

to violent and traumatic events? Furthermore, what

happens when the child is launched as the figure

of truth, authenticity, and power in contemporary

political struggles? These are the questions that inform

my research into the making of children as political

actors in a transnational frame.

Notes

^ This moment in the genealogy ofthe figure ofthe child does not

exclude attention to the domestic sphere and girls’ fiction as a site

of imperial/colonial negotiation of so-called civilization, propriety.

and racial regulation through the mother’s body (on this point, see

Emberley, Defamiliarizing, specifically chapter one).

164 Julia Emberley Jeunesse: Toung People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009)

Works Cited
Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan: or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Crow Up. London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 1904.

Print.

Churchill, Caryl. Seven Jewish Children. Dir. Dominic Cooke. Royal

Court Theatre, London. 9 Feb. 2009. Performance.

—. Seven Jewish Children. Dir. Elliot Smith. Perf. Jennie Stoller.

Guardian. Guardian, 25 Apr. 2009. Web. 20 May

2009.

—. Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza. London: Nick Hern,

2009. Royal Court Theatre. Web. 12 Nov. 2009.

Ellis, Deborah. Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak.

Toronto: Anansi, 2004. Print.

Emberley, Julia. “A Child is Testifying: Testimony, Transnationalism,

and the Cultural Construction of the Child in a Transnational

Frame.” The Journal of Postcolonial Writing 45.4 (2009): 379-90.

Print.

—. Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and

Decolonization in Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2007. Print.

—. “Indigenous Storytelling Epistemologies and Residential School

Testinnony.” Reconciling Canada: The Culture of Redress. Ed.

Jennifer Henderson and Pauline Wakeham. Toronto: U of Toronto

P, 2010 (forthcoming). Print.

—. “This Is Not a Game: Childhood, Cultural Memory, and

Violence.”/Austra//an Humanities Review 47 (2010). Forthcoming.

Print.

Henry, Brian. “Seven Jewish Children: An Incitement to Hatred.” The

Jewish Tribune. B’nai Brith Canada, 7 May 2009. Web. 20 May

2009.

Jacobson, Howard. “Let’s See the ‘Criticism’ of Israel for What it

Really Is.” The Independent. Independent, 18 Feb. 2009. Web. 15

Mar. 2009.

Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. London: MacMillan, 1901. Print.

Nathan, John. Rev. of Seven Other Children, by Richard Stirling. The

JC.com. The Jewish Chronicle, 7 May 2009. Web. 15 June 2009.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London:

Bloomsbury, 1997. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. Trans. Blake

Ferris and Mattias Ripa. NewYork: Pantheon, 2003. Print. Trans, of

Persepolis. 2 vols. Paris: L’Association, 2000-01.

Seton, Ernest Thompson. Two i/tt/e Savages. Toronto: Doubleday,

2003. Print.

Julia Emberley is Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. Her recent book publication is

Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada (U of Toronto P, 2007). Dr. Emberley

has published widely on the topic of children, childhood, and testimony, and is currently completing a manuscript

that is provisionally titled “The Cultural Politics of Testimony and Childhood,” supported by a SSHRC Standard

Research Grant. Dr. Emberley is a recipient of the Graham and Grace Wright Distinguished Scholar Award from The

University of Western Ontario for 2009-10.

Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 1.2 (2009) Julia Emberley 165

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exceptional among legal punishments in that it is inflicted without
conviction, trial or arraignment, the divorce proceedings being quite
another and different matter. It is exceptional in that the period of its
continuance, and therefore the degree of its severity, are indeterminate;
they are dependent on no limiting statute, and on neither the will of the
power inflicting nor the conduct of the person suffering.

To sentence a person to a punishment that is to be mild or severe
according to chance or—which is even worse—circumstance, which but
one person, and that person not officially connected with administration
of justice, can but partly control, is a monstrous perversion of the main
principles that are supposed to underlie the laws.

In “the case at bar” it can be nothing to the woman—possibly herself
remarried—whether the man remarries or not; that is, can affect only her
feelings, and only such of them as are least creditable to her. Yet her
self-interest is enlisted against him to do him incessant disservice. By
merely caring for her health she increases the sharpness of his
punishment—for punishment it is if he feels it such; every hour that she
wrests from death is added to his “term.” The expediency of preventing a
man from marrying, without having the power to prevent him from
making his marriage desirable in the interest of the public and vital to
that of some woman, is not discussable here. If a man is ever justified in
poisoning a woman who is no longer his wife it is when, by way of
making him miserable, the State has given him, or he supposes it to have
given him, a direct and distinct interest in her death.

III.
With a view, possibly, to promoting respect for law by making the

statutes so conform to public sentiment that none will fall into disesteem
and disuse, it has been advocated that there be a formal recognition of
sex in the penal code, by making a difference in the punishment of men
and of women for the same crimes and misdemeanors. The argument is
that if women were “provided” with milder punishment juries would
sometimes convict them, whereas they now commonly get off altogether.

The plan is not so new as might be thought. Many of the nations of
antiquity of whose laws we have knowledge, and nearly all the European
nations until within a comparatively recent time, punished women
differently from men for the same offenses. And as recently as the period
of the Early Puritan in New England women were punished for some
offenses which men might commit without fear if not without reproach.
The ducking-stool, for example, was an appliance for softening the
female temper only. In England women used to be burned at the stake for
crimes for which men were hanged, roasting being regarded as the
milder punishment. In point of fact, it was not punishment at all, the

Page 44 of 124The Shadow on the Dial and Other Essays, by Ambrose Bierce

5/3/2008http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25304/25304-h/25304-h.htm

victim being carefully strangled before the fire touched her. Burning
was simply a method of disposing of the body so expeditiously as to give
no occasion and opportunity for the unseemly social rites commonly
performed about the scaffold of the erring male by the jocular populace.
As lately as 1763 a woman named Margaret Biddingfield was burned in
Suffolk as an accomplice in the crime of “petty treason.” She had
assisted in the murder of her husband, the actual killing being done by a
man; and he was hanged, as no doubt he richly deserved. For “coining,”
too (which was “treason”), men were hanged and women burned. This
distinction between the sexes was maintained until the year of grace
1790, after which female offenders ceased to have “a stake in the
country,” and like Hood’s martial hero, “enlisted in the line.”

In still earlier days, before the advantages of fire were understood, our
good grandmothers who sinned were admonished by water—they were
drowned; but in the reign of Henry III a woman was hanged—without
strangulation, apparently, for after a whole day of it she was cut down
and pardoned. Sorceresses and unfaithful wives were smothered in mud,
as also were unfaithful wives among the ancient Burgundians. The
punishment of unfaithful husbands is not of record; we only know that
there were no austerely virtuous editors to direct the finger of public
scorn their way.

Among the Anglo-Saxons, women who had the bad luck to be
detected in theft were drowned, while men meeting with the same
mischance died a dry death by hanging. By the early Danish laws female
thieves were buried alive, whether or not from motives of humanity is
not now known. This seems to have been the fashion in France also, for
in 1331 a woman named Duplas was scourged and buried alive at
Abbeville, and in 1460 Perotte Mauger, a receiver of stolen goods, was
inhumed by order of the Provost of Paris in front of the public gibbet. In
Germany in the good old days certain kinds of female criminals were
“impaled,” a punishment too grotesquely horrible for description, but
likely enough considered by the simple German of the period
conspicuously merciful.

It is, in short, only recently that the civilized nations have placed the
sexes on an equality in the matter of the death penalty for crime, and the
new system is not yet by any means universal. That it is a better system
than the old, or would be if enforced, is a natural presumption from
human progress, out of which it is evolved. But coincidently with its
evolution has evolved also a sentiment adverse to punishment of women
at all. But this sentiment appears to be of independent growth and in no
way a reaction against that which caused the change. To mitigate the
severity of the death penalty for women to some pleasant form of
euthanasia, such as drowning in rose-water, or in their case to abolish the
death penalty altogether and make their capital punishment consist in a
brief interment in a jail with a softened name, would probably do no
good, for whatever form it might take, it would be, so far as woman is
concerned, the “extreme penalty” and crowning disgrace, and jurors
would be as reluctant to inflict it as they now are to inflict hanging.

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Testifying in Criminal Court: Emotional Effects on Child Sexual Assault Victims
Author(s): Gail S. Goodman, Elizabeth Pyle Taub, David P. H. Jones, Patricia England,
Linda K. Port, Leslie Rudy, Lydia Prado, John E. B. Myers and Gary B. Melton
Source: Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development , 1992, Vol. 57,
No. 5, Testifying in Criminal Court: Emotional Effects on Child Sexual Assault Victims
(1992), pp. i+iii+v+1-159
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/1166127

MONOGRAPHS OF THE
SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Serial No. 229, Vol. 57, No. 5, 1992
TESTIFYING IN
CRIMINAL COURT:
EMOTIONAL EFFECTS ON
CHILD SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIMS
Gail S. Goodman
Elizabeth Pyle Taub
David P. H. Jones
Patricia England
Linda K. Port
Leslie Rudy
Lydia Prado
WITH COMMENTARIES BY
John E. B. Myers
Gary B. Melton
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MONOGRAPHS OF THE SOCIETY FOR RESEARCH IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Serial No. 229, Vol. 57, No. 5, 1992
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT v
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. DESIGN AND STUDY POPULATION 16
III. THE SEQUENCE OF ASSESSMENTS AND MEASURES 36
IV. THE EMOTIONAL
EFFECTS OF COURTROOM TESTIMONY 44
V. PREDICTING RECOVERY 63
VI. AT THE COURTHOUSE 71
VII. IN THE COURTROOM 77
VIII. AFTER TESTIFYING 96
IX. FAMILIES’ EXPERIENCES OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM 102
X. DISCUSSION 114
APPENDIX:
VARIABLES MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT 127
REFERENCES 136
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 142
COMMENTARIES
STEPS TOWARD FORENSICALLY RELEVANT RESEARCH
John E. B. Myers 143
CHILDREN AS PARTNERS FOR JUSTICE:
NEXT STEPS FOR DEVELOPMENTALISTS
Gary B. Melton 153
CONTRIBUTORS 160
STATEMENT OF
EDITORIAL POLICY 162
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ABSTRACT
GOODMAN, GAIL S.; TAUB, ELIZABETH PYLE; JONES, DAVID P. H.; ENGLAND,
PATRICIA; PORT, LINDA K.; RUDY, LESLIE; and PRADO, LYDIA. Testifying
in Criminal Court: Emotional Effects on Child Sexual Assault Victims.
With Commentaries by JOHN E. B. MYERS and GARY B. MELTON. Mono-
graphs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1992, 57(5, Serial
No. 229).
Child victims must cope not only with the emotional consequences of
criminal acts but also with the potentially traumatizing effects of legal
involvement. Dramatic increases in the reporting of child sexual abuse are
bringing greater numbers of children into contact with the criminal justice
system, raising fears that child victims of sex crimes will be further harmed
by the courts. In the present study, the effects of criminal court testimony
on child sexual assault victims were examined in a sample of 218 children.
From this sample, the behavioral disturbance of a group of “testifiers” was
compared to that of a matched control group of “nontestifiers” at three
points following testimony: 3 months, 7 months, and after prosecution
ended. At 7 months, testifiers evinced greater behavioral disturbance than
nontestifiers, especially if the testifiers took the stand multiple times, were
deprived of maternal support, and lacked corroboration of their claims.
Once prosecution ended, adverse effects of testifying diminished. In court-
house interviews before and after testifying, the main fear expressed by
children concerned having to face the defendant. Children who appeared
more frightened of the defendant while testifying were less able to answer
the prosecutors’ questions; and later, after the cases were closed, they were
more likely to say that testifying had affected them adversely. The two most
pervasive predictors of children’s experiences in the courtroom, however,
were age and severity of abuse. Despite relevant laws, few innovative tech-
niques were used to help the children testify. The results are discussed in
relation to children’s ability to cope with stressful situations, the interaction
of the legal system with the child/family system, and debates about the need
to protect child victims who testify in criminal court.
V
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I. INTRODUCTION
An upsurge in the reporting of child sexual abuse is bringing an in-
creasing number of children into the criminal justice system, accompanied
by the legal and psychological dilemmas that such cases pose. One of these
dilemmas concerns how to prosecute without causing additional trauma to
children and without abrogating defendants’ rights. Despite growing con-
cern, we know surprisingly little about the effects of criminal court testi-
mony on child victims of sexual abuse; the purpose of the present study
was to redress this lack.’
It is common knowledge that testifying can be a stressful experience
even for adult witnesses. Although we know little about children’s responses
to testifying, studies of children’s reactions to other stressful situations (e.g.,
see Garmezy & Rutter, 1983) may help guide child witness research. Such
studies suggest that factors associated with the system of the child (e.g.,
individual differences, such as age and gender), the family (e.g., maternal
support), and the law (e.g., prolonged or repeated exposure to a stressful
environment) would all be expected to affect children’s emotional reactions
to testifying in court.
In the present Monograph, we develop this framework in relation to
child witnesses. Before doing so, however, it is necessary to examine the
extent and characteristics of children’s involvement in child sexual abuse
prosecutions and review existing research on children’s reactions to legal
involvement.
CHILDREN AS WITNESSES IN SEXUAL ABUSE CASES
The United States has recently experienced a phenomenal growth in
reports of child sexual abuse. When the National Center on Child Abuse
‘ Some prefer the term “alleged victim” because in actual cases of child sexual abuse
one cannot always distinguish true from false reports with absolute certainty. For the sake
of brevity, we have chosen the term “victim.” All the children were in the role of victim
in the prosecutions.
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MONOGRAPHS
and Neglect began collecting data in 1976, child protection agencies nation-
wide reported 1,975 cases of child sexual assault. By 1990, the total came
to 138,357 (Department of Health and Human Services, 1992). Compared
to other kinds of abuse and neglect cases, sexual abuse cases more often
involve the courts (American Association for Protecting Children, 1988); in
fact, by prosecutors’ reports, children in America are more likely to testify
in such cases than in any other kind of criminal case (Leippe, Brigham,
Cousins, & Romanczyk, 1989; Whitcomb, Shapiro, & Stellwagen, 1985).
Although courtroom testimony is not always required, it may play an
important part in successful prosecution of child sexual abuse cases because
the unique character of this crime heightens the chances that the child’s
testimony will be needed. It is not uncommon for the assault to leave little
sign; once completed, acts of fondling and oral sex-which are more com-
mon than rape-are largely invisible. Moreover, when weeks, months, or
even years elapse before a child reveals that abuse has occurred, the likeli-
hood that physical evidence of the assault will remain is reduced. Even when
such evidence exists, it may have to be linked by the child’s testimony to a
specific perpetrator. The child’s account is thus likely to be a crucial piece
of evidence heard by a grand jury or presented at a preliminary hearing
and trial.
No yearly statistics are kept concerning the number of child sexual
abuse victims who become involved in criminal prosecutions and who testify,
but relevant information is available.2 Such information indicates consider-
able variability across jurisdictions in the number of child sexual abuse cases
prosecuted and the number of children who testify. Concerning the number
of cases prosecuted, a 1981 American Bar Association survey of prosecutors
across the United States indicated that about 75% of intrafamilial and 80%
of extrafamilial sexual abuse cases referred to district attorneys’ offices re-
sulted in prosecution; about two-thirds of these were settled by guilty pleas
(Bulkley, 1983). However, in a later survey, some jurisdictions claimed that
41% of child sexual assault cases went to trial (Whitcomb et al., 1985). The
most recent statistics come from a national telephone survey of 530 district
attorneys’ offices (Smith, 1991), which uncovered a range of from 1 to 800
(M = 66) in the number of child sexual assault cases prosecuted by each
office.
Differences across jurisdictions in the incidence of child sexual abuse
and in sentiment, state law, and resources concerning its prosecution may
2 It is unfortunate that there are no general statistics on the number of children who
are subpoenaed and who testify in various types of criminal court proceedings. Although
such data would be helpful, it should be noted that they would vary as a function of the
historical and cultural contexts that affect laws influencing prosecution (e.g., corroboration
laws), prosecutors’ decisions to pursue child sexual abuse cases, the willingness of children
and families to report sexual abuse, etc.
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GOODMAN ET AL.
at least in part explain these diverging statistics as well as variability in
the number of children who testify. Concerning the latter, Rogers (1980)
followed 261 child sexual abuse cases reported to police in the District of
Columbia and discovered that few children took the stand at trial. In con-
trast, Sas and Wolfe (1991) substantiated that 50% of the 150 children
involved in a study on preparing children for court later testified either at
trial or in some type of preliminary hearing. In considering such statistics,
it is important to keep in mind that, even in cases settled before trial, chil-
dren may be required to testify at competence examinations and/or prelimi-
nary hearings.
Increased awareness of the extent of child sexual abuse (Finkelhor,
1984; Russell, 1983) and of its emotional sequelae (for reviews, see Browne
& Finkelhor, 1986; and Wyatt & Powell, 1988) has brought considerable
public and legislative attention to the issue of children’s ability to withstand
court proceedings. Courtrooms are austere, formal settings capable of in-
timidating adults, let alone children. The court system, established with
adult defendants and witnesses in mind, does not easily accommodate chil-
dren’s special needs. Nevertheless, various groups have made recommenda-
tions for changes in current procedures when a child victim testifies (e.g.,
Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence, 1984; Bulkley, 1982), and
legislatures across the country have recently passed new laws governing
children’s testimony. These new laws promote the use of videotaped testi-
mony and closed-circuit television, the extension of hearsay exceptions,
early docketing of cases involving child victims, and the use of expert wit-
nesses to testify about the effects of sexual abuse (for reviews, see Bulkley,
1982; and Goodman, 1984). In addition, courts are being asked to rule on
the use of innovative procedures in individual cases (e.g., Craig v. Maryland,
1991). The purpose of these reforms is to minimize the presumed traumatic
effects on children of court appearances and maximize children’s ability
to provide accurate testimony. Some of the new laws have been deemed
unconstitutional (Coy v. Iowa, 1988) because they overly infringe on the
Sixth Amendment rights of defendants, especially those of face-to-face con-
frontation and cross-examination of all witnesses. Other reforms, however,
have withstood constitutional test (Maryland v. Craig, 1990).
Despite the enthusiasm for procedural reform, systematic research
about children’s immediate or long-term psychological reactions to court
involvement has been scarce, and much of the existing evidence is anecdotal
(Benedek, 1982; Berliner & Barbieri, 1984; Claman, Harris, Bernstein, &
Lovitt, 1986; Levine & Levine, 1992; Pynoos & Eth, 1984; Schudson, 1987;
Terr & Watson, 1980; Weiss & Berg, 1982). Nevertheless, many attorneys,
mental health professionals, and legal commentators have claimed that
court involvement retraumatizes children (e.g., Bulkley, 1982; Burgess &
Holmstrom, 1978; Katz & Mazur, 1979; Libai, 1969; Parker, 1982), while
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MONOGRAPHS
others have asserted that it is not necessarily traumatic and may at times be
cathartic (Berliner & Barbieri, 1984; Goodman, Levine, Melton, & Ogden,
1990). We review next what is known from scientific study about children’s
reactions to testifying.
THE FINDINGS OF PREVIOUS RESEARCH
Only a few published studies have focused on children’s psychological
reactions to court proceedings. The reason for this paucity is probably two-
fold. First, until relatively recent times, it was generally believed that chil-
dren rarely testify in courts of law, and child sexual abuse itself was not
believed to be widespread, a misconception shattered by findings of recent
prevalence studies (Finkelhor, 1984; Russell, 1983). Second, the criminal
justice system poses many formidable obstacles for the researcher. Among
the few who braved it, the earliest were Gibbens and Prince (1963). Working
through records of the Federation of Committees for the Moral Welfare of
Children in England, they compared the adjustment of a selected sample
of child victims who were involved in court proceedings with that of a
random sample of those who did not go to court. They found that 56% of
the no-court group evinced no overt signs of disturbance and seemed to
recover quickly whereas only 18% of the court group did. However, they
also noted that the cases ending in court were probably the more serious
and that the families of the court group were more disturbed; thus, the
greater disturbance evinced by the children who appeared in court might
have resulted from factors other than involvement in court proceedings.
DeFrancis (1969) followed 250 cases of child sexual assault and incest
in New York, of which 173 resulted in prosecution. He reported that nu-
merous court appearances were required of the children and that their
testimony resulted in “much stress and tension” for them and in resentment
in their parents. However, because no comparison group was included, it
is impossible to tell how much of the children’s disturbance may have been
caused by the assault rather than by their legal involvement; moreover, no
standardized measures of the children’s and families’ psychological adjust-
ment were used. Nevertheless, this study transmits the impression that legal
involvement was stressful for children and their families.
Nearly 20 years elapsed before the next study was published. Tedesco
and Schnell (1987) sent a questionnaire concerning legal experiences to 120
child abuse councils, mental health facilities, therapists, and others who
provide services to child victims in Iowa, asking that they be distributed to
children who had testified in criminal court; 48 of these were returned,
completed either by the victims, sometimes with the help of a parent (N =
35), or by an adult (attorney, social worker, or relative other than a parent).
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GOODMAN ET AL.
The victims ranged in age from 4 to 22 years, and 81% were females; only
nine (all females) had actually testified in court. Of those nine, only two
(22%) found the legal process helpful, whereas, of the 31 who did not
testify, 21 (68%) rated it as such. Among all respondents, the number of
interviews endured was negatively correlated with perceived helpfulness.
Females and incest victims appeared to be more conflicted than males and
nonincest victims, the former being more likely to rate the legal process as
both helpful and harmful; interestingly, treatment workers were more likely
to rate the procedures as harmful than were parents or child victims. Al-
though intriguing, these findings are difficult to assess for a variety of rea-
sons, including the low return rate (40%), the likely unrepresentativeness
of the resulting sample, and the lack of statistical control over potentially
correlated variables (e.g., sex and type of charge, abuse severity and court-
room testimony). The impression that emerges, however, is that courtroom
testimony and numerous precourt interviews of children contribute to feel-
ings that the legal process is not helpful.
At the same time as Tedesco and Schnell’s study appeared, Oates and
Tong (1987) reported a retrospective study in which 229 child sexual abuse
cases in Australia were traced 2.6 years after the victims had been referred
to a hospital for evaluation. Although only 49 families agreed to participate
in the study, these were representative of the larger sample in terms of the
children’s age, gender, and relationship to the defendant and the families’
socioeconomic status. Forty-six of the parents completed a structured inter-
view. For these families, 21 of the cases went to court, 12 heard in children’s
and 9 in criminal court. Children were required to testify in only 6 of
the 21 court hearings, all of which involved criminal prosecutions. Using
a five-point scale (“not upset at all” to “extremely upset”), 18 of the 21
nonoffending parents indicated that their children had been very upset
immediately after the court hearings, and 12 reported that, even 2.6 years
later, their children were still upset about their court experience. In addi-
tion, compared to the others, children whose cases went to court were more
likely to be reported by their parents as having behavioral problems at
school. Although this interesting study suffers from many of the method-
ological problems mentioned above, it indicates that court involvement is
stressful for children.
The most impressive study to date was conducted in North Carolina by
Runyan, Everson, Edelsohn, Hunter, and Coulter (1988); although their
research mainly concerned children’s reactions to juvenile court experience,
it included a small sample of children who were also involved in criminal
court proceedings. The full group comprised 75 sexual abuse victims, aged
6-17 years, whose cases involved a family member or caretaker as the al-
leged perpetrator. The children’s well-being was assessed by, among other
measures, a psychiatric interview conducted early in the social service and
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MONOGRAPHS
legal intervention process and repeated 5 months later. By the second inter-
view, 12 children had testified in juvenile court; these twelve proved to have
had higher initial distress scores than the 63 children who had not testified.
When initial differences in relationship to the perpetrator, vaginal penetra-
tion, verbal IQ, percentage of life having been abused, and provision of
therapy were statistically controlled, children who testified in juvenile court
exhibited significant improvement in their anxiety scores compared with
the others.
Of primary interest for our own research were the 22 children for
whom criminal proceedings were pending. Across the 5-month period, they
were only 8% as likely to evince improvement (i.e., to show a 1 standard
deviation or more decrease in their depression score) on the depression
subscale as the 33 children not involved in the court process. Thus, over
the course of the 5 months, children not involved in criminal proceedings
showed significantly greater improvement, leading Runyan et al. to con-
clude that waiting for criminal prosecution has a negative effect on children
whereas testifying in juvenile court has a beneficial effect.
Although this study improves in many ways on former research, it too
has its limitations. Of primary concern is that the children who testified in
juvenile court were more disturbed at the initial interview than those who
did not testify; at the 5-month follow-up, the two groups actually looked
very similar. Thus, the “improvement” of the children who had testified in
juvenile court may simply represent either unaided recovery or regression
to the mean, and it may in fact say little about any beneficial effects of
testifying.
A second concern is that the comparison between children who testified
in juvenile court and those who were awaiting criminal proceedings is con-
founded by the fact that proceedings were completed for the former but
still in progress for the latter. It is possible that closure would lead to im-
provement whatever the type of case. Finally, because only five children in
the entire study testified in criminal court, the effect of criminal court testi-
mony could not be ascertained.
Despite these problems, Runyan et al.’s study shows that testifying in
juvenile court did not cause the children additional harm: the children’s
scores tended to improve over time regardless of court experience. If this
finding were to be replicated for testimony in criminal court, it would argue
against the notion that legal involvement traumatizes children.
In summary, the few existing studies generally indicate that criminal
court involvement is stressful for children, especially if in-court testimony
and repeated interviewing are required. Although such involvement may
not lead to disturbance greater than what is evinced at entry into the legal
system, it may keep children from improving at the same rate as they would
if they were not involved in criminal court. However, owing to a variety of
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GOODMAN ET AL.
methodological problems, it is difficult to take these conclusions as firmly
established.
Nevertheless, there are a number of reasons to suspect that these gen-
eral conclusions would be supported by more ideal studies. Legal involve-
ment can be stressful even for adult victims of sex crimes (Brownmiller,
1975; Katz & Mazur, 1979); however, adults’ more complete emotional de-
velopment may help bolster them compared to children against short- and
long-term adverse effects of stressful events (Maccoby, 1983). Moreover,
the potential for legal-system-induced stress in children is exacerbated by a
number of factors.
First, in contrast to adult victims, children, especially in intrafamilial
cases, are likely to be interviewed before a court appearance by social service
workers as well as police and attorneys; additional precourt interviews may
be required if children’s disclosures are not readily forthcoming or because
they simply tend to report less information than adults (e.g., Goodman &
Reed, 1986; Leippe, Romanczyk, & Manion, 1991; Marin, Holmes, Guth,
& Kovac, 1979). Then, young children may have to make more court ap-
pearances than adults as, for example, when a competence examination is
required. Thus, child victims are likely to endure an even greater number
of interviews than adult victims. Second, it is not uncommon for children
to be subjected to months, if not years, of uncertainty about whether their
courtroom testimony will be needed. Young children’s inability to gauge
passage of time as accurately as older children or adults may add to their
sense of unpredictability about legal involvement (e.g., Friedman, 1982).
As often occurs in other stressful situations, lack of predictability might
exacerbate distress (e.g., Ross & Ross, 1988). Third, compared to adults,
children have a poor understanding of the legal system (Cashmore & Bus-
sey, 1990; Melton, 1989; Pierre-Puysegur, 1985; Saywitz, 1989; Warren-
Leubecker, Tate, Hinton, & Ozbek, 1989). They might not understand why
they have to go to court, what will happen there, whether they are to blame,
and why their testimony might be challenged. Fourth, the child’s relation-
ship to the defendant is also likely to add to the stress. Strangers are rela-
tively infrequently implicated as perpetrators of child sex crimes; children
are much more likely to accuse an adult known to them, such as a relative,
the mother’s boyfriend, a teacher, or a neighbor (Finkelhor, 1984). In many
such cases, the child’s emotional tie to the accused increases the stress and
guilt that accompany testifying. Although perpetrators in adult rape cases
are also often known to the victim, the feeling of dependence on, and
intimidation by, the perpetrator may be even greater for many child than
adult victims. Finally, regardless of age, courtroom testimony is likely to
force the victim to relive the assault and to do so in public. Given the aura
of both intimacy and taboo that surrounds most sexual activity, having to
describe such acts publicly is likely to be embarrassing and humiliating. For
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MONOGRAPHS
all these reasons, child victims may find courtroom testimony traumatizing
as well as retraumatizing.
Alternatively, there are some reasons to believe that testifying may be
cathartic or empowering for children. Victimization is likely to weaken a
child’s sense of control, and testimony potentially places her in a more
powerful role, where she can influence the outcome of a case (Berliner &
Barbieri, 1984). Moreover, being called to testify represents public acknowl-
edgment that the child’s claim is taken seriously. And, especially if her
testimony leads to a guilty verdict, the child may feel that her statements
mattered and that justice was done. If not permitted to testify, the child
might feel disenfranchised. It is also possible that, compared to adults, chil-
dren may be treated with greater consideration by defense attorneys, who
might fear that jurors will sympathize with the child victim if she is harshly
questioned and who might themselves be truly concerned with the child’s
well-being. Judges, too, may go out of their way to protect child victims.
Systematic research can help resolve debates about beneficial versus
harmful effects of testifying on children. It would seem likely that who is
helped and who harmed depends on specifiable conditions revolving
around child-, family-, and legal-system factors.
COPING WITH STRESSFUL EVENTS: INFLUENCES OF THE CHILD,
FAMILY, AND LEGAL SYSTEMS
Although relatively little is known from scientific study about the emo-
tional effects on children of criminal court testimony, studies of children’s
reactions to other stressful events may provide important insights. Develop-
mental studies of risk factors for psychological disturbance have examined
children’s reactions to such stressors as parental discord, maternal depriva-
tion, divorce, war, hospitalization, and death of a loved one (for a review,
see Rutter, 1983). From these studies, “vulnerability” factors, which increase
the effect of stressors, and “protective” factors, which reduce the effect of
stressors, have been identified. To the extent that vulnerability and protec-
tive factors transcend a specific stressful situation, the factors identified in
previous research may also be relevant to child sexual abuse victims’ experi-
ences within the legal system. For present purposes, protective and vulnera-
bility factors can be considered within the context of the system of the child,
the family, and the law; factors within each system would be expected to
influence children’s emotional responses to testifying in court.
The child system.-Children’s reactions to stressful events differ. The
reasons for these differences are only partially understood. However, it is
clear that age is one important consideration. The relation between age and
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GOODMAN ET AL.
emotional distress seems to vary with different stressors. In response to
certain stressors (e.g., death of a loved one), younger children have more
limited adverse short-term responses (Bowlby, 1980); however, it is possible
that adverse long-term reactions may be even greater for younger than for
older children (Rutter, 1983). In response to other stressors (e.g., hospital-
ization), the adverse short- and long-term effects are stronger for younger
than older children, especially if the stressor affects a developing socioemo-
tional system (e.g., parental attachment) and the child’s ability to understand
the event is limited (Ferguson, 1979; Rutter, 1983). However, for yet other
stressful events, it is the form more than the extent of the reaction that
is most notable developmentally. In summarizing research on children’s
reactions to divorce, Rutter (1983) concludes that the form of a child’s
response (e.g., the specific aspects of the family disruption to which the
child responds) is influenced by age but that overall vulnerability is not
markedly increased or decreased in any specific age period. Alternatively,
Hetherington et al. (1992) report that adverse reactions to divorce and
remarriage show less attenuation when adolescents, compared to younger
children, are studied.
No previous studies have examined reactions to criminal court involve-
ment as a function of age or developmental level. Studies of children’s
reactions to other stressful events, as described above, indicate several possi-
ble developmental relations. Young children might not realize the signifi-
cance of legal proceedings, whereas older children might appreciate the
importance of their performance, the social implications of public admission
of sexual behavior, and the consequences of a guilty or not guilty verdict.
This appreciation may add to children’s distress. Therefore, younger chil-
dren may be less adversely affected than children who are older and more
aware. Alternatively, younger children may be more easily intimidated and
confused by the proceedings given their lack of understanding of the legal
system (Cashmore & Bussey, 1990; Pierre-Puysegur, 1985; Saywitz, 1989;
Warren-Leubecker et al., 1989) and their general cognitive and emotional
immaturity. Older children would be more likely to know what to expect.
If so, younger children might be more adversely affected than older chil-
dren. To investigate these possible relations, it was of interest to include age
as a factor in our study.
However, even within an age group, how a child reacts to a stressful
event can differ depending on other factors associated with the system of
the child, such as the attributions the child makes (e.g., self-blame for the
abuse, that the legal system is basically fair), coping mechanisms available
to the child (e.g., not looking at the defendant when testifying), the general
emotional well-being of the child (e.g., pretestimony level of adjustment,
emotional aftermath of the assault), and the child’s self-esteem (e.g., that
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MONOGRAPHS
the child basically thinks of himself as a worthwhile person) (Rutter, 1983).
In summary, the personal characteristics that a child brings to the court-
room may increase or decrease the likelihood of a maladaptive outcome.
The family system.-In addition to factors associated with the child, fac-
tors associated with the child’s family system may also play a crucial role.
Many stressors, such as sexual abuse and subsequent legal involvement,
occur in the context of other, more chronic family problems. Moreover,
they can result in family-system changes (e.g., the parents’ divorce) that go
beyond the original source of distress. In general, persistent disturbance as
a result of childhood stressors is more likely if the child comes from a
deprived or disturbed family and if the parent-child relationship was poor
to start with (Douglas, 1975; Rutter, 1983).
With regard to child sexual abuse specifically, one would suspect that
intrafamilial as opposed to extrafamilial child sexual abuse is particularly
likely to occur when the family system is characterized by instability and
discord and, vice versa, that such abuse would be especially likely to cause
increased family turmoil. Thus, children in intrafamilial (e.g., incest) cases
might be particularly vulnerable to retraumatization by legal involvement.
In addition, the closer the relation of the perpetrator to the child (e.g., the
perpetrator is a father or stepfather), the more distressed the child might
be by legal involvement (e.g., due to guilt, family pressure not to disclose).
Thus, testifying against a loved one might well be associated with greater
strain for children.
The literature on children’s reactions to stressful events suggests that, in
general, parental support and parental rejection are, respectively, protective
(Elder, 1979; Rutter, 1971) and vulnerability (Rohner & Rohner, 1980)
factors. Although supportive relationships with persons other than the par-
ents can also serve a protective function (Garmezy, 1983), many children
can be expected to look primarily to their parents for emotional support.
Consistent with such findings, studies of the emotional effects of sexual
abuse on children indicate that maternal support is a particularly important
protective factor (e.g., Conte & Berliner, 1988; Conte & Schuerman, 1987).
However, level of maternal support provided to children in intrafamilial
sexual abuse cases is related to the mother’s relationship to the offender:
Everson, Hunter, Runyon, Edelsohn, and Coulter (1989) found that moth-
ers were more supportive of their children if the offender was an ex-spouse
than if the offender was someone with whom the mother still maintained a
relationship. In any case, to the extent that maternal support is a protective
factor across many stressful situations, it may be an important family-system
factor for children who testify in sexual abuse cases.
The legal system.-Research on children’s reactions to stressful situations
points to certain experiences within the legal system itself as likely to be
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GOODMAN ET AL.
associated with adverse or beneficial reactions. For example, prolonged ex-
posure to a stressor can be detrimental to children’s well-being (Garmezy &
Rutter, 1983). There is already reason to believe that this relation holds in
regard to children’s reactions to legal involvement: as described earlier,
Runyan et al. (1988) found that more prolonged exposure to the criminal
justice system was associated with less improvement in children.
Also of interest, repeated exposure to a stressor can have detrimental
effects. In studying children’s reactions to hospitalization, researchers find
that one hospital admission is not associated with later psychiatric disorder
but that having two admissions is associated with a marked increase in risk
of subsequent disturbance (Douglas, 1975; Quinton & Rutter, 1976). This
effect still holds after family adversity is taken into account. According to
Rutter (1983), although the first admission does not lead to disorder, it
may predispose the child to react badly the second time. Even one hospital
admission has adverse short-term effects, however. Similarly, it is possible
that, while stressful for many children, one experience testifying is not in
itself detrimental in the long term but that two or more experiences testi-
fying are. As Rutter (1983) concludes, “It could be that single fear-
provoking events are of very limited consequence but that many experi-
enced over a short period of time are more likely to be damaging” (p. 15).
In stressful situations, part of children’s distress may result from sepa-
ration from supportive adults while at the same time being exposed to a
strange, frightening environment. For example, studies of children’s reac-
tions to hospitalization indicate that the stress of hospital visits is reduced by
the presence of a familiar figure such as a parent or a consistently present,
supportive nurse (Rutter, 1983). It follows that the presence of a parent or
other support figure in the courtroom may be a protective factor for chil-
dren. However, to maintain perceptions of fairness, the legal system often
demands that witnesses testify outside the presence of other witnesses. In
child sexual abuse cases, parents may also be asked to testify, which typically
precludes their presence in the courtroom while the child takes the stand,
especially at trial. Because of children’s needs for a support person, victim
advocates are increasingly assigned to accompany children into the court-
room. However, the benefits of parents or victim advocates as providers of
social support for children who testify in court have not been evaluated.
The legal system also typically demands that children, like other wit-
nesses, testify face to face with the defendant, as specified in the Sixth
Amendment. Several recent reforms (e.g., use of closed-circuit television or
videotaped testimony) revolve around eliminating or modifying the need
for children to face the defendant in court, under the assumption that
face-to-face confrontation is stressful for child witnesses and inhibits their
ability to testify accurately and completely. If this assumption is valid, it
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MONOGRAPHS
would thus be expected that children who are particularly afraid of the
defendant would be at greater risk of adverse effects of testifying than
children who are less fearful of the defendant.
Summary.-In conclusion, insights into children’s reactions to court-
room testimony may be gained from consideration of their reactions to
other stressful events. The system of the child, the family, and the law may
all contribute to the child’s reaction.
CHILDREN’S COURTROOM PERFORMANCE
Although laboratory research on the accuracy and completeness of chil-
dren’s testimony is being actively pursued (see, e.g., Dent & Flin, 1992;
and Goodman & Bottoms, in press), researchers have not yet systematically
documented children’s actual performance as witnesses in criminal court.
Similarly, although laboratory studies of mock jurors’ perceptions of child
witnesses are being conducted, researchers have generally failed to examine
the credibility of children who actually testify in court (but see Bottoms &
Goodman, 1989).
In laboratory studies, researchers typically find that young children
have greater difficulty recalling events and answering questions about their
experiences than older children or adults (e.g., Cohen & Harnick, 1980;
Goodman, Aman, & Hirschman, 1987; Goodman & Reed, 1986; Leippe et
al., 1991; Marin et al., 1979; Nelson, 1986; for reviews, see Kail, 1989; and
Spencer & Flin, 1990). Such studies also indicate that testifying face to face
in front of a defendant can be intimidating, especially to young children,
and result in more limited testimony (e.g., Bussey, Lee, & Ross, 1991; Dent,
1977; Hill & Hill, 1987). Nevertheless, mock jury studies show that young
children are viewed as more credible victim/witnesses in sexual assault cases
than are older children and adults (Duggan et al., 1989; Goodman, Bottoms,
Herscovici, & Shaver, 1989). In addition, surveys of prosecutors indicate
that children are viewed as particularly credible witnesses if they show emo-
tion, for example, if they cry while on the stand (Limber & Etheredge,
1989). It is still unknown, however, whether actual child witnesses and ju-
rors exhibit these tendencies.
GOALS AND HYPOTHESES OF THE PRESENT STUDY
Evaluation of the opposing possibilities that testimony may be either
traumatic or cathartic in part motivated the present study, as did the search
for vulnerability and protective factors. A central goal was to determine if
variability in the child and family systems, and in the children’s specific
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GOODMAN ET AL.
experiences within the legal system, would lead to subgroups of children
who would be benefited, harmed, or relatively unscathed by testifying.
Although our main focus was on the emotional effects of testifying,
we also undertook the task of describing the children’s performance and
experiences while they testified. Because we were permitted to observe the
children testifying in court, we could examine the generalizability of labora-
tory findings to actual cases; we could also examine the attorneys’ and
judges’ behavior to determine whether the children received harsh treat-
ment or, conversely, protection.
In the process of pursuing these questions, we examined a number of
additional issues, such as children’s attitudes about going to court (e.g., their
specific fears about testifying), use of innovative courtroom techniques to
protect children (e.g., testimony via closed-circuit television), and children’s
and parents’ reactions to legal involvement (e.g., their perceptions of the
legal system’s fairness) once the final disposition of a case was reached.
Given the relatively unique opportunity to conduct a large-scale study of
child victims’ reactions to legal involvement, another goal was to obtain the
most complete picture possible.
On the basis of previous research concerning the effects of courtroom
testimony and stressful events on children as well as of developmental stud-
ies of children’s memory and testimony, we formulated a set of hypotheses.
These hypotheses and their rationales are presented below.
Our overarching framework emphasizes the interaction of the legal
system with the system of the child, along with his or her family. According
to this view, a child’s experiences in court are partly determined by a unique
set of characteristics and resources associated with the child and the child’s
family and also by how the court responds to those characteristics and re-
sources. Thus, while testifying may be stressful in the short term for many
child (as well as adult) witnesses, one might expect that certain subgroups
of children would be more at risk of adverse long-term effects of court
involvement, depending on how the system treats the child. According to
this view, the legal system may have positive or negative emotional effects
on children depending on how this interaction is negotiated. It was thus
predicted that, on average, children who testify in court proceedings will
show greater short-term psychological disturbance than those who do not
but that the degree to which the disturbance persists will be a function of
interactions among factors associated with the legal system, the family sys-
tem, and the child system.
The literature reviewed above pointed to several particularly important
factors within each system. For the system of the child, the child’s age was
expected to bear an important influence on his reaction. To the extent that
a limited understanding of a stressful or unfamiliar event contributes to
adverse emotional effects, younger children’s adjustment was predicted to
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MONOGRAPHS
be more negatively affected than older children’s. However, to the extent
that a better understanding of a stressful event permits a child to worry
more about the event and to understand the implications of the event’s
outcome, older children would be predicted to show greater disturbance
than younger children.
The severity of the abuse that the child experienced and the child’s
fearfulness of the defendant were also predicted to be child-system factors
influencing a child’s reaction. Testifying in court face to face with the defen-
dant might force the child to reexperience the original trauma, a reliving
that would likely be more traumatic if the abuse was severe. Also, fear of the
defendant was expected to add to the stress that children might experience
anyway by being placed in an austere, foreign environment and publicly
questioned about sexual activities.
Within the system of the family, maternal support was expected to be
a particularly important protective factor, as it is for children’s reactions to
sexual abuse generally (e.g., Conte & Schuerman, 1987). Testifying against
a parent (e.g., a father or stepfather) was predicted to exacerbate the child’s
distress; this prediction was based on the notion that testifying against a
parent is particularly likely to lead to feelings of conflict and guilt in the
child and to be more disruptive of the family system.
Several hypotheses were generated concerning factors involved within
the legal system. Specifically, we predicted that children who testify repeat-
edly, or who experience a greater number of delays and postponements of
court hearings, will evince relatively greater disturbance than those who do
not. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that prolonged involvement
in the criminal justice system and repeated exposure to stressful events are
harmful for children (Runyan et al., 1988; Rutter, 1983). Postponements
require children to prepare for court without then testifying, which pro-
longs their involvement and could sensitize them, thereby increasing their
anxiety. Testifying many times also prolongs children’s involvement and
places them in stressful situations repeatedly.
In addition, past research on the accuracy of children’s eyewitness testi-
mony led to a set of predictions. Again, these predictions can be considered
within the context of the child, family, and legal systems. Specifically, re-
garding the system of the child, it was predicted that children’s ability to
testify in court (e.g., to answer questions in detail) would increase with age
whereas their perceived credibility would decrease with age, predictions
based on findings from relevant laboratory studies (e.g., Goodman & Reed,
1986; Goodman et al., 1989; Leippe et al., 1991). It was also predicted that
having to testify about a more severe assault would produce a more emo-
tional reaction, with the result that the quality of the child’s testimony (e.g.,
amount of detail provided) might be adversely affected; nevertheless, chil-
dren who express distress on the stand (e.g., crying) were expected to be
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GOODMAN ET AL.
viewed as more credible witnesses (Limber & Etheredge, 1989). Again on
the basis of laboratory studies (e.g., Bussey et al., 1991; Dent, 1977), it was
predicted that fear of the defendant would impair the amount of detail that
children could provide.
Regarding the system of the family, we expected that, owing to feelings
of guilt or conflict, children would provide less detail and be more negative
about testifying when taking the stand against a parent or stepparent than
against an acquaintance or a stranger. Finally, regarding the legal system,
it was predicted that, compared to children questioned under standard ad-
versarial conditions, children provided with a more supportive environment
(e.g., permitted to take a toy to the stand, permitted to have a parent or
victim advocate remain in the courtroom) would evince less fearfulness and
provide greater detail about what occurred.
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II. DESIGN AND STUDY POPULATION
OVERVIEW
Over 2 years were spent following a group of 218 children through
criminal court and collecting data about their experiences. Since our main
concern was to determine the emotional effects of testifying on child sexual
assault victims, we concentrated most of our attention on the subgroup who
took the stand (“testifiers”) and a matched subgroup who did not (“con-
trols”). The overall design of the study is presented in Table 1.
In brief, measures of the children’s well-being were obtained as soon
as possible once the case was referred for prosecution. (The measures are
described in detail in the subsequent chapter on measures.) This assessment
consisted of the children’s primary caretakers completing the Child Behav-
ior Checklist (CBCL) and the children’s teachers completing the Teacher
Report Form (TRF), both of which provide T scores for the children’s total
behavior problems, internalizing problems, and externalizing problems.
This assessment permitted us to determine children’s level of adjustment
before extensive legal involvement and courtroom testimony had occurred.
We also began to document the case through an adaptation of the Sexual
Assault Profile (SAP), on which we rated the severity of the abuse, the child’s
relation to the defendant, etc. When the children were later subpoenaed,
we met them at the courthouse to obtain additional measures of their well-
being and to interview them about their upcoming court appearance; we
then waited with them to see whether they would be called to the stand.
Children who did testify were observed as they underwent direct and cross-
examination (noting their responses and the nature of the questioning) and
then reinterviewed immediately after they were excused from the court-
room. To test our hypotheses about the effects of courtroom testimony,
measures of the control and testifying children’s well-being were obtained
3 and 7 months after the latter group first testified and again after the case
was closed. We could thus determine at each follow-up whether the children
who testified showed greater emotional disturbance than their matched con-
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GOODMAN ET AL.
TABLE 1
EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AND MEASURES USED IN THE STUDY
Intake (N = 218; home visit, after subpoena issued):
Informed consent (parent and child)
Sexual Assault Profile (SAP; DA’s files, primary caretaker and child report)
Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; primary caretaker report)
Social Adjustment Scale (SAS; primary caretaker self-report)
Precourt (N = 110; court offices; unknown whether child will testify):
Spielberger State Anxiety Scale
Before-Court Measure (child’s feelings about having to testify in court)
Abbreviated form of the CBCL (by parent; child distress in last 48 hours)
Court-testifiers only (N = 40 at preliminary hearings; N = 8 at competence
examinations; and N = 17 at trial):
Court observations (ratings of child and of court members)
Postcourt-testifiers only (N = 38):
After-Court Measure (court offices, child’s feelings about the experience)
Follow-up, 3 months (N: testifiers = 46; controls = 46; matched pairs = 46):
Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist
Follow-up, 7 months (N: testifiers = 37; controls = 37; matched pairs = 37):
Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist
Follow-up, final (N: testifiers = 28; controls = 28; matched pairs = 28):
Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist
Case progress (facts concerning progress through the legal system; obtained also
from additional nontestifier group, N = 218)
Legal Involvement Questionnaire (parent’s and child’s reactions to experiences in
the legal system; obtained also from additional nontestifier group, N = 73
children and 103 caretakers; of these, N = 57 children and 85 caretakers
for closed cases)
NOTE.-The total sample (N = 218) comprises testifiers, matched controls, and additional nontestifiers.
trols. Finally, we surveyed the families to obtain the children’s and parents’
attitudes toward the legal system.
VICTIMS, DEFENDANTS, AND CASE CHARACTERISTICS
Intake Procedures
Between September 1985 and December 1987, we worked with three
district attorneys’ (DAs’) offices in the Denver area to obtain our sample.
DAs’ offices were used as the referral source for several reasons. First,
cases referred for prosecution are likely to contain a higher percentage of
certifiable crimes than are cases reported to the police or social services;
this, in effect, provided us with an initial screening for possible false reports.
Second, parents wisely wanted to be assured that our study would not inter-
fere with prosecution of the case. By working through the DAs’ offices and
making certain that the DAs approved of our measures and procedures,
such assurance could be provided.
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MONOGRAPHS
There were a number of other advantages as well. Access to the prose-
cutors’ files allowed us to obtain information about a case without extensive
questioning of the victim and family about the assault. The DAs’ coopera-
tion was also beneficial in convincing judges to let us remain in the court-
room even when it was closed to others. As concerns the ethics of soliciting
participants for the study, we could not call families directly because their
names were not a matter of public information. Instead, as they would
normally do, victim advocates (VAs) in the DAs’ offices called the family to
inform them of the expected course of legal events when a child sexual
assault case was filed for prosecution. At that time, the VAs also mentioned
our study and asked if the family wanted to be contacted for further infor-
mation; if the family granted permission, we contacted them, explained the
study, and scheduled an appointment. If the family did not have a phone,
they were contacted through the mail by the VAs and then by us.
Total Sample
Victims.-During the period when we solicited participants, 359 cases
were referred for prosecution. Owing mainly to refusals or inability to main-
tain contact with a family (e.g., the family moved) but also to unexpected
complications (e.g., one child whose case was filed in the wrong jurisdiction),
the final sample consisted of 218 children; characteristics of the sample are
presented in Table 2. As can be seen in that table, the children ranged
widely in age. When the abuse was first reported to authorities, over 55%
were under 10 years of age, and 18% were 5 years old or younger; as far
as could be ascertained, for some of the children the assault began when
they were as young as 2 years. The majority of victims were girls and Anglo.
Although the socioeconomic (SES) level of the families (assessed through a
revision of the Hollingshead scale; Watt, 1976) varied across the entire
seven-point range, middle to lower socioeconomic status was typical (M =
4.94; SD = 1.57).
Defendants.-Because our study involved criminal and not juvenile
court, the defendants’ ages did not drop below 18 years. Nearly all were
male; two of the six female defendants were charged with committing crimi-
nal acts in conjunction with males. Many at least initially denied the charges,
although a substantial minority admitted that some part of the acts oc-
curred. Note that an admission is not the same as a confession-it may be
a minimalization of the abuse in light of the child’s report or the medical
evidence, or it may consist of acknowledging that certain acts occurred but
justifying them in the context of nonabusive activities (e.g., washing the
child’s genitals).
Nearly all the defendants were known to the children. The largest
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GOODMAN ET AL.
categories of offenders were natural fathers (15%), stepfathers (9%), live-in
boyfriends (11%), family friends (14%), acquaintances (13%), and neighbors
(10%). Forty percent of the defendants were living in the same home with
the child when the assault allegedly occurred.
Case characteristics.-Most of the cases involved rape or other forms of
genital contact. The abuse lasted anywhere from 1 day to over 5 years, with
75% of the assaults lasting 6 months or less. Only 16% of the children
incurred injury as a result of the abuse. Physical force was not always in-
volved, although some of the children had been threatened with guns or
knives, and verbal threats were common (e.g., ranging from “You’ll get in
trouble” or “I’ll kill you and your mother if you tell”). Corroborating evi-
dence (e.g., medical evidence, an eyewitness) was available in 34% of the
cases.
Most of the children disclosed the abuse relatively quickly (e.g., within
2 weeks), although it took over 6 months for 15% of the children to disclose.
The persons to whom the children disclosed the abuse behaved similarly in
informing authorities of the abuse; most did so within 2 weeks, but it took
16% over 6 months to do so.
The legal process.-Once the abuse was disclosed to authorities, a police
or social service report was taken. Concurrent “dependency and neglect”
cases were almost always initiated when intrafamilial abuse was involved and
sometimes also if it was not (e.g., cases involving a mother’s boyfriend).
Within the three jurisdictions that we studied, children rarely testified in
dependency and neglect cases (we know of only two instances in our
sample).
Once the police or social service report was available, the case was re-
ferred to the relevant prosecutor’s office. It was at this point that we defined
the legal process, by which we mean the prosecution, as beginning. For the
169 cases that reached final disposition (i.e., “closed”) during the course of
the study, it is possible to provide a sense of the time course of the legal
events.
For these cases, the legal process lasted between 2 and 27 months
(M = 10.50). The time lapse between disclosure of abuse to authorities
and holding the first preliminary hearing averaged 4.65 months (range,
0.75-22.75); in 110 of these 169 cases, preliminary hearings were waived.
In 51 cases the defendant was bound over for trial, and in 8 cases the
charges were dismissed at this point either by the courts or by the DA. The
average time lapse between the preliminary hearing and the trial was 4.40
months (range, <1-16.75) and that between the plea bargain or trial and sentencing was 2.0 months. Some defendants were sentenced immediately, but others were not sentenced until over 9 months had passed. During the course of the children's involvement in the prosecution, 19 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TABLE 2 CHARACTERISTICS OF VICTIMS, DEFENDANTS, AND CASES A. VICTIMS (168 Girls, 50 Boys, Total N = 218) AGE IN YEARS AT: Report to Start of End of Intake Authorities Abuse Abuse Total: Mean ..... 10.05 9.30 8.60 9.00 (Range) .... (4-17) (3-17) (2-16) (3-16) Testifiers: Mean ..... 10.22 9.55 8.66 9.29 (Range) .... (4-16) (3-16) (3-15) (3-15) Controls: Mean ..... 10.48 9.73 9.03 9.45 (Range) .... (4-16) (3-17) (2-16) (3-16) ETHNICITY (%) Anglo Black Hispanic Other Total ....... 70 11 17 1 Testifiers .... 75 9 13 2 Controls..... 80 13 5 1 B. DEFENDANTS (172 Males, 6 Females, Total N = 178) ETHNICITY (%) Anglo Black Hispanic Other Don't Know Total ....... 57 16 25 1 2 Testifiers .... 49 13 31 2 5 Controls ..... 69 16 13 2 0 AGE IN YEARS Mean Range Total ....... 35.49 18-78 Testifiers .... 34.42 19-62 Controls ..... 34.76 18-78 INITIAL STANCE (%) Denial Admission Unknown Total ....... 42 25 33 Testifiers .... 64 2 33 Controls ..... 32 32 35 C. CASE CHARACTERISTICS (N = 218) RELATIONSHIP TO VICTIM (%) Acquaintance/ Caregiver/ No Position Position Parent/ Stranger of Trust of Trust Stepparent Total ....... 6 27 43 23 Testifers..... 6 36 42 16 Controls..... 7 23 45 25 20 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TABLE 2 (Continued) SEVERITY OF ABUSE Mean SD Range Total ....... 7.88 1.72 4-13 DURATION OF ABUSE (%) 2 Days- > 6 Months-
1 Day 6 Months 5 Years > 5 Years
Total ……. 44 31 22 3
Testifiers …. 51 31 13 6
Controls….. 36 32 31 1
TYPE OF ABUSE (%)
Genital
Nongenital Fondling Vaginal or
Exhibitionism Fondling or Oral Sex Anal Penetration
Total ……. 1 9 48 42
Testifiers …. 0 11 47 42
Controls ….. 3 7 51 40
FREQUENCY OF ABUSE (%)
Limited
1 Time (2-3 times) Extended Unknown
Total ……. 42 21 33 4
Testifiers …. 51 22 24 4
Control ….. 33 27 33 7
CHILD INJURED (%)
No Mildly Moderately Severely
Total ……. 84 13 3 0
Testifiers …. 75 20 6 0
Control ….. 93 4 3 0
FORCE INVOLVED (%)
No Mild Moderate Severe
Total ……. 62 23 16 3
Testifiers …. 60 26 11 4
Control ….. 61 24 13 1
LAST ASSAULT TO DISCLOSURE (%)
> 48 Hours- > 2 Weeks- > 1 Month-
– 48 Hours 2 Weeks 1 Month 6 Months > 6 Months Unknown
Total ……. 42 17 5 14 15 8
Testifiers …. 53 16 6 13 9 4
Control ….. 37 21 5 13 15 8
DISCLOSURE TO REPORT (%)
> 48 Hours- > 2 Weeks- > 1 Month-
– 48 Hours 2 Weeks 1 Month 6 Months > 6 Months Unknown
Total ……. 35 23 7 16 16 3
Testifiers …. 49 20 7 13 9 2
Control ….. 35 25 5 15 16 4
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MONOGRAPHS
cases were continued by the courts an average of 1.85 times. There were
no continuances in some cases, but in others there were as many as 10. The
children received an average of 2 subpoenas (range, 0-9).
Case outcomes.-These were of considerable interest, not only for their
implications for the children’s adjustment, but also because they bear on
defendants’ fates. In only one case did the defendant plead guilty as
charged. It was much more common for a plea bargain to be arranged; this
occurred in 126 of the 169 closed cases. Perhaps reflecting DAs’ typical
stance of prosecuting only strong cases, the courts dismissed only four cases
on the basis that no probable cause was found. In two instances, the cases
were dismissed on a technicality (i.e., pleading errors). Charges were dis-
missed by the DA in ten cases; in three of these, it was felt that the allega-
tions against the defendant were false (e.g., the complaining child had sev-
eral venereal diseases, but the defendant was uninfected, and it was feared
that the mother, who was considered an unreliable source, had coached the
children). In several of the other cases dismissed by the DA, charges were
dropped, but the defendant was prosecuted for similar crimes in stronger
cases. We knew of four cases in which the child witness refused to testify
and of one in which the child was “unavailable” (e.g., considered too trauma-
tized or mentally unstable to endure testifying).
In 21 cases that went to trial, the defendant was found guilty in 11
instances and acquitted in eight; there were one mistrial and one hung jury.
We were able to obtain data on the defendant’s sentence in 133 (out of
138) cases in which a conviction or plea bargain was the final disposition.
The defendant received a deferred judgment and deferred sentence in 18
cases and probation without incarceration in 37. The defendant was sen-
tenced to county jail in 24 cases and to prison in 54 cases-in 16 of these
instances for more than 8 years.
The harshest judgment was against a defendant who had a long history
of sexual and other offenses starting when he was 8 years old. In prison as
an adult, he was befriended by a woman who had two daughters. Once out
of prison, he started dating the woman and, while dating her, allegedly
assaulted the daughters. He was convicted of the child sexual assault charges
but, while in jail awaiting sentencing, shot and killed a guard in a foiled
escape attempt. By the end of the study, this defendant was sentenced in
the child sexual assault case combined with habitual criminal charges to life
imprisonment, which in Colorado mandates at least a 40-year term. In the
murder case, he was facing the death penalty.
Representativeness of the Sample
The generalizability of our findings rests in part on the representative-
ness of the subject sample. In total, 61% of the 359 possible families (i.e.,
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GOODMAN ET AL.
who had been referred to the DAs’ offices over the 2-year period) partici-
pated; given the sensitive nature of child sexual assault cases, we were
pleased with this rate of agreement. Nevertheless, the question of whether
these cases are representative of the population of child sexual abuse cases
referred for prosecution in Denver, Arapahoe, and Adams counties re-
mains. In an attempt to answer it, we collected some data on the families
who refused to participate as well as on those we were unable to contact.
(The latter occurred mainly when the family’s whereabouts were unknown
even to the DA’s office; thus, prosecution was stymied because the victim
could not be found. In three cases, the DAs’ offices asked us not to contact
the family for fear that this mightjeopardize their already tenuous coopera-
tion with the prosecutors.)
Information about the nonincluded cases came from the prosecutors’
files and consisted of brief descriptions of the victim, the defendant, the
assault, and the charges.
Characteristics of the cases that were and were not included were com-
pared by chi square statistics (see Table 3). Overall, the two groups were
comparable in terms of (a) age and race of the victim; (b) age, race, and sex
of the defendant; (c) whether the child was injured and, if so, the severity
of the injury; (d) the frequency of the abuse; (e) whether the official charge
was incest (parental plus other forms); (f) whether a second type of offense
was committed against the child (e.g., kidnapping, child physical abuse);
and (g) the type of sexual act (e.g., penetration vs. exhibitionism/nongenital
fondling).
Nevertheless, the cases included in the study differed from those that
were not in several interesting ways. There was a marginal trend for families
of older children to decline participation. Surprisingly, proportionally more
families of male than female victims agreed to participate; not surprisingly,
the relation between the child’s relationship to the defendant and the fam-
ily’s participation was inverse: when the defendant was the parent (virtually
always the father or stepfather), only 50% of the families agreed to partici-
pate, whereas 75% did so when the defendant was a stranger. Differences
also occurred as a function of the type of charge filed. If at least one of the
formal charges was first-, second-, or third-degree sexual assault, the family
was more likely to agree to participate than if that charge was not made. A
similar pattern held if one of the charges was sexual assault on a child.3
3 In Colorado at the time of this study, first- and second-degree sexual assault referred to
acts of rape, including penile or digital penetration, fellatio, analingus, etc. These charges
could be made with regard to offenses against adult or child victims. First-degree sexual
assault typically included more physical force, violence, or threat than did second-degree
sexual assault. Third-degree sexual assault, which could also be charged for offenses against
adults or children, concerned sexual contact other than rape (e.g., fondling). Second- and
third-degree sexual assault could include subjecting a child under 18 years of age to sexual
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MONOGRAPHS
We can only speculate as to the reasons for these differences. Given
the sensitivity of cases in which a parent is charged, it is not surprising
that proportionally more families declined participation in such instances.
Because charges of sexual assault are more likely to be made against non-
family members, the same effect may operate here. The child’s relation to
the defendant may also account for the greater participation of boys’ fami-
lies. In our sample, girls were more likely than boys to be victims of parental
incest; given that families were less likely to participate if the father was the
defendant, this trend would have excluded more girls than boys. It is also
possible that families are more protective of girl than boy victims. Alterna-
tively, if families of boy victims are less likely to report abuse to authorities
(Finkelhor, 1984), perhaps those who did so were particularly resilient or
unintimidated. In any case, the findings of our study should be considered
in light of these differences.
Testifiers and Control Samples
The testifiers and their matched controls represented subsets of the
total sample. (Note that the sum of testifiers and control children does not
equal 218 because some of the children in the total sample neither testified
nor served in the control group.) We describe first how these two groups
were established.
Matching.-By the end of the study, we obtained follow-up measures
on 55 of 60 children who had testified (the five lost from the study either
moved without leaving a forwarding address or did not have a suitable
parent or parent substitute to complete the CBCL). Because some desig-
nated control children were also lost from the study or became testifiers
themselves-and were replaced in either case-75 children served as
matched controls. As a result, the composition of the testifier and control
group varied as a function of when the follow-up tests were administered.
For example, if a child who served in the control group for the first phase
of testing was lost from the study before the second phase of testing, the
original control child was replaced by another child who had not testified.
Thus, the 75 control children and 55 testifiers were never directly compared
as groups in our analyses of the matched groups. Rather, at each of the
activity when the perpetrator was the victim’s guardian or was otherwise in a position of
responsibility for the general supervision of the child. Sexual assault on a child included
subjecting a child to any form of sexual contact when the victim was younger than 15
years of age and the perpetrator was at least four years older than the victim. Incest,
including aggravated incest, included sexual contact between relatives, such as a parent
and a natural child, a child by adoption, or a stepchild, or between a brother and sister,
uncle and nephew, etc.
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MONOGRAPHS
three follow-ups, different subgroups of these children were compared.
Thirteen testifier-control pairs remained the same across all three follow-up
assessments.
Each testifier was matched as well as possible with a control child on
the following variables: age, gender, initial CBCL total score, relation to the
defendant, severity of the abuse, and SES. When possible, the children in
each pair were also matched on ethnicity. Given the need to match simulta-
neously on seven variables, matching criteria could not always be fully met.
These criteria and number of exceptions were as follows. (a) The children’s
ages had to fall within 2 years, 6 months, of one another (there were three
exceptions, with all matches falling within a 3-year, 2-month, range). (b)
The testifiers’ and controls’ initial CBCL total raw score had to fall within 25
points of each other.4 Although the majority of matches actually fell within
15 points, there were seven exceptions to the 25-point criterion (the range
for the exceptions was 26-45 points). (c) The matched pair’s SES rankings
were to fall within 3 points of each other (there were four exceptions, with
a range for the exceptions of 4-5 points). (d) The child’s relationship to the
defendant, as assessed on the SAP relationship-to-defendant scale, was to fall
within two categories of her match (there was only one exception, which
differed by 3 points). (e) The matched children’s scores on the severity scale
were to be within 4 points (there were seven exceptions, with the exceptions
ranging from 5 to 6 points). All pairs were of the same gender; the same
ethnicity prevailed in 50 cases. We conducted analyses to ensure that the two
groups did not differ statistically on the matching variables; their outcome
is reported later in this chapter.
It is important to consider why the 75 control children did not take the
stand because the reasons might have affected their adjustment and resul-
tant scores on measures that are of central interest in this study. The defen-
dant pled guilty outright in only one of these cases. A plea bargain was
arranged in 46 cases; even in these instances, a preliminary hearing had
typically been scheduled and then waived or continued one or more times.
In many of these cases there appeared to be sufficient evidence (e.g., an
admission by the defendant, medical evidence, or a corroborating eyewit-
ness) that the child’s testimony was not needed at a preliminary hearing,
and the case was then resolved before trial; most of these pleas occurred
4 Raw scores rather than T scores were used at the time of matching for the sake of
expediency. Matching was not officially conducted on internalizing and externalizing T
scores; however, because these scores are known to correlate highly with total T scores,
they are also referred to as matching variables in the present study. How a 25-point
difference in raw score corresponds to a difference in total T score depends on the child’s
total number of behavior problems and age/gender group; for the majority (84%) of the
children in our study, the difference in total T score did not exceed 15 points.
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GOODMAN ET AL.
before our follow-up measures were administered. In three cases the defen-
dant was still at large. The charges were dismissed in six cases, one of these
after our first follow-up measures were taken. In 15 cases a preliminary
hearing and/or trial had been held, waived, or continued without the child
having to testify, but the case still remained open, and it was unclear
whether the child’s testimony would be needed in the future. An additional
three children originally used as controls later testified and were reclassified
as testifiers. Finally, we were unable to determine why one child failed to
testify, but the defendant had already been sentenced before our follow-up
measures were administered.
Thus, over half the children in the control sample knew by the time of
our follow-up assessments that they would not testify, whereas there was
still uncertainty for about one-third of them. To the extent that lack of
resolution about testifying might have influenced the latter third’s adjust-
ment and thus decreased the likelihood of a control-testifier difference in
CBCL scores, our main follow-up analyses are conservative.
Intake assessments were completed for all children as soon as possible
after the case was referred for prosecution and once the VAs were able to
contact the family; because we did not know who would testify and who
would not at the time, it was impossible to match dates for the matched
testifiers and controls. Also, the follow-up measures had to be administered
on the basis of the point at which testifiers took the stand. A clear event did
not mark the start of a comparable period for the control children; however,
at the time of the follow-up assessments, testifier and control children were
involved in the legal system for an equivalent amount of time (see below).
Fortunately, it was also possible to conduct all follow-up assessments of the
matched pairs within a circumscribed time period. The 3-month measures
were administered within an average of 4.0 days of each other (range, 0-
19), the 7-month measures within an average of 4.8 days (range, 0-17), and
the final measures within an average of 4.1 days (range, 0-13). At each
follow-up, 78% or more of the pairs were assessed within 1 week; across all
the follow-ups, the matched-tests assessments were conducted within 2
weeks for all but two pairs (98%).
Testifiers.- Summary information concerning the characteristics of the
55 children is presented in Table 2 above. The demographic characteristics
of the victims and defendants are very similar to those of the total sample.
The biggest difference lies in the defendant’s initial stance: whereas about
40% of the defendants in the entire sample denied the charges, 60% did so
in the cases in which the children testified. This difference is predictable
given that cases that go to trial are likely to be the most contested. There
was also a difference in delays. In the main sample, the proportion of cases
in which the child took over 6 months to disclose the abuse and in which it
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MONOGRAPHS
took over 6 months for the disclosure to be reported to authorities was
higher in the total sample than in the testifier group. Finally, the main
sample contained a somewhat higher percentage of parents and stepparents
as defendants than did the testifier group.
The 75 chosen for the control group were also very similar to the total
sample (see Table 2). The few differences were that (a) there were more
Anglo and fewer Hispanic children and defendants in this group; (b) the
total sample contained more cases in which the abuse lasted only 1 day and
fewer in which it occurred over a 6-month to 5-year period; and (c) children
in the control group were more likely to have suffered no injury and less
likely to have suffered a mild one than those in the total sample. Compari-
sons of the testifier and control groups’ characteristics (see Table 2) reveal
many of the same differences as those that prevail between the latter group
and the total sample.
Comparability of Testifier and Control Groups on
Intake Matching Variables
The logic of our study required that the testifier and control children
be successfully matched at intake on CBCL scores, age, severity of the abuse,
relationship to the defendant, and SES. If, for example, the children’s
CBCL scores were equivalent at intake but not after the testifiers took the
stand, inferences regarding the effects of testifying could reasonably be
made. Because the composition of the testifier-control pairs differed at each
follow-up, it was necessary to determine whether the testifier-control pairs
included in each follow-up were successfully matched.
Three-month follow-up.-The first follow-up was scheduled to occur
about 3 months after the child’s initial testimony (M = 3 months, 9 days;
range = 1 month, 28 days, to 5 months, 10 days) and was obtained on 46
pairs. In this subgroup of testifiers, first testimony was given by 76% at a
preliminary hearing, by 2% at a competency hearing, by 4% at a motions
hearing, by 15% in trials, and by 2% in sentencing hearings. If a child first
testified in a preliminary hearing, it was rare for the case to be closed 3
months later, and often the case was still pending even when the child’s first
testimony had been at trial. In this subgroup, only seven cases of testifiers
and 15 cases of controls had closed (i.e., reached final disposition) by the
first follow-up.
First follow-up measures were not obtained for 14 children who had
testified, owing to their unavailability or to difficulties in our communica-
tions with the DAs’ offices; assessments of 13 of these children were ob-
tained at later follow-ups.
To determine if the 46 pairs of testifier and control children differed
32
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MONOGRAPHS
at intake on the matching variables, scores from each of the seven matching
variables were entered into separate one-way analyses of variance with con-
dition (testifier vs. control) as a blocked variable. As can be seen in Table 4,
there were no significant differences between the groups on these measures.
The externalizing T score approached significance, with the control children
having a higher mean score than the children who testified. Also shown in
Table 4 are the findings for a variable called “months since disclosure,” by
which we mean the number of months elapsed between disclosure of the
abuse to authorities and the administration of the first CBCL. Months since
disclosure was not used as a matching variable but is important in consider-
ing whether children in the two groups had been involved in child abuse
investigations for relatively comparable periods of time.
Seven-month follow-up.-We obtained 7-month (M = 7 months, 17 days;
range = 6 months, 1 day, to 14 months, 16 days) follow-up measures on
37 matched pairs of children. Considering the children’s most recent testi-
mony, 76% testified at preliminary hearings, 8% at competence hearings,
14% in trials, and 2% at sentencing hearings. By the 7-month test, final
disposition had been reached for 20 children in the testifier group and 15
children in the control group. The rest of the cases were still in various
stages of prosecution.
At the point of the 7-month follow-up, four of the children who had
been controls at the first follow-up had testified. A number of other control
children were lost from the study and therefore replaced. Because the sam-
ple thus differed from that at the first follow-up, one-way analyses of vari-
ance on the intake matching variables for this set of children were con-
ducted. These analyses failed to produce reliable effects (see Table 4). In
addition, the children did not significantly differ on the number of months
since disclosure variable. Thus, the 37 testifier and control pairs included
at the 7-month follow-up were successfully matched.
Final follow-up.–By the end of the study, final disposition had been
reached for 28 matched pairs of children. By that time, the most recent
testimony for the testifiers had taken place for 39% in preliminary hearings,
for 7% in competence hearings, for 43% at trial, and for 4% at a sentencing
hearing. The final follow-up measures were administered an average of 11
months, 1 day (range = 4 months, 17 days, to 20 months, 11 days), after
the child first testified. One-way analyses of variance on the intake matching
variables and the month since disclosure variable for the 28 pairs failed to
uncover any significant differences (see Table 4).
Longitudinal sample.–Although as a whole the composition of the
matched pairs varied across the three follow-up assessments, a subgroup of
13 testifier-control pairs remained constant across all three testings. One-
way analyses of variance on the intake matching variables and the month
34
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GOODMAN ET AL.
since disclosure variable for these children also failed to uncover any sig-
nificant differences (see Table 4).
In summary, subsamples of testifier-control pairs were compared on
the intake matching variables, and statistically significant differences be-
tween the groups failed to emerge. In addition, the matched pairs did not
significantly differ in the amount of time that they had been involved in
the legal system since they disclosed the abuse. If significant differences in
behavioral adjustment were to appear after the testifiers appeared in court,
inferences regarding the effect of criminal court testimony could be drawn.
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III. THE SEQUENCE OF ASSESSMENTS AND MEASURES
A number of assessments were made, most of them involving parental
responses, brief interviews with the children, or courtroom observations.
Some were standardized measures frequently used in psychological re-
search, whereas others were developed specifically for the present investiga-
tion. Several considerations constrained their selection. None involved ask-
ing the victim about the abuse itself. Our agreement with the prosecutors
and the families was that we would not pose such questions to the child;
this made families more receptive to the study and defense attorneys less
likely to subpoena our data. We also selected measures that did not involve
extensive interviewing of children (such as psychiatric interviews) since fam-
ilies were typically concerned that the children were already being inter-
viewed too frequently. The measures completed at the courthouse (see Ta-
ble 1 above) had to be ones that could be administered quickly because the
children could have been called to the stand at any moment. The measures
are described in the order outlined in Table 1; variables mentioned in this
Monograph that were derived from the measures are listed in the Appendix.
INTAKE
Informed consent.-At the time of the initial meeting, we obtained in-
formed consent from the child’s primary caretaker and assent from the
child.
The Sexual Assault Profile (SAP).-We obtained information about the
assault from the prosecutors’ files, which contained police records and other
materials. Parents were also interviewed briefly about the case, and children
at times volunteered relevant statements. Such information was recorded
on a modified version of Conte and Berliner’s (1984) Sexual Assault Profile.
As the case progressed and new information became available, the SAP was
updated. The profile was filled out by research assistants trained on sample
cases at the start of the study and then again midway through. Reliability,
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GOODMAN ET AL.
assessed by proportion of agreement scores on sample cases, ranged from
.63 to 1.00.
The questions on the profile concern demographic information about
the child and the defendant (e.g., age, race), characteristics of the abuse
(e.g., age at onset, specific acts performed), the child’s relation to the defen-
dant, the child’s perception of the Abuse, the support given by the child’s
family, other traumas the child might have experienced, etc.
Our main adaptation of the original SAP involved deriving the fol-
lowing summary scales. The child’s relation to the defendant was coded as 1
(stranger), 2 (known to the child but not a caretaker or someone in a position
of trust; e.g., a neighbor), 3 (known to the child and a caretaker or holding
a position of trust but not a parent; e.g., a teacher or an uncle), or 4 (parent
or stepparent). Type of sexual activity involved in the abuse was coded as 1
(exhibitionism), 2 (nongenital contact; e.g., fondling of the child’s breasts),
3 (genital contact including oral sex but no vaginal or anal penetration), or
4 (vaginal or anal penetration/intercourse). Injury to the child was scored as
1 (none), 2 (mild), 3 (moderate), or 4 (severe). Amount of force used was
scored 1 (none), 2 (mild), 3 (moderate), or 4 (severe). Force included verbal
threats, such as threats to kill the child or the child’s mother, as well as more
direct shows of force, such as holding a gun to the child’s head. Duration of
the abuse was scored 1 (1 day), 2 (2 days to 6 months), 3 (over 6 months to
5 years), or 4 (over 5 years).
A scale indicating severity of abuse was derived by summing the scores
assigned to these last four variables. The concept of severity is complex. In
addition to the four dimensions we used, many other factors could legiti-
mately enter into the overall concept, such as the child’s age at onset and
at cessation of abuse, frequency of abuse, age and sex of the accused, and
so forth. However, some of these factors, such as duration and frequency
of abuse, are likely to be intercorrelated (Browne & Finkelhor, 1986), and
others-sex of the perpetrator, for example-are difficult to substantiate
as influencing severity because of low base rates (e.g., the number of re-
ported female perpetrators is quite low). Hence, we decided to restrict the
concept to a few of the more obvious and quantifiable variables and to
examine the others separately.
Two additional scales were derived from the SAP. The families’ per-
ception of threat, from either the defendant or the defendant’s supporters,
ranged from 1 (family reports not feeling threatened) to 3 (family reports
feeling extreme threat, such as threat of death). The sentence received by the
defendant if a plea bargain or guilty verdict was obtained was scaled from
1 (deferred judgment or sentence) to 4 (prison).
The Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL).-The CBCL served as
our main measure of the children’s psychological adjustment. The CBCL
has been standardized for use with 4-16-year-old children on a wide range
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MONOGRAPHS
of socioeconomic and racial groups and provides norms that permit com-
parison with others of the same gender and age.5 The measure consists of
Part I, which contains three social competence scales, and Part II, which is
more frequently used in research and contains questions concerning inter-
nalizing behavior problems (e.g., depression, somatic complaints) and exter-
nalizing behavior problems (e.g., delinquency, aggressiveness). The CBCL
also provides information that can be used to determine the child’s socioeco-
nomic status, on the basis of Hollingshead’s seven-step scale (Hollingshead
& Redlich, 1958; Watt, 1976).
The psychometric properties of the CBCL are exemplary for scales
of this type. For normal children, median short-term (1-week) test-retest
reliabilities are both .89; median interrater (mother and father) agreement
has been .66. For a clinic sample, mean short-term (3-month), medium-term
(6-month), and long-term (18-month) test-retest reliabilities were .74, .65,
and .62, respectively; interrater reliabilities ranged from .54 to .87. The
validity of the CBCL has been examined as well, showing that its content,
construct, and criterion-related validity are all acceptable. For example,
scores on all behavior problems and social competence subscales differenti-
ate between clinic and nonclinic children (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983)
and between abused and nonabused children (Wolfe & Mosk, 1983).
The CBCL was completed by the child’s mother in about 80% of the
cases, by the child’s father in about 7% of the cases, and by other caretakers
(e.g., a foster parent, relative, or guardian with whom the child lived) in the
remaining cases. The child’s behavior was rated as of the last 2 weeks.
The children’s total CBCL scores as well as internalizing and externalizing
subscale scores were converted to T scores using a computer program (see
Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983, app. B) developed by Achenbach and his
associates. High T scores represent greater behavioral disturbance. A T
score of 63 is recommended as the cutoff between the normal and the
clinical range of disturbance for the total score and the internalizing and
externalizing scales.
The Teacher Report Form (TRF).-At intake, we obtained parental per-
mission for the child’s teacher to complete the TRF (Achenbach & Edel-
brock, 1986). This questionnaire is very similar to the CBCL in content and
psychometric properties. In studies by Achenbach and Edelbrock (1986),
its test-retest reliability averaged .89, .77, and .64 at 1 week, 2 months, and
4 months, respectively. The median short-term (1-week) test-retest reliabil-
ity for children in special education classes was .90, and the median in-
terrater (teacher and teacher’s aide) agreement was .57. Two- and 4-month
test-retest reliabilities are available only for 6- and 11-year-old males; these
“5 Achenbach and Edelbrock (1986) state that the CBCL can be used with 17-year-olds
when necessary.
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GOODMAN ET AL.
were .74 and .68, respectively. Content, construct, and criterion-related va-
lidity of the TRF have all been found to be acceptable. For example, behav-
ior problem scores differentiate between boys with emotional disorders and
boys with learning disabilities (Harris, King, Reifler, & Rosenberg, 1984)
and between children referred for services as a result of behavioral or emo-
tional problems and demographically similar nonreferred children (Achen-
bach & Edelbrock, 1986; Edelbrock & Achenbach, 1984).
The CBCL and TRF are appropriate for longitudinal research and for
research in which the questionnaires are completed before and after an
intervention (in this case, appearance in court). Like the parents, the teach-
ers were asked to rate the child’s behavior over “the last 2 weeks.” They
were not informed of the child’s involvement in a sexual assault case but
were told instead that he or she was participating in a study of child devel-
opment.
The TRF was originally included in our study to assess possible bias in
parental reports. We were particularly concerned about incest and boy-
friend cases, in which the nonoffending parent might side with the offender
and thus blame-or at least feel ambivalent toward-the child. Since the
inception of the present study, Achenbach, McConaughy, and Howell
(1987) showed that scores on the CBCL and TRF are not highly correlated
and hence not interchangeable. These low correlations are attributed by
Achenbach et al. (1987) to the fact that parents’ and teachers’ observations
are only partially overlapping since some behaviors are exhibited primarily
at home and others primarily at school. Their finding, in addition to the
relatively low response rate from teachers in returning our forms, led us to
rely almost exclusively on the CBCL.6
The Social Adjustment Scale-Self-Report (SAS).-This questionnaire,
based on self-report, was used to assess the social adjustment of the child’s
primary caretaker over the preceding 2-week period. It was included be-
cause a child’s level of disturbance may depend on the primary parent’s
“6 It was still of interest to us to determine the relation between teachers’ ratings and
ratings by mothers of children involved in incest vs. nonincest cases: if the former were
more biased in their judgments, their ratings should be more discrepant from the teachers’
ratings than those of the “nonincest-case” mothers. Contrary to this prediction, the correla-
tion obtained at intake between the CBCL total T scores and the TRF scores was .39 for
the incest-case group (N = 16) and .25 (N = 74) for the nonincest-case group. Thus, the
formers’ ratings were actually more similar to the teachers’ ratings than were those of the
latter. Achenbach et al. (1987) reported that the average correlation between parents and
teachers/observers across a number of studies was .27; however, there was considerable
variability across studies, with some correlations falling in the .30-.40 range. Although
both the incest- and the nonincest-case mothers’ CBCLs thus appear to be within expected
limits and roughly comparable, the overall correlation between the parents’ and the teach-
ers’ total T scores in our study was .27 (N = 90), which corresponds exactly to the mean
correlation reported by Achenbach et al.
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MONOGRAPHS
adjustment. The scale includes assessment of the caretaker’s relations with
her or his children, spouse or partner, and extended family; work and
economic circumstances; and overall adjustment. The reliability of the over-
all adjustment scale is .72 when assessed by interview instead of self-report.
Test-retest reliability is also high, r = .80. Concurrent validity has been
demonstrated (Weissman & Bothwell, 1976; Weissman, Prusoff, Thomp-
son, Harding, & Myers, 1978). High scores indicate greater maladjustment.
Weissman et al. (1978) found the mean overall adjustment score for a com-
munity sample to be 1.59.
PRECOURT
After obtaining intake measures, we waited to see which of the children
were subpoenaed to appear in court, at either a preliminary hearing, a
motions hearing, a competence hearing, a trial, or a sentencing. When a
child appeared at the courthouse, we greeted the family there and obtained
several more measures: Spielberger’s State Anxiety Scale (Spielberger, Gor-
such, & Lushene, 1970), the “Before-Court Questionnaire,” and an abbre-
viated form of the CBCL, the “Day-of-Court Measure.”
The Spielberger State Anxiety Scale.-The children’s precourt anxiety was
assessed with this widely used self-report measure. It has high reliability
(test-retest, r = .68) and validity (see Spielberger et al., 1970; Spielberger,
1973) and is easy to administer. For young children in our study, age-
appropriate definitions for some of the test’s terms were constructed and
used to aid the children. High scores indicate greater anxiety. Spielberger
(1973) reports that, based on a normative sample of fourth through sixth
graders, the average score was 31.
Before-Court Questionnaire. -The Before-Court Questionnaire was de-
veloped specifically for this study and included questions about the child’s
feelings about testifying, having a nonoffending parent in the courtroom,
and testifying in front of the judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, and de-
fendant. A “faces” scale, adapted from Andrews and Withey’s (1976) happi-
ness scale and ranging from 1 (very happy) to 4 (very unhappy), was used
in eliciting answers. Practice questions (e.g., “What is your favorite food?
Point to the face that shows how you feel when you eat your favorite food”)
were used to ensure that the children understood the scale. The questions
were asked by a research assistant (RA) or a victim advocate (VA) who had
received appropriate training.
The precourt measure also included sections for the RA or VA to note
who brought the child to court, what the child did while waiting, and
whether the child toured the courtroom or talked to the prosecutor before
being called to testify.
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GOODMAN ET AL.
Day-of-Court Measure.-An abbreviated form of the CBCL was used to
assess the child’s level of disturbance within 48 hours prior to testifying.
The form consisted of three categories: questions to assess physical prob-
lems such as vomiting, headaches, and dizziness; questions to assess inter-
nalizing problems such as nervousness, crying, and clinging behavior; and
questions to assess externalizing problems such as fighting, stealing, and
temper tantrums. The questionnaire was completed by a nonoffending par-
ent or caretaker at the courthouse while waiting to see if the child’s testi-
mony would be required. Responses were provided on a three-point scale
ranging from 1 (less than usual) to 3 (more than usual).
COURT
Often, children who were subpoenaed waited around the courthouse
for hours, seeming bored and nervous, and then went home without testi-
fying. This occurred when hearings and trials were delayed or “continued”
(i.e., set for a later time), defendants waived the hearing or accepted a plea
bargain at the last minute, or prosecutors found that the child’s testimony
was not needed that day. Some of the children did testify, however. We
observed each child in the courtroom as she or he underwent direct and
cross-examination.
Courtroom Observation Measures.-The Courtroom Observation Mea-
sures were also specifically developed for this study. For this measure, rat-
ings were made on 26 scales for the judge’s behavior throughout the court
session and the child’s responses, the prosecutor’s behavior and the child’s
responses during direct and redirect examination, and the defense attor-
ney’s behavior and the child’s responses during cross- and re-cross-
examination. Five overall ratings were made concerning the child’s affect
generally and toward the defendant specifically as well as the prosecutor’s,
defense attorney’s, and judge’s supportiveness of the child. More specifi-
cally, the Courtroom Observation Measures focused on the child’s responses
(e.g., signs of discomfort such as crying, whether the child recanted); the
attorneys’ questions (e.g., whether the attorney asked mainly about periph-
eral vs. central events) and demeanor toward the child (e.g., degree of
supportiveness); the time course for direct, cross-, redirect, and re-cross-
examination (e.g., length of time of cross-examination); the judge’s behavior
(e.g., whether the judge was supportive); techniques used to aid the child
(e.g., use of anatomically detailed dolls); and the presence of others in the
courtroom (e.g., whether the courtroom was closed, whether a jury was
present). Ratings were typically made on five-point scales; for example, the
child’s mood while testifying was rated on a scale from 1 (very happy) to 5
(very unhappy). At times, three- or four-point scales were used; for exam-
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MONOGRAPHS
pie, the question concerning the child’s ability to answer questions was rated
on a four-point scale ranging from 1 (answered all questions) to 4 (silent or
said only “I don’t know”), and the question concerning whether the child
cried was rated on a three-point scale ranging from 1 (no) to 3 (a lot). A
few of the judgments required dichotomous yes-no responses, such as
whether the child recanted the assault.
The observations and ratings were made by one of nine RAs, who
were graduate students in psychology, law, social work, or education or
nonstudents who held B.A. degrees in psychology. Training was accom-
plished by having them first make ratings while watching videotapes of
children testifying in actual hearings. Interrater reliability was then as-
sessed; once it was .75 or above, pairs of RAs observed children testifying
in court. As determined by proportion of agreement scores, this second
“training” reliability index was always above .75.
POSTCOURT
After-Court Questionnaire.–The After-Court Questionnaire was ad-
ministered immediately after children who testified emerged from the
courtroom. It was identical to the Before-Court Questionnaire except that
the after-court questions were asked in the past tense (e.g., “Now that it’s
over, how did it feel to testify today?”).
THREE-MONTH FOLLOW-UP
Comparison of CBCL scores for testifier and control children 3 and 7
months after the testifiers took the stand and again after the case closed
permits inferences about the emotional effects of criminal court testimony
on child sexual assault victims. Thus, whenever possible, we obtained a
second CBCL from the primary caretaker and TRF from the teacher 3
months after the child testified. By that time we had matched the child who
testified with another child whose case had been filed at the prosecutor’s
office but who had not testified. The CBCL and TRF were also completed
for this control child.
SEVEN-MONTH FOLLOW-UP
The seven-month follow-up procedure was identical to that at three
months.
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GOODMAN ET AL.
FINAL FOLLOW-UP
The CBCL and TRF were again administered after the case officially
closed. If a case closed within 7 months of the child testifying, the 7-month
and final follow-ups were combined so that only one set of measures was
given. (This occurred for 10 pairs of children.) As part of the final
follow-up, parents and children were asked to complete a Legal Involve-
ment Questionnaire concerning their impressions of the legal process.
Legal Involvement Questionnaire.–Two questionnaires were developed,
one for the child victim and another for the nonoffending caretaker, to
assess reactions to the legal system once final disposition of the case (e.g.,
sentencing, dismissal) was reached. A set of questions was included to verify
that the child had or had not testified, how many times she had been inter-
viewed, and whether she had received psychological counseling. Using a
total of 19 four-point rating scales (ranging from 1 [very positive] to 4 [very
negative] on the caretaker’s form and from 1 [very good] to 4 [very bad]
on the child’s form), the respondent rated her or his feelings about the
effects of testifying, the quality of interaction with various legal personnel
(e.g., the prosecutor), and the overall effect of legal involvement on her or
his life. In addition, respondents rated how satisfied they were with the
outcome of the case, how fair and efficient the justice system was, and how
informed they had been kept about the course of events (all rated with I
indicating a positive evaluation and 4 a negative evaluation). A checklist
was included on which caretakers indicated whether involvement in the
prosecution affected their marital, work, or family relations or their chil-
dren’s behavior. Finally, at the end of the questionnaire, respondents were
asked to describe what changes in the legal process they would like to see
made. The child’s form was a simplified version of the caretaker’s form. To
make the questionnaire more appropriate for children and less emotionally
taxing, the child’s version omitted questions about effects on the parents
(e.g., on their marital relationship), sentencing, outcome of case, psychologi-
cal counseling, and how informed the child had been kept about the case.
Case Progress Sheet.-We also recorded a variety of facts concerning the
progress of the case through the legal system. These included the total
number of continuances; the number of continuances involving court dates
for which the child appeared at the courthouse; the number of times the
child was subpoenaed, appeared at the courthouse, and testified; the out-
come of the preliminary hearing; the length of the legal process, whether
the case reached disposition by the end of the study, and, if not, why (e.g.,
the defendant was still at large, the trial had not yet occurred). In addition,
the duration of various time periods was recorded (e.g., time from child’s
disclosure to the preliminary hearing, time from the preliminary hearing
to trial or plea bargain).
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IV. THE EMOTIONAL
EFFECTS OF COURTROOM TESTIMONY
The main goal of the study was to determine whether and under what
conditions courtroom testimony is associated with child witnesses’ emotional
distress. After determining that the testifier-control pairs did not reliably
differ on the matching variables (see Chap. II), our strategy was to compare
caretakers’ reports of the testifier and control children’s CBCL scores at the
three posttestimony follow-up intervals as a function of age, time of test
(intake vs. follow-up assessment), and group (testifier vs. control). Because
different subgroups of children were included at each follow-up, separate
analyses are reported for each assessment. In addition, separate longitudi-
nal analyses are presented for the 13 testifier-control pairs that remained
constant across the three follow-up periods. For each of these except the
longitudinal analyses, gender was entered into separate analyses that, for
lack of sufficient numbers of subjects, excluded age as a factor. These analy-
ses are reported only when significant gender effects emerged, which oc-
curred infrequently.
The CBCL provides a measure of the children’s behavioral adjustment
but does not explicitly ask caretakers to rate the children’s well-being as a
result of the prosecution. However, a question concerning the latter was
included on the Legal Involvement Questionnaire, on which we obtained
caretakers’ ratings of whether the child’s behavior improved or worsened
as a result of participation in the legal process. Analyses of the caretakers’
responses to this question after the case closed are also presented in this
chapter.
Adverse or positive effects of testifying might appear at some points
but not at others. For example, if a child first testified in a preliminary
hearing, the case might still be in progress 3 months later, with a trial
upcoming and the child in a continued state of anticipation. However, some
cases would be resolved (e.g., a plea bargain arranged) after a preliminary
hearing, freeing children from further legal involvement. Alternatively, by
7 months some children would have testified more than once, for example,
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GOODMAN ET AL.
in a preliminary hearing and a trial or in a preliminary and a competence
hearing. If testifying repeatedly adds to a child’s distress, then one might
expect adverse effects to emerge at 7 months rather than at 3 months. Or
perhaps children’s well-being is affected only while the case is ongoing. If
so, one might expect to find adverse effects of testifying at 3 and 7 months
but not after the case closed, at which point a subset of children might show
positive effects of the experience (e.g., if the defendant was found guilty).
However, if testifying has long-term adverse effects on children as a group,
negative effects might be evident even after the final disposition of the case.
These various possibilities were explored in the sections that follow.
ADJUSTMENT AFTER THREE MONTHS
It will be recalled that we obtained 3-month follow-up data on 46 pairs
of children. Each child’s total CBCL T scores on the intake and first follow-
up were entered into a 3 (age: 4-5, 6-11, and 12-16 years) x 2 (testifier
or control group) x 2 (time of test) analysis of variance, with age as the
only factor to vary between subjects (see Table 5).7 The group x time of
test interaction was not significant, F(1,43) = 0.72; however, all children’s
scores were higher at intake than at the first follow-up, producing a signifi-
cant main effect of time of test, F(1,44) = 7.89, p < .01. Thus, the children's behavioral adjustment improved rather than deteriorated over 3 months regardless of whether they had testified. (The lack of a significant difference between the testifiers' and the control children's scores at the first follow-up was confirmed by a nonsignificant planned comparison and a nonsignificant analysis of covariance with the children's intake total T score used as the covariate.) However, a significant age x time of test interaction, F(2,45) = 3.79, p < .05, indicated that significant improvement occurred only for one age group. Post hoc mean comparisons, as calculated by Tukey's HSD test, re- vealed that the 6-11-year-olds showed significant improvement over time, p < .01, whereas the older and younger children did not. When the age factor was replaced with a gender-of-child factor in a new analysis of variance, the only additional finding was a main effect of gender, F(1,44) = 5.14, p < .05. Females, M = 68.74, SD = 8.64, had higher total T scores than males, M = 62.02, SD = 8.34. A similar pattern of results was obtained when each child's internalizing and externalizing T scores were entered into separate 3 (age) x 2 (group) 7 Age groups were based on Achenbach's scoring system. When the ages of a testifier and control child fell into different groups, classification was determined by the testifier's age; this happened in 11 instances across all three follow-up periods. 45 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms & 00 00 in 1000 00 in "d II CD O n 1"4 00v 00 0)Q L C'i c -0-q 6 cli r -? 06 If ci 06 c-z 0 t.. J tO .- r.D .-.rD' --. Vo -.. oo S-11 16W0 C;r 1 1-- n11- 6Cz- 0?oCO EO\O NIr\ -o0'rD'D \ < z H-( II z z H m c6 ,-- t--od i6 -"o:dRo -u,. Q~r jQ rJ ? " o- " - C. ' I W)o)---4 00 L-N 040 060 o C (0 clu ? 0 ; 41 C 8 " " 8 "o ZCz O c OQ ,, =D = Co Coc Co .. Hv cll bjO l c , V. = =r f G)M~O ~C 0 o-4 ? ~(~ D ,~ C nInI ~ This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. x 2 (time of test) analyses of variance (see Table 5). A main effect of time of test indicated that the children's internalizing problems decreased from intake to the first follow-up, F(1,43) = 9.84, p < .01. There were no signifi- cant main effects or interactions involving the group factor. In addition, the age x time of test interaction was not significant, F(2,43) = 2.55, p < .10. The children's externalizing problems also decreased from intake to the first follow-up, F(1,45) = 3.26, p = .07, although the effect only approached significance. In addition, a significant group x time interaction emerged, F(1,43) = 5.36, p = .025 (see Table 5). Simple effects analyses revealed that the control group significantly improved over time, F(1,45) = 10.63, p < .01, whereas the testifiers did not, F(1,45) = 0.77. Nevertheless, the control children's improvement did not result in a significant difference between the groups at the first follow-up, F(1,45) = 0.07. Because the control group's initial scores were higher than those of the testifiers, F(1,45) = 3.68, p = .06, the control group's improvement might simply indicate regression to the mean as opposed to differential improvement across the two groups. A significant age x time of test interaction, F(2,45) = 5.57, p < .01, indicated that the improvement was primarily for the middle age group. Post hoc Tukey's HSD mean comparisons revealed that the middle age group's scores were the only ones to show a statistically significant decrease over time, p < .01. This group's initial scores were the highest, however. At intake and also at the 3-month follow-up, the scores of the three age groups did not differ reliably: intake, F(2,43) = 2.26; 3 months, F(2,43) = 0.91. It is interesting to note, however, that, in contrast to the other age groups, the younger children actually evinced a (nonsignificant) increase in their externalizing T scores. When the age factor was replaced with a gender factor in new analyses of variance, a main effect of gender, F(1,44) = 5.29, p < .05, indicated that females (N = 35), M = 66.68, SD = 7.18, had higher internalizing T scores than males (N = 11), M = 61.14, SD = 7.73. The females' and males' externalizing scores did not differ reliably. Whether a difference between the testifiers' and the control children's internalizing or externalizing T scores existed at the first follow-up was also explored through planned comparisons and analyses of covariance. These analyses also failed to reveal reliable differences between the groups. It is also of interest to note that the children's mean intake and 3-month follow-up T scores mostly fell within the clinical range. Thus, the caretakers' reports indicated that, at the time of entry into the criminal justice system, the children were quite distressed and that, although the children's well- being improved, the children at the 3-month assessment were still showing signs of disturbance. In summary, the general trend was for caretaker report of children's 47 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS behavioral adjustment to indicate substantial levels of disturbance at time of entry into the criminal justice system but improvement from intake to the 3-month follow-up, regardless of whether the children testified or not. Improvement was most likely to be reflected in 6-11-year-olds' total T and externalizing T scores and least likely to be reflected in the younger chil- dren's externalizing T scores. The children's emotional well-being was still precarious at the time of the first follow-up; however, there was little evi- dence of adverse effects on children of testifying in criminal court. ADJUSTMENT AFTER SEVEN MONTHS We obtained 7-month follow-up measures on 37 matched pairs of chil- dren. Each pair's total T scores were entered into a 3 (age) x 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) analysis of variance with age as the only between-subjects factor (see Table 6). There were 15, 14, and 8 pairs of children in the older, middle, and younger age groups, respectively. A main effect of time of test, F(1,34) = 9.08, p < .01, was subsumed under a significant time of test x group interaction, F(1,34) = 4.93, p < .05. The interaction was further analyzed into simple effects. Children in the control group evinced a sig- nificant decrease in total behavioral problems from intake to the 7-month follow-up, F(1,36) = 27.99, p < .001, whereas children who testified showed less improvement, F(1,36) = 0.66. At the time of the 7-month follow-up, the difference in behavioral problems between the control group and the testifiers closely approached significance, F(1,36) = 3.67, p = .06. A planned comparison, however, using the mean square error term from the overall analysis revealed a significant effect, F(1,34) = 8.51, p < .01. More- over, analysis of covariance, with the children's intake total T score serving as the covariate, revealed a significant difference between the testifiers' and the control children's 7-month follow-up scores, F(1,35) = 5.45, p < .05: testifiers' adjusted M = 65.46 and control children's adjusted M = 60.65. Thus, control children improved relative to their level of disturbance at intake, whereas testifiers did not. When the children's internalizing problems T scores were compared, a main effect of time of test, F(1,34) = 11.64, p < .01, was again subsumed under a time of test x group interaction, F(1,34) = 3.82, p = .059. The children in the control group showed improvement over time, F(1,36) = 27.12, p < .001, whereas the children who testified did not, F(1,36) = 1.36. Despite these trends, the mean internalizing scores of the two groups did not differ reliably at the time of the 7-month follow-up, F(1,36) = 2.40. Again, planned comparisons using the mean square error term from the overall analysis revealed that the latter two means did differ significantly, F(1,34) = 6.96, p < .05, as did an analysis of covariance when the children's 48 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms i ) "1 4, t (0 ) ?c 14 cl? 0 1 r-. - - , - - . - ?Ko arcc od ? 4c ?;C; o - . .S HC 0 4 i Ic r o C t 0>
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MONOGRAPHS
intake internalizing T scores served as the covariate, F(1,35) = 5.93, p < .05, testifiers' adjusted M = 63.25 and control children's adjusted M = 59.19. A very similar pattern emerged when the children's externalizing scores were compared. The time of test x group interaction was significant, F(1,34) = 4.97, p < .05. The testifiers and control children's scores did not differ reliably at intake. By the second follow-up, the control children's externalizing problems had significantly declined, F(1,36) = 11.57, p < .01, whereas the children who testified evinced no improvement, F(1,36) = 0.01. When the children's scores were directly compared at the second follow-up, the difference was marginally significant, F(1,36) = 2.87, p < .10. However, planned comparisons using the mean square error term from the overall analysis again indicated significant differences, F(1,34) = 4.85, p < .05. The analysis of covariance revealed that, when the children's intake externalizing T scores served as the covariate, the difference between the two means was again marginally significant, F(1,35) = 3.92, p < .06, testifiers' adjusted M = 63.38 and control children's adjusted M = 59.87. The analyses of variance described above were also conducted with the age factor replaced by the gender factor. The analyses included 29 pairs of girls and eight pairs of boys. There were no significant main effects or interactions associated with victim gender. At the 7-month follow-up, the testifiers' average total T score still fell within the clinical range, and their internalizing and externalizing T scores hovered around the clinical cutoff. In contrast, the control children's aver- age T scores all fell within the normal range. In sum, at the second follow-up, children who did not testify showed improvement in behavioral problems as indexed by all three CBCL scores, whereas children who testified did not. Possible causes of adverse effects of testifying.-Why did the testifiers exhibit greater disturbance at the second but not the first follow-up? One possible reason is that, by the 7-month test, more of the children had testified at trial. Perhaps trial testimony produces an increase in behavioral distur- bance, especially if the case does not close quickly. This possibility was not supported by the data, however; the percentage of children who testified at trial was virtually identical for the first and second follow-ups. Perhaps the children who testified were more likely than the control children to be involved in open cases by the 7-month follow-up. If pro- longed involvement in the legal system leads to greater disturbance (Runyan et al., 1988), the children whose cases were still open should have had higher CBCL scores. To examine this possibility, each child's total T score was entered into a 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) x 2 (case status: open or closed) analysis of variance. A significant three-way interaction would be expected, but none emerged, F(1,35) = .01. 50 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Another possibility is that a greater number of the noncontrol children might have testified more than once by the 7-month test. Perhaps multiple court appearances cause an increase in children's emotional disturbance, as do multiple exposures to other stressful events. By the 7-month test, six testifiers had taken the stand twice, whereas the others had testified only once. To examine the effects of testifying more than once, the children's total T, internalizing T, and externalizing T scores were entered into sepa- rate 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) x 2 (number of times testified: once vs. twice) analyses of variance with number of times testified as the only between-subjects factor. If testifying more than once resulted in greater disturbance, a group x time of test x number of times testified interaction should appear. Mean scores are presented in Table 7. The three-way interaction was not significant in separate analyses of the three CBCL measures. For the total T and the internalizing T scores, the direction of the means is consis- tent, however, with the prediction that testifying more often results in greater disturbance. Because it was predicted that multiple testimony expe- riences would lead to greater disturbance, planned comparisons were con- ducted on the total T scores. Although the intake scores did not reliably differ, children who testified twice had higher total T scores at the 7-month follow-up than their respective controls, F(1,35) = 6.08, p < .025, and than the children who testified only once, F(1,35) = 5.38, p < .05. In contrast, the intake and 7-month follow-up scores of the children who testified only once did not differ reliably from those of their controls. Thus, testifying more than once was related to increased disturbance. In fact, children who testified twice showed a slight (nonsignificant) increase in disturbance. Given that none of the children had testified more than once at the 3-month follow-up, the children's increased disturbance at 7 months may have been related at least in part to the fact that several children testified twice by 7 months. In summary, by the 7-month follow-up, the control children showed significant improvement, whereas the testifiers did not. There was a sugges- tion in the data that continued behavior problems were associated with repeated courtroom testimony. ADJUSTMENT AFTER CONCLUSION OF THE CASE Even though the testifiers showed less improvement than the control children at the 7-month follow-up, it was an open question whether their behavioral adjustment would remain poorer once the children's cases had closed. Perhaps the disturbance shown at 7 months was relatively short lived. By the end of the study, final disposition had been reached for 28 matched 51 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms oO t- 0) "4' cl?) t-~ cn t- i. n C14 c ) in o0 oo oo t" c ji " r5t-.: -: c o6 ci S0-D " ) n-D" -D r- " C T z 1 ,0 , Q 4C-4, 00 C-4,LO 114 0 lo4 b I ST T zz 6 .CIS . . .. :. [-, o \ ? c ?- .- D D Q Ci VI I I 4 - 6 - - -- oo, * iI1 O '-o- r ; b "0 3 ~ (I No 0CE v -0 V -0 Z~ C QDcD VD Iff0'4 V0C 0 o ~H zs ~, I _ zE V ~ Q z 8 o, z n - t, o~m n H 0 * 0b Q 0 * *1 0 I o 2 r2 ~t , HI **W -3 U 3 , d VV3r E VV E: " ~ 1 ? ~r u 3~ O 0V) This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. pairs of children.8 Each matched pair's total T scores were therefore entered into a 3 (age) x 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) analysis of variance with age as the only between-subjects factor (see Table 8). To test the age factor, there were 12, 10, and 6 pairs of children in the older, middle, and younger age groups, respectively. The effect of time of test was significant, F(1,25) = 6.38, p < .025. The children's scores dropped between intake and the final follow-up. The group x time of test interaction was not significant, F(1,25) = 0.39. Analysis of covariance using the children's intake total T scores as the covariate also failed to reveal a reliable mean difference be- tween the testifiers' and the control children's final follow-up total T scores, F(1,26) = 2.28, testifiers' adjusted M = 64.27 and control children's ad- justed M = 61.12. However, a planned comparison of the testifier and control children's mean scores at the final follow-up indicated a significant difference, F(1,25) = 4.54, p < .05. Each pair's internalizing T scores were entered into an analysis of vari- ance as described above. Again, the only significant effect was of time of test, F(1,25) = 8.99, p < .01. On average, the children's level of behavioral disturbance decreased from intake, M = 64.16, to final follow-up, M = 62.27, regardless of whether the children testified or not. Because differ- ences were predicted, a planned comparison was performed. By this test, testifiers exhibited a significantly greater number of internalizing problems at the final follow-up than did control children, F(1,25) = 4.25, p = .05. When the children's externalizing T scores were considered, there were no significant effects. The lack of a reliable effect was confirmed by a nonsig- nificant planned comparison. Analyses of covariance failed to reveal a sig- nificant effect for either the internalizing or the externalizing T scores. The analyses of variance described above for the final follow-up test were duplicated with the age factor replaced by a gender factor. Twenty-two pairs of girls and six pairs of boys were included in the analyses. There were no significant main effects or interactions associated with gender in any of the analyses. Possible causes of adverse effects of testifying.--The time between case clos- ing and the final follow-up varied widely (testifiers: 0 months, 15 days, to 16 months, 26 days; controls: 0 months, 8 days, to 18 months, 8 days). This variability permitted us to examine whether case closure or simply time itself influenced the children's well-being. If case closure led to improvement, we reasoned that the children should show improvement relatively quickly after the case closed and that there should be no significant difference between 8 There were two pairs of children for whom the 3-month and final follow-ups or, more likely, the 7-month and final follow-ups were the same; if a pair's case had closed before the 7 months elapsed, the children's scores were entered in both the 7-month and the final follow-up analyses. 53 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms oC4 to Pt-"-4 0 c c int ",00? l oci c5c o6 &6 w4 CV l t- cc in 1", 0 CV l 0 0Lc ?o 0 C) IR" 00 cli 0 0) C~ l 10 --4 cli c lt -- 0 0i ac ot) ' 6o 00 coqac4- o-a0 Zt - I", c - \6 o6 cS r -Z c,? c ~ ; c5 r6 w4 00 0 C'I C4~c 0V 0 - 1 f r i t- 00 "4 an ) +i Ql0 q-, j 0 ?6 c; S v 1 o6 o\r- coC) 0) CO -- F~n c H~ .0~ z $" 0 V4r0r r IP cn UI I0 I 40. 40. 0. 00 Sc CV C\ 0c) cgc,~O 00 H~d ~~ d;ad This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. their scores and those of their matched controls. If instead time is needed, the children should show less improvement relative to their matched con- trols within a few months after case closure compared to later. To examine these possibilities, the children were divided into two groups: testifiers whose adjustment was measured within 4 months of case closure (N = 11) and their matched controls versus testifiers whose adjustment was measured more than 4 months after case closure (N = 17) and their matched controls, a division that retained enough children in each group to permit meaning- ful comparisons. The children's total T, internalizing T, and externalizing T scores were entered into separate 2 (time since case closure) x 2 (group) x 2 (time of test: intake vs. final follow-up) analyses of variance with time since case closure as the only between-subjects factor. The time since case closure x group x time of test interaction was not significant: total T, F(1,26) = 0.75; internalizing T, F(1,26) = 0.13; and externalizing T, F(1,26) = 0.01. The only significant effects were for time of test (i.e., intake vs. final follow-up), with both the testifying and the control children's scores improving over time: total T, F(1,26) = 6.06, p < .025; internalizing T, F(1,26) = 8.88, p < .01; externalizing T, F(1,26) = 2.97, p < .10. Thus, the testifiers whose cases had closed within 4 months showed improvement comparable to those whose cases had been closed for more than four months. The findings for the 7-month follow-up suggested that a potential stressor for the children was testifying multiple times. By the time their cases closed, 10 children had testified two or more times; 18 children were required to testify only once. Each child's total T score at the final follow-up was entered into a 2 (number of times testified: one vs. two or more) x 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) analysis of variance, with the number of times testified as the only between-subjects factor. The main effect of number of times testified was significant, F(1,26) = 4.30, p < .05. This finding reflects the fact that total T scores were higher throughout for the children who testified two or more times as well as their matched controls, M = 68.73, SD = 6.46, compared to children who testified once and their matched controls, M = 62.68, SD = 7.84. Although the predicted number of times testified x group x time of test interaction was not significant, F(1,26) = .57, the pattern of the means at the final follow-up is in accordance with predictions, as can be seen in Table 9. Planned comparisons revealed that, although significant differences did not exist at intake, the children who testified more than once had higher total T scores at the final follow-up than their respective controls, F(1,26) = 6.65, p < .025, and than the chil- dren who testified only once, F(1,26) = 9.93, p < .01. In contrast, children who testified once did not differ from their controls at intake or final follow-up, F(1,26) = 2.46, and F(1,26) = 3.93, respectively. The total T 55 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms - ?,,,4 '4 G', r-' co - 0 ,0 0 o c z oc C4 " In c 00 -'t o o6 t-? S000 0 00 NIz4 ic zcz i N \0 (0D L) t- 0 00 kr) 0 0 z( 0 - t-.: q o6 t-- "N 0 ,"P-400 ' 0"0 . iZ H zl .3 z o o N -0 H !w z e .. " " " . . 4.j O ? v 00vN t- -o NN NN Zc, O~ I d~ c , 0 0I\0 t NZ c ~~C < J zt~-o N~t H~ - 00 o z z V U MH 0 HI This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. scores of the children who testified twice remained well within the clinical range, whereas this was not true for the children who testified once. When the children's internalizing and externalizing scores were ana- lyzed as a function of the number of times the children testified, significant main effects of number of times testified did not emerge: internalizing T scores, F(1,26) = 2.76, p = .10, and externalizing T scores, F(1,26) = 3.45, p < .10. In both cases, the nonsignificant trend was for children who testified more than once and their matched controls to evince higher scores through- out (M = 66.08, SD = 6.07, and M = 65.60, SD = 7.21, for internalizing and externalizing T scores, respectively) than did the children who testified only once and their matched controls (M = 61.63, SD = 7.15, and M = 60.31, SD = 7.24, for internalizing and externalizing T scores, respectively). There were no other significant main effects or interactions. Planned com- parisons were consistent with these nonsignificant findings. Why do children who testify more than once have higher CBCL scores overall? Correlational analyses revealed that two factors were associated with repeated testimony. One was the amount of trauma the child experienced in his or her life after the assault. As traumas, we considered such events as divorce or separation of the child's parents, death of a parent, placement outside the home, or even moving to a new home. Children in the final follow-up group who testified more often had more traumas in their lives than children who testified less frequently, r = .38, N = 26, p < .05. They were also likely to have higher first-time Day-of-Court scores, indicating greater distress 48 hours before having to appear in court, r = .43, N = 22, p < .05. This finding may simply reflect the children's greater overall level of disturbance. It is unclear why children who are required to testify multiple times have a greater number of traumas in their lives, but correlational analyses indicated several interesting possibilities. During the children's first court appearance, children who experienced more traumas in their lives com- pared to those who experienced fewer traumas were rated by our court observers as being more credible witnesses during the prosecutor's direct examination, r = .74, N = 18, p < .001, and during the defense attorney's cross-examination, r = .59, N = 17, p < .01. Moreover, cases involving children who had a greater number of traumas in their lives were more likely to be associated with corroborative evidence, r = .43, N = 26, p < .025. For both these reasons, prosecutors might have been more willing to take these cases to trial, requiring more court appearances for the children. Under the assumption that prolonged legal involvement is likely to be detrimental for children, we predicted that children's behavioral distur- bance would be directly related to the number of continuances of the case. Did the children who endured a greater number of continuances show greater disturbance? To answer this question, we first determined whether 57 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS the children who testified experienced a greater number of continuances than their matched controls. The cases in which the children testified, M = 2.79, were continued a greater number of times than the control group's cases, M = 1.39, F(1,27) = 10.00, p < .01. Note that these were continu- ances of the case and may or may not have involved the child's participation. Specifically, we refer here to any type of continuance (i.e., delay) of a court date (e.g., having a preliminary hearing date set for a specific time and then having it delayed to a new date). The greater number of continuances for the children who testified probably reflects the fact that fewer plea bargains were arranged in their cases (eight for testifiers and 23 for controls). Next, each child's total CBCL T score was entered into a 2 (group) x 2 (time of test) x 2 (number of continuances) analysis of variance. For this analysis, the number of continuances in the testifiers' cases was divided into two groups: cases having zero to two continuances (N = 12) and cases having three or more continuances (N = 16). This division permitted us to include similar numbers of cases in the two categories. If a greater number of continuances leads to greater disturbance, the testifiers whose cases were continued more often should have exhibited greater disturbance relative to their controls at the final follow-up than the children whose cases were continued fewer times. Mean scores are presented in Table 10. The only significant effect was a main effect of time of test, F(1,26) = 5.83, p < .025. Analyses identical to the one for the total T scores were conducted on the internalizing and externalizing T scores. The only significant finding was a main effect of time of test for the internalizing T scores, F(1,26) = 8.38, p < .01. In contrast to prediction, if anything, the children tended to show greater improvement the greater the number of continuances. More contin- uances of the case may have given children a longer time to improve. Perhaps it is only continuances that directly involve the child that are retraumatizing. This would seem reasonable given that the child and family might not even know about some of the continuances of the case. The number of continuances that directly involved the child (i.e., in which a subpoena had been sent or the child appeared at the courthouse) did not differ for the testifiers, M = .11, and controls, M = .18, F(1,27) = .39. For children included in the final follow-up group, only three testifiers experienced a continuance that directly involved them, too few to permit us to conduct a valid analysis of variance. It is interesting to note, however, that the testifiers who experienced the continuances actually had lower mean scores than the children who did not (no continuances: intake, M = 69.16, SD = 9.49, and final follow-up, M = 65.72, SD = 10.38; continu- ances: intake, M = 55.67, SD = 24.58, and final follow-up, M = 54.67, SD = 14.57). Perhaps the courts were more likely to agree to a continuance if they felt the child was more stable to start with. It is still possible that children who experience multiple continuances that directly involve them 58 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Cd en r- 00 0 inO~l II It tt ,.. ,- - t-,.. R V ce) 00 ar) 00; d 24 : ,"' V C:),' CD " CD Z o Z C4 0 ,u. cr , o~ro ,o~ ,.a t.- ?ct . ; . d .dc; V. . () ..cl r - C~ q cI -- - " -- -0 C - Cw - - C~ n~ ,d H 0 H O 0-4 C4 00 v o 3)e I - 0 o Hz H w 0 H 0
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GOODMAN ET AL.
children’s reactions to testifying in criminal court. They are also consistent
with the finding that maternal support influences testifiers’ well-being.
A number of factors were also associated with how the nontestifiers felt
about not testifying. When the case outcome was “not guilty,” either through
a plea bargain or through a court decision, children who did not testify felt
worse about not testifying. Children who had physical abuse experiences
prior to the incidents at issue in the current legal case or who felt more
responsibility for their abuse were more likely to rate the effects of not
testifying as negative. Children whose caretakers were more disturbed were
more unhappy that they did not testify than children whose caretakers were
less disturbed. Caretakers confirmed their children’s feelings. Apparently,
these children were more likely to want to have their voices heard. When
the outcome was “not guilty,” nontestifiers probably felt that their testimony
might have swayed the trier of fact (judge or jury) toward a guilty verdict.
For children who had previously experienced abuse, testifying might have
been viewed as compensating for past resentment about not being heard.
Alternatively, perhaps these children were simply more accustomed to legal
participation. Children who felt some responsibility for the abuse may have
thought that testifying would help them shed responsibility by publicly shar-
ing it. In addition, caretakers whose social adjustment was low, as indicated
by the SAS, rated the effects on their children of not testifying as worse.
Table 23 shows that some of the predictors of negative effects of not
testifying were correlated with each other. Previous abuse was correlated
significantly with feeling responsible and with the caretaker’s low social ad-
justment, although these two variables were not correlated with each other.
The correlations (one for children’s reports and one for caretakers’ reports)
between previous abuse and feeling that the effects of not testifying were
negative were recomputed with feeling responsible and parent’s SAS par-
tialed. The correlations actually went up: r = .76, p < .001, for the chil- dren's reports; r = .54, p < .01, for the caretakers' reports. The correlations for children and caretakers between feeling responsible and feeling that the effects of not testifying were negative were recomputed, partialing out previous abuse. The correlations for children and caretakers were essen- tially unchanged, .54 and .29, although the latter fell below the .05 level. Finally, the correlation between SAS and the child's feeling that the effects of not testifying were negative was recomputed with previous abuse par- tialed. Both correlations increased: r = .56, p = .01, for the children's reports; r = .53, p < .01, for the caretakers' reports. Taken together, these results indicate that the significant relations shown in Table 22 can be inter- preted individually. All but one remain large and significant even when potentially confounded variables are partialed. The results indicate, then, that children have negative feelings about not testifying if the case results in a not guilty outcome or if the children 109 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS were previously abused, feel responsible for being abused, or have a care- taker who exhibits relatively poor social adjustment. Several items on the measures we collected when the children were at the courthouse were associated with their later attitudes and with their caretakers' reports as well. In general, the more negative or upset the chil- dren were about testifying, the more negative were their later attitudes about legal participation. Children who were more negative about testifying in court as reflected on our After-Court Measure and who had higher scores on the Day-of-Court Measure concerning internalizing problems (e.g., fear- fulness, trouble sleeping) rated legal involvement as more negative, r = .61, N = 14, p < .02, and r = .40, N = 28, p < .05, respectively. Similarly, the more negative the child felt about testifying immediately after having done so, the more likely the caretaker was to indicate that the effect of legal participation on the child was negative, r = .53, N = 17, p < .05. Children whose mood was sadder while they testified later rated the system as less fair, r = .59, N = 15, p < .05, and the worse the child felt about testifying in front of the defendant, the more likely the caretaker was to report that the child was unsatisfied with the outcome of the case, r = -.52, N = 15, p < .05. Thus, children's feelings about testifying were associated with later negative attitudes toward the legal system. It is possible, however, that these results are at least in part a product of some children who were simply more negative generally or of caretakers whose negative attitudes about the legal system influenced their children's attitudes. Predicting children's and caretaker's reactions generally.-Correlations were also calculated with the testifiers and the nontestifiers combined. There were no significant correlations between the children's responses to items on our Legal Involvement Questionnaire and their age or relationship to the defendant. However, three child factors were significantly related to the children's attitudes. The more severe the abuse, r = .41, N = 51, p < .01, and the longer the abuse lasted, r = .32, N = 52, p < .025, the more negatively the child rated the effect of the legal system on her or his life. Also, children's gender was predictive of how satisfied children were with the outcome of the case, with females being less satisfied than males, r = .37, N = 53, p <.01. Concerning family-system factors, the amount of support that children received at home was significantly related to children's feelings about the legal system. If another child in the same household was a victim, children rated the effect of legal involvement on their lives as being less negative, r = -.42, N = 49, p < .01. Children also rated the effects of legal involve- ment on their lives as less negative if they had maternal support, r = -.29, N = 47, p < .05. Thus, children who felt support at home, either by virtue of having a sibling who was also a victim or by virtue of having a mother who was supportive, were less likely to find legal involvement aversive than 110 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. children who had less support at home, again indicating the important role of family-system factors. The family's socioeconomic standing was associated with the caretakers' responses: caretakers of children in lower-income families were more likely to report that the effect of court involvement on the child's life was negative than were higher-income families, r = .23, N = 76, p < .01. Several legal-system factors were also related to the children's and fami- lies' responses to items on our Legal Involvement Questionnaire. Consistent with the findings of Tedesco and Schnell (1987), children who experienced more interviews by police and other authorities before the court hearings rated their legal involvement more negatively, r = .41, N = 38, p < .05. This finding is interesting in light of the results reported above for the children's CBCL scores: as will be recalled, the number of interviews was not associated with the children's improvement. Thus, although the number of interviews did not predict whether the children's general well-being im- proved, it was associated with their attitudes toward legal involvement, an important consideration in its own right. However, the most pervasive legal factor associated with the children's and caretakers' responses was case outcome. Although as indicated above a gender difference emerged in satisfaction with the case outcome, in general the children's and caretakers' attitudes toward the legal system were strongly associated with case outcome, regardless of gender. Using the guilty (plea bargain or "guilty" trial outcome) versus not-guilty (dismissal or "not guilty"/ hung jury trial outcome) variable, a not-guilty outcome was associated with more negative ratings by the children concerning the fairness of the legal system, r = - .35, N = 45, p < .025. When a guilty verdict was reached, caretakers also rated the system as more fair, r = -.34, N = 72, p < .01, and the effect of legal involvement on their lives as more positive, r = -.24, N = 75, p < .05. Not surprisingly, caretakers rated their own and their child's satisfaction with the outcome of the case as more positive if the defendant was found guilty at trial, r = .84, N = 76, p < .001, and r = .79, N = 76, p < .01, respectively, or if there was a guilty outcome in general, r = .44, N = 76, p < .001, and r = .44, N = 76, p < .001, respectively. Thus, understandably, the families felt more satisfied and that the system was more fair if the defendant was convicted. Again implicating the importance of the interaction of family and legal systems, the caretakers' social adjustment was significantly related to atti- tudes about case outcome. Specifically, caretakers' social adjustment pre- dicted their report of how satisfied the child was with the case outcome: the more disturbed caretakers indicated that their children were less satisfied with the case outcome, r = -.27, N = 52, p < .05. This finding does not simply reflect adult bias since children of more disturbed caretakers also reported greater dissatisfaction with case outcome, r = -.29, N = 52, 111 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS p < .05. Since caretaker disturbance did not in fact significantly predict whether the defendant was convicted, these findings suggest that caretaker disturbance affects children's attitudes about case outcome because such caretakers do not help their children accept the case's final disposition. SUGGESTED CHANGES What features of the legal system would the families like to see changed? In exploring answers to this question, we again considered state- ments from all the respondents, not just the testifiers and the control fami- lies. Eighty-three percent of the caretakers who returned questionnaires responded to this question. (Because caretakers at times mentioned multiple changes, the percentages presented below add to more than 100.) A com- mon response, given by 37% of the adult respondents, was that the legal process should move more quickly. Also common was the suggestion that alternative means for taking the child's testimony should be instituted (39%), such as the admission of videotaped testimony, the elimination of cross-examination of child witnesses, or the use of professionals to testify for the child. (The latter procedure is commonly used in some countries, such as Israel; see David, 1990; and Harnon, 1990.) Caretakers also com- mented that greater respect should be paid to the child victim's rights (23%) and that defendants should be given harsher sentences (23%). A number of caretakers mentioned that the child should not have to face the defendant (9%), a comment implicit in suggestions concerning videotaped testimony or professionals who would testify for the child. Only 6% of the caretakers indicated that the legal system was fine the way it was. Thus, 94% of the caretakers who answered this question wanted to see changes. Sixty-nine percent of the children who returned questionnaires re- sponded to our open-ended question. Nineteen percent of those who did commented on the need to shorten the length of their legal involvement. Twenty-one percent mentioned that alternative means for taking their testi- mony should have been used, such as videotaped testimony, limits on the types of questions that could be asked, or not having the defendant present in the courtroom. Twenty-six percent indicated that no changes in the sys- tem were needed, but 74% indicated that changes should be made. SUMMARY Attitudes about the legal system are important for understanding the effects of legal participation on children. Our findings indicate that, on 112 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. average, the effects of not testifying are viewed as more positive than the effects of testifying. Our findings also indicate that different factors predict testifiers' reac- tions to testifying and nontestifiers' reactions to not testifying. Children who were visibly frightened of testifying in front of the defendant and who had been severely abused and/or who lacked maternal support were more likely to feel that testifying had a negative effect on them. In contrast, children who did not testify regretted not testifying if the defendant was found not guilty, if they felt in some way responsible for the abuse, if they had a poorly adjusted caretaker, or if they had endured past abuse. The children and families had a number of suggestions for changes in the legal system. These suggestions were aimed primarily at making the experience of testifying less stressful for the children. 113 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms X. DISCUSSION This study indicates that testifying in criminal court, at least as the system is traditionally constituted, is associated with negative effects for many, but not all, child sexual assault victims. The negative effects are more evident in the short than the long term. But negative effects, particularly in a subgroup of children, are still present even after the prosecution ends. Our findings confirm those of previous researchers (DeFrancis, 1969; Gib- bens & Prince, 1963; Oates & Tong, 1987; Runyan et al., 1988; Tedesco & Schnell, 1987) but also offer new insights into children's fears, experiences, performance, and attitudes associated with legal involvement. Our findings are also surprisingly consistent with studies of children's reactions to other stressful events, such as hospitalization and divorce. For example, in regard to several of these situations, multiple exposures to a stressor and lack of parental support are known to exacerbate children's distress, as was uncovered in the present investigation as well. Moreover, in our study, as in research on children's reactions to anxiety-provoking events generally, vulnerability and protective factors associated with the systems of the child and the family and with the specific stressful event (in the present case, testifying in criminal court) were identified. Below, we summarize our main findings and discuss their implications. BEHAVIORAL ADJUSTMENT AND ATTITUDES TOWARD LEGAL INVOLVEMENT The main goal of the present study was to determine whether testifying in criminal court is deleterious or beneficial for children. On average, the short-term effects on the children's behavioral adjustment, as reported by their caretakers, were more harmful than helpful. In contrast, by the time the cases were resolved, the behavioral adjustment of most, but not all, children who testified was similar to that of children who did not take the 114 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. stand. The general course for these children, as for the control children, was gradual improvement. Nevertheless, continued involvement as a witness for the prosecution can at least temporarily interfere with children's ad- justment. In considering the extent of the children's reactions, it is informative to compare the children's CBCL scores to Achenbach and Edelbrock's (1983) norms. On average, the children in our study scored within the clinical range at intake, especially on the total and internalizing T scales. Scores of children who testified continued to fall within the clinical range or hovered closely around the clinical cutoff at the three follow-up assessments, whereas the control children's scores tended to fall in the normal range by the time of the 7-month and final follow-up tests. Of note, total T scores for the subset of children who did not improve, as assessed at the 7-month and final follow-ups, rose from about 63 (the clinical cutoff) to over 70. These findings indicate that, at the start of the prosecution, the children's well- being was already precarious; the legal system, along with the child and family systems, then played a role in exacerbating or lessening these vulner- able children's disturbance. Given that the legal system is likely to be dealing with many child victim/witnesses who evince clinical disturbance or who are just on the border of the clinical range, sensitivity by the legal system to their needs seems justified. How do the child, family, and legal systems, and the interaction among these three systems, influence children's behavioral adjustment to and atti- tudes about criminal court involvement? We turn next to a discussion of our results concerning child-, family-, and legal-system factors and relate our findings to earlier research on children's reactions to the legal system and stressful events generally. We also identify subgroups of children who may profit from special consideration by the courts. The child system.-Although we expected age differences in children's reactions to criminal court involvement, surprisingly few appeared in the children's behavioral adjustment, as reported by their caretakers. One might predict that younger children would be less stressed by legal involvement because they would have less understanding of the implications of their testimony for their own or the defendant's life. Conversely, younger chil- dren might be more stressed by testifying since they would be more intimi- dated, confused, and emotionally vulnerable. In fact, it was only at the first follow-up that age differences emerged in behavioral disturbance. Older and younger children, compared to 6-11 -year-olds, showed less improve- ment as evinced in the children's total and externalizing behavioral prob- lems scores. This pattern is consistent with the possibility that younger chil- dren are stressed because of their vulnerability whereas older children are stressed because of their greater awareness. Because these findings did not 115 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS replicate at the 7-month and final follow-ups, and because initial (pretesti- mony) differences in behavioral disturbance existed for one age group at the 3-month follow-up, caution is needed in interpreting these results. Studies of children's coping indicate that the relation between age and reactions to stressful events is not a simple one. Consistent with conclusions regarding children's reactions to stressful events such as divorce and birth of a sibling (Dunn, 1988; Rutter, 1983), it may be the form rather than the extent of children's reactions to testifying that is influenced by age; that is, children of all ages may have adverse reactions but express those reactions in somewhat different ways. Future studies using more sensitive measures may uncover more definitive age relations in behavioral disturbance associ- ated with testifying in court. Although consistent age differences failed to emerge when caretaker ratings of adjustment were considered, when asked directly about testifying, either before entering the courtroom or emerging from it, older children expressed more negative feelings than younger children. There are several possible reasons for the older children's more negative attitudes. Older chil- dren's greater understanding of the legal system (e.g., Saywitz, 1989), with concomitant increases in the ability to predict aversive courtroom experi- ences and to appreciate the significance of legal outcomes, might underlie their more negative attitudes. Moreover, older children's awareness of ta- boos concerning sexuality may result in greater embarrassment over having to discuss sexual activity in public (Goldman & Goldman, 1982; Saywitz, Goodman, Nichols, & Moan, 1991). It is also possible that part of the older children's negativity resulted from developmental issues: during adoles- cence, self-determination and autonomy become increasingly important. Given the lack of control that child victims may experience in the court system, adolescents may be particularly at risk of experiencing the process as coercive (see Hetherington et al., 1992). In addition to age differences, gender differences emerged in the chil- dren's reports of their reactions to testifying; females expressed greater negativity about testifying in front of the defendant than did males. It is possible that females find the adversarial system, which is confrontational in nature, less to their liking and more foreign to their experiences than do males (Gilligan, 1982). Alternatively, females may be more willing than males to express negative and fearful emotions. In any case, the gender difference is worthy of note because the majority of children involved in child sexual abuse prosecutions are female. The family system.-Features of the family system were also important in influencing the children's emotional reactions to testifying. In particular, maternal support was associated with improvement, whereas lack of support was associated with continued distress. Maternal support has been impli- cated as important for the emotional recovery of child sexual assault victims 116 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. (Conte & Berliner, 1988; Conte & Schuerman, 1987), and it has long been suspected to affect children's reactions to legal involvement. The role of maternal support as a protective factor in coping with the stress of legal involvement is consistent with the literature on the buffering effects of maternal and social support generally (e.g., Dunn, 1988; Gore, 1985; Mu- sick, Stott, Spencer, Goldman, & Cohler, 1987; Rutter, 1983). Our findings establish that, when mothers react to the disclosure of abuse with hostility, distance, or preoccupation with others' needs (i.e., not the child's needs), their children have more difficulty dealing with the additional stress of legal involvement. This finding emerged from the analyses of the CBCL data as well as from the children's own reports, as obtained on our Legal Involve- ment Questionnaire. On the latter, children who lacked maternal support rated the effects of testifying and of legal involvement on their lives as being more negative than did children who enjoyed maternal support. A lack of maternal support was associated with the presence of a concurrent depen- dency and neglect case and with the child having a closer relationship to the defendant. This combination of factors points to a subgroup of chil- dren-specifically, incest victims-as being particularly at risk of traumatic effects of testifying, although any child who lacks maternal support should probably be considered at risk. The legal system.-A set of stressors posed by the legal system itself was identified, some of which had a more or less pervasive effect on the children and some of which interacted with the child and family system to affect the children's reactions. The finding that testifying multiple times was associ- ated with continued distress is consistent with the results of several previous studies. Tedesco and Schnell (1987) found that victims reported that legal involvement was less helpful the more often they had to testify. DeFrancis (1969) and Gibbens and Prince (1963) also reported that testifying is associ- ated with distress in child sexual assault victims. Our findings indicate, how- ever, that testifying once does not, on average, lead to increased behavioral disturbance, at least as reported by parents, whereas multiple testimony experiences do. The findings are also consonant with those reported in studies of young children's reactions to hospitalization; one hospital admis- sion is not associated with long-term disturbance, but multiple exposures are (Rutter, 1983). It is possible that children can cope with one exposure to a stressful event but that multiple exposures start to erode children's resilience and have a sensitizing effect. According to the framework developed in this Monograph, a child's experience in court is partly determined by the courts' response to a unique set of characteristics and resources of the child and family systems. As men- tioned earlier, it may be possible then to identify subgroups of children who are at particular risk for lack of improvement related to their court involvement. In the present study, testifying more than once was the vari- 117 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS able most highly associated with lack of improvement. Compared to chil- dren who testified only once, children who testified two or more times had higher CBCL scores at intake, had more traumas in their lives, and had higher Day-of-Court scores, indicating greater disturbance at intake as well as 48 hours before having to appear in court. They were rated as being more credible witnesses, and corroborative evidence was more likely to be associated with their claims. These children may have been more likely to testify because prosecutors perceived them as more credible witnesses-for example, if they were able to tell what happened believably, with corrobora- tive evidence to back up their claims. However, these children may be partic- ularly vulnerable. They were already exhibiting a high level of distress and may lack resources to handle more. In short, how professionals in the legal system select children for repeated legal involvement may in part be a func- tion of characteristics of the child and family systems as well as of such legally relevant factors as the severity of the crime and the dangerousness of the accused. However, to the extent that the children selected for partici- pation are particularly vulnerable, special consideration may need to be given to their welfare. Further reseach is needed to confirm this pattern, but, if replicable, the findings may provide a guide for intervention. Another factor that is particularly important within the context of the legal system is the presence or absence of corroborative evidence. The ab- sence of corroborating evidence was related to distress at the 7-month fol- low-up. Presumably, when corroborating testimony is lacking, greater em- phasis is placed on the children's testimony and credibility. Adult rape victims as well as child sexual abuse victims have noted the particular stress associated with being the sole witness to their assaults and the resultant fear of not being believed (Brownmiller, 1975; Rush, 1980). Lack of corrobora- tion is likely to be a source of concern not only for the child but also for those in decision-making roles (Leippe & Romancyzk, 1987). The legal-system variables that we identified were particularly evident at the 7-month follow-up. Although by the time of the final follow-up a subset of children still had not improved, it was difficult to establish why. Contrary to our prediction, the more times the case was continued, the more likely the child's behavioral adjustment was to improve. This is surpris- ing because it is commonly believed that continuances increase children's distress. Our finding appears to reflect the mere passage of time, however. Since continuances typically prolonged the case, continuances gave the chil- dren more time to recover. When the length of the legal process was con- trolled, the number of continuances experienced no longer predicted im- provement. In cases where continuances are positively correlated with testifying multiple times, the effects of continuances might be confused with the effects of testifying. That is, although the continuances in themselves may not be harmful, they could lead to greater distress if they involve the 118 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. child testifying multiple times. There were too few cases of this kind of continuance to determine the effects of this potentially important variable. Future research, ideally with a larger number of children, is needed to investigate this possibility. Even though continuances gave children longer to improve, parents and children complained that the legal system moved too slowly. Thus, self-report measures pointed to length of legal involvement as a significant stressor. Such findings are consistent with former research indicating that prolonged involvement with criminal prosecution is distressing for children (e.g., Runyan et al., 1988). In addition, other legal-system factors appeared to be predictive of the children's improvement. Parents who complained that the system was un- fair, that they were unsatisfied with it, and/or that it had a negative effect on their children's or their own lives were more likely to have children who did not improve. The direction of these effects is unclear, however. On the one hand, it would be understandable for parents of children who do not improve to be more unhappy with the legal system; perhaps in such cases the legal system was more unfair and more destructive for the children. On the other hand, since parents filled out both the CBCL and the Legal Involvement Questionnaire, it is possible that parents who were more un- happy with the legal system projected their feelings onto their child's behav- ior or were just more likely to report negative feelings generally, seeing both their children and the legal system in a negative light. That certain legal-system factors (e.g., case outcome) did not predict improvement as measured by the CBCL was as interesting as the fact that others did. One might also expect certain child-system factors (e.g., gender, severity of the abuse suffered) and family-system factors (e.g., SES) to be related to improvement in behavioral adjustment, but they were not. Some of these factors might have emerged as significant predictors if a larger number of cases had been available for study. Also, although some of these factors were not associated with adjustment as measured by the CBCL, they were related to the children's and parents' attitudes about legal involvement once the cases closed. Regarding these attitudes, there were again clear subgroups of children and parents who found legal participation to be more upsetting, again re- flecting the influence of legal-system factors often in combination with child- and family-system factors: more severely abused children, females, children who had less family support, children whose parents evinced low social adjustment, children from poorer families, children who experieneed re- peated interviewing by authorities, and children who, on the day of court, were more fearful of the defendant and more negative about testifying. Based on research concerning children's reactions to stressful events, many of the factors associated with children's later attitudes would be expected to 119 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS place the children at risk. For example, compared to less severely abused children, those who suffered more severe abuse would, because of their former trauma, be expected to be especially at risk when confronted with a stressful event that provides links to the former trauma. One such link that is of considerable importance legally is facing the defendant, which emerged repeatedly in the study as an important legal- system factor associated with children's attitudes about testifying. In a very real sense, facing the defendant reexposes the child to part of the original precourt stressor, that is, the assault. Although only young children may fail to realize that the defendant cannot hurt them in the courtroom, regard- less of age, seeing the defendant again may revive traumatic memories, reawakening feelings of anger, hurt, and helplessness. However, it is worthy of note that such feelings may occur in or out of the courtroom. One mother wrote to us after our study ended, saying that she felt that her child was not traumatized by the legal process but that events after the case closed were much worse. The defendant, who was on probation, moved back into his home across the street from the child, and the child lived in fear that she would be assaulted again. Despite the financial burden, the family even- tually had to move to a new neighborhood, further disrupting the child's life. Unfortunately, such fears are not entirely unjustified: in a recent case in California, a man raped a girl when she was 9, threatening that he would attack her a second time when she was older. Six years later, after he was let out on parole without the family being notified, he kidnapped and raped the girl again ("Alleged Rape Victim Sues over Parole," 1991). Such dis- tressing examples indicate that it is also important to study child victims' experiences, reactions, and attitudes well after the cases have closed. Children's attitudes about legal involvement, such as facing the defen- dant or the fairness of the legal system, may in the long run be as important, if not more important, than their behavioral adjustment, especially if per- turbations in the latter are relatively short lived. Even after behavioral symp- toms associated with exposure to a stressful event subside, attitudes may prevail. If those attitudes are negative (e.g., that the system is unfair), chil- dren may be at risk of failing to report new experiences of victimization or developing pessimistic attitudes about justice generally. If the attitudes are positive (e.g., that fair treatment is possible), even though the event may have been anxiety provoking and disturbing at the time, it may be viewed as justifiable and worth the distress, and at least faith in the justness of the legal system is maintained. Thus, to obtain a complete understanding of children's reactions to legal involvement, studies are needed of both chil- dren's emotional reactions to and their attitudes about testifying-as well as of not testifying. Regarding the latter, we were also able to identify a subgroup of chil- dren who were upset that they did not have their day in court. Some chil- 120 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. dren who did not testify-those who felt some responsibility for the abuse, those who had been victimized before, and those whose cases ended in a not-guilty outcome-later regretted their lack of legal participation. Al- though we concentrated mainly on the reactions of children who took the stand, it is also important to consider the effects on children of not being allowed to testify. These children may also be at risk of negative attitudes about legal involvement, and, in addition to feelings of lack of control re- sulting from their victimization, they might feel disempowered again by not being able to help convict the offender. CHILDREN'S COURTROOM APPREHENSIONS, EXPERIENCES, AND EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY Other goals of the present study were, on the day of court, to determine children's apprehensions about testifying, the nature of their courtroom experiences, and the characteristics of their eyewitness reports. Our pre- and postcourt measures were designed to tap children's feelings about testi- fying, having a nonoffending parent present, being questioned by the attor- neys, talking to the judge, and seeing the defendant again. One of the most interesting findings was that, although children expressed considerable ap- prehension about testifying, they emerged from the courtroom feeling bet- ter about the experience than they had expected. In particular, they felt better about testifying, about thejudge, and even about the defense attorney (although the defense attorney was still seen in a negative light). Some of the positivity expressed related to relief that the event was over. The children's feelings about testifying in front of the defendant did not change, however. They expressed very negative feelings about testifying in front of the defen- dant both before and after they entered the courtroom. These findings lend support to recent efforts to shield child witnesses from the defendant via closed-circuit television or videotaped testimony (e.g., Maryland v. Craig, 1990). The courtroom observations of the children provide a firsthand ac- count of their legal-system experiences. The children's age and the severity of the abuse seemed to have the greatest influence on their behavior and treatment. Older children could provide more detail, as could children in- volved in more severe cases, and older children were viewed as more credi- ble witnesses, at least during the preliminary hearings. Children who ap- peared more anxious were also viewed as more credible. Also of interest is the finding that, the more frightened the child was of the defendant, the fewer of the prosecutors' questions the children could answer. With an occasional exception, the judges were quite passive in protecting the children. 121 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS The finding that older children could provide more detail is consistent with findings from laboratory studies of children's testimony (e.g., Good- man & Reed, 1986; Goodman, Rudy, Bottoms, & Aman, 1990; Leippe et al., 1991; Marin et al., 1979). Laboratory studies have also documented the effects of intimidation in inhibiting children's reports (e.g., Clarke-Stewart, Thompson, & Lepore, 1989; Dent, 1977; Peters, 1988; for a review, see Pipe & Goodman, 1991). The present research provides evidence for the generalizability of these laboratory findings to the courtroom. In contrast, findings from mock jury studies that younger compared to older child sex- ual assault victims are viewed as more credible witnesses (Duggan et al., 1989; Goodman et al., 1989) were not supported when ratings by our court- room observers were considered. We do not know, however, how the actual jurors viewed the children's testimony. In any case, our findings suggest that mock jury studies should examine the influence of children's demeanor (e.g., anxiety) as well as age on perceived credibility. Our hypotheses concerning family factors were not supported by our data: children who testified against a family member did not provide less detail or evince greater negativity about testifying when observed in the courtroom or when questioned about the experience. Predictions about in- novative legal-system practices were supported, however. We had predicted that child victims/witnesses would evince less fear and provide more detail when granted social support and testimony aids, as offered by innovative courtroom procedures. Although few innovative techniques were used to help the children testify, those we could evaluate indicated that they were associated with less distress (e.g., crying) and more detail (e.g., being able to answer more questions). These findings are consistent with laboratory research indicating that the accuracy of children's testimony is increased by the provision of social support (Moston, 1987) and the use of props (Good- man & Aman, 1990). However, props were also associated with inconsistent testimony regarding peripheral details. Perhaps the props were somewhat distracting. We hope that future studies will determine the replicability and bases of our findings. SATISFACTION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR CHANGE How satisfied in the end were families with the legal system and legal involvement? As would be expected, the families were more satisfied if the defendant was found guilty. In any case, children and parents had a number of suggestions about how to make the experience less traumatic and more sastisfactory. Their suggestions included being able to testify on videotape, not having to testify in front of the defendant, elimination of cross- examination, and hastened legal involvement. Some of these changes would 122 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. probably be interpreted as infringing on defendants' constitutional rights, however. This, of course, raises again the primary dilemma concerning children's testimony in criminal court: how to protect children from trauma while at the same time protecting defendants' rights. Our results indicate that families can do their part by supporting their children. Unfortunately, this is not a realistic option in many cases. The police can do their part by trying their best to obtain corroborating evidence whenever possible. The legal system can do its part by having the child testify fewer times and by shielding frightened children from the defendant, as needed. Perhaps use of alternative testimony procedures (e.g., videotapes) at preliminary hear- ings, when constitutional rights can be more broadly interpreted, would aid children. Also, children who are most at risk (e.g., those who have to testify multiple times, who lack maternal support, and whose claims are not sup- ported by corroborating evidence) should be given special consideration by the courts. In addition to the more general literature on children's ability to cope with stressful events, our findings may provide guidelines to the legal system as to which children would most benefit from protective mea- sures. CAVEATS A variety of caveats apply to our findings. Because we were working in a real-life legal setting, we could not manipulate and control variables as we would in the laboratory, and we could not randomly assign subjects to conditions. Studies embedded within a legal context invariably suffer from such difficulties. Here, we highlight some of the additional problems associ- ated with our project. One problem concerns the representativeness of our sample. Although a surprisingly high proportion of the people we approached agreed to par- ticipate, our sample was nonrepresentative in a number of ways. Families of incest victims, females, and older children were less likely to agree to participate than we had hoped. The resulting bias in our sample might have distorted our findings. Because children who failed to improve were ones who lacked maternal support, and because maternal support may be absent in a substantial proportion of incest cases (Everson et al., 1989), it is possible that our findings underestimate the negative effect of criminal court involvement on such children. Even for families who agreed to participate, we have missing data on a variety of measures, and the reasons for these omissions may have important implications for our findings. For example, children who refused to complete our After-Court Measure may have done so because they were too upset about their experiences in court to be inter- viewed. Thus, children who had the most negative experiences may have 123 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS been unavailable for our postcourt interview, again biasing our findings toward a rosier picture of children's reactions to court involvement. A second problem involves our heavy reliance on the CBCL, a single measure of children's disturbance that was completed by parents. Possible parental bias associated with our measure could have been examined and countered by observational measures, psychiatric interview, or self-report. Several considerations influenced our decision to use the CBCL as our main measure of the children's well-being. One concerned the difficulty of find- ing a valid and reliable measure of children's disturbance that was appro- priate for a broad age range: the CBCL met our needs in this respect better than any other instrument; a good alternative was not apparent. Another concerned legal and ethical restrictions associated with the ongoing prosecu- tions. Because the children were involved in active criminal cases, prosecu- tors were hesitant for us to interview the children directly. If we had done so, defense attorneys might have claimed that we were tampering with the witnesses (as one attorney did when he saw a child completing our After- Court Measure). Moreover, defense attorneys might have been more likely to subpoena our data, potentially forcing us to violate researcher-participant confidentiality. Finally, even if prosecutors had approved direct interviews, our impression was that many parents would have declined participation in the study. As noted earlier, during our initial recruitment calls, parents often asked us if we had to interview their children and expressed concern that they were already enduring too many interviews by unfamiliar profes- sionals. The CBCL could also be criticized for not providing a sensitive measure of the types of problems that child sexual abuse victims evidence. Relatively few items on the CBCL deal with sexual problems, for example. Again, no better substitute was available. Fortunately, efforts to develop measures sensitive to emotional problems that result from child sexual abuse are cur- rently under way (Friedrich et al., 1991). Another problem concerns the relative paucity of subjects in relation to the many variables of interest. As a result, some of our findings may have been significant by chance alone. Statistical "purity" was further corrupted by the fact that it was impossible to obtain complete information on every child, resulting in missing data on a number of variables. These problems typically did not affect tests of our main hypotheses, however. Much of our study was admittedly exploratory, and future researchers should attempt to replicate or disconfirm our findings. Nevertheless, our main predictions concerning the effects of testifying were supported, and these findings stand on firmer statistical and conceptual ground. Our findings might also be attacked on the basis that we studied only three jurisdictions, all in the same state. A nationwide study would be useful in determining whether some jurisdictions' procedures lead to less stressful 124 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225ff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. outcomes for children. Fortunately, at least one such study is currently under way (Whitcomb & Runyan, 1992). Finally, we followed the children for a relatively short time. We do not know how their legal experiences will affect them once they are older. FUTURE DIRECTIONS Much more research is needed before we will have a complete picture of the emotional effects of criminal court testimony on children. We would like to share with others several of our ideas for future research. We did not study a number of potentially important contributions to children's reactions to court. For example, we did not evaluate the prosecu- tor's ability to establish rapport with the child and the family, and we had only sketchy data on the children's involvement with social services. More- over, we had little information on the initial investigation phase by police and/or social services. Although our findings indicate that fear of the defen- dant was part of the stressful nature of testifying, other possible courtroom stressors (e.g., harshness of the questioning) could be examined in greater detail. Future researchers might profitably concentrate on these potentially informative areas. Investigators should examine techniques to limit the emotional distress experienced by the subset of children most at risk for adverse effects of testifying. Although the Supreme Court recently ruled that closed-circuit television could be used to shield child witnesses in child sexual abuse cases, research is needed to determine if this technology is indeed beneficial. Also, it will be important to determine if its use unduly biases the jury toward guilt (see Swim, Borgida, & McCoy, 1991), as feared by some members of the Court (e.g., Coy v. Iowa, 1988). Preparation programs to aid children in coping with the stresses of testifying have recently been instituted and evaluated, showing promising results (Sas, 1991). Further research along these lines would be beneficial. Our study concentrated mainly on children's reactions and somewhat on nonoffending parents' reactions to criminal court involvement. We did not interview defendants to obtain their side of the story. Research is just beginning to evaluate the perceptions and reactions of other participants (e.g., defense attorneys, judges, jurors) in child sexual abuse prosecutions (Gray, 1988; Tidwell & Lipovsky, 1991), perceptions that will help provide a more complete picture of legal involvement. Valuable lessons can be learned from such studies. Most research on children's reactions to court involvement have con- cerned child sexual assault victims, probably because they are most likely to testify as victim/witnesses in American criminal courts (Leippe et al., 1989; 125 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Whitcomb et al., 1985). Nevertheless, other children may also face distress when serving as witnesses. Reactions to legal involvement should also be studied in children who witness homicide (Pynoos & Eth, 1984), domestic violence (Goodman & Rosenberg, 1987), severe accidents (Terr, 1990), and other traumatic events. Finally, future researchers interested in children's reactions to legal involvement would profit from exploring theoretical models developed to understand children's reactions to other stressful events (e.g., bereavement, divorce). It is possible that a more refined understanding of children's reac- tions to stressful events generally would result. For example, such models indicate that the meaning of the event to the child and changes in family interaction patterns that accompany stressful events have important influ- ences on children's reactions (Dunn, 1988). CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, our findings confirm that testimony in criminal court is associated with adverse emotional effects for at least some children. Specifi- cally, a subgroup of children who testify do not show as rapid or complete improvement as children who do not testify. Our findings can be inter- preted in light of studies of children's reactions to other stressful events. Taken as a whole, these studies indicate that specific protective and vulnera- bility factors are operative, some specific to particular situations like the courtroom, but others more general in nature. Based on an understanding of these factors in relation to the child, family, and legal systems, it is possi- ble that children in particular need of protection can be identified. Although the findings of our study indicate that criminal court testi- mony is stressful for many children and often accompanied by dissatisfac- tion for children and caretakers, it need not be so. We did not study how the children were prepared for the ordeal of testifying, but our impression was that systematic attempts to prepare the children were made only infre- quently. Once in court, few innovative techniques were used to make the event less burdensome. Under other circumstances, criminal court testi- mony may be less stressful (Berliner & Barbieri, 1984; Sas, 1991). In any case, it would be incorrect to interpret our findings as supporting the view that child sexual abuse cases should not be prosecuted. We did not have a comparison group of nonprosecuted cases. Moreover, the distress of the subgroup of children who testified needs to be considered in light of the distress of the subgroup of children who were upset because they did not take the stand. Rather, our findings are more appropriately interpreted as indicating that changes in the current legal system are needed so that children can serve as more effective and less traumatized witnesses. 126 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms APPENDIX VARIABLES MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT Sexual Assault Profile (adapted from Conte & Berliner, 1984) Date of first disclosure Date of disclosure to police or social services Date case filed at prosecutor's office Date of last offense Child's birth date Child's age (in years) Child's gender: 1 (female) and 2 (male) Child's race/ethnicity: 1 (majority) and 2 (minority) Age at onset of abuse (in years) Age at end of abuse (in years) Type of charges: First-, second-, or third-degree sexual assault: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Attempted rape: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Incest: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Sexual assault on a child: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Other offenses (charges involving child's body, such as kidnapping, child physical abuse): 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Corroborative evidence (e.g., medical evidence, other witness): 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Time lapse between last assault and victim report: 1 (within 48 hours), 2 (2 days-2 weeks), 3 (2 weeks-1 month), 4 (1 month-6 months), 5 (6 months or more) Frequency of sexually abusive contacts with the defendant: 1 (one time), 2 (limited; 2-3 times), 3 (extended) 127 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Previous sexual abuse: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Previous physical abuse: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Nonoffending parent was victim of sexual abuse: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Maternal support at time of disclosure: 0 (no: e.g., hostile, disbelief, concerned with self) and 1 (yes: e.g., supportive) Maternal support throughout legal process: 0 (no: e.g., hostile, disbelief, concerned with self) and 1 (yes: e.g., supportive) Paternal support at time of disclosure: 0 (no: e.g., hostile, disbelief, concerned with self) and 1 (yes: e.g., supportive) Paternal support throughout legal process: 0 (no: e.g., hostile, disbelief, concerned with self) and 1 (yes: e.g., supportive) Child's perception of responsibility for the abuse: 1 (no responsibility), 2 (partial responsibility), 3 (child blames self for abuse) Child's belief about negative consequences: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child receiving psychological counseling: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child's current living situation: 0 (out of home) and 1 (parent's home) Siblings of child are known victims of sexual abuse: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child involved in concurrent dependency and neglect case: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child testified in concurrent dependency and neglect case: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Defendant's age (in years) Defendant's gender: 1 (male) and 2 (female) Defendant's race/ethnicity: 1 (majority) and 2 (minority) Defendant's initial stance on the abuse: 1 (denial), 2 (admission but takes no responsibility, e.g., drunk and blanked out), 3 (accepts full responsibility) Defendant's final stance on the abuse: 1 (denial), 2 (admission but takes no responsibility, e.g., drunk and blanked out), 3 (accepts full responsibility) Number of perpetrators Type of relationship scale: 128 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. 1 (stranger), 2 (known but not in position of trust), 3 (position of trust), 4 (parent or stepparent) Type of sexual abuse scale: 1 (exhibitionism), 2 (nongenital), 3 (genital but no penetration), 4 (penetration) Injury scale: 1 (none), 2 (mild), 3 (moderate), 4 (severe) Force scale: 1 (none), 2 (mild), 3 (moderate), 4 (severe) Duration of abuse scale: 1 (1 day), 2 (2 days-6 months), 3 (6 months-5 years), 4 (over 5 years) Severity of abuse scale: Sum of scores for type of sexual activity, injury, force, and duration of abuse scales Outcome of case: 0 (not guilty) and 1 (guilty, plea bargain) Outcome of trial: 1 (not guilty, hung jury) and 2 (guilty) Sentence: 1 (deferred judgment or sentence), 2 (probation, no incarceration), 3 (county jail), 4 (prison) Defendant found guilty of other charges: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child experienced other significant traumas since sexual assault: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child/family threatened since assault: 1 (no threat), 2 (moderate, e.g., harassment, ostracism), 3 (extreme, e.g., kidnapping, murder) Likelihood that sexual abuse took place: 1 (extremely likely), 2 (likely), 3 (uncertain), 4 (unlikely), 5 (extremely unlikely) Likelihood that defendant is the person who sexually abused the child: 1 (extremely likely), 2 (likely), 3 (uncertain), 4 (unlikely), 5 (extremely unlikely) Socioeconomic Status (SES) (Watt, 1976; adaptation of Hollingshead Scale) Seven-point scale: 1 (high SES) and 7 (low SES) Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983) Total T score Internalizing T score Externalizing T score Improvement: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) 129 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Teacher Report Form (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1986) Total T score Social Adjustment Scale-Revised (Weissman et al., 1978) Mean total score Spielberger State Anxiety Score (Spielberger et al., 1970; Spielberger, 1973) Mean total score Before-Court Measure Court appearance number Total number of family/friends waiting with the child Where child waited Amount of time child waited before entering courtroom Feelings about going to court: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about possibility of primary caretaker in courtroom: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about talking to judge: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about talking to prosecutor: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about talking to defense attorney: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about seeing defendant in court: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about telling the jury what happened: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Day of Court Measure Total score Courtroom Observation Measure Type of court appearance Number of times child has already testified Child's mood: 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (neutral), 4 (sad), 5 (very sad) Child's self-confidence: 1 (very unconfident), 2 (unconfident), 3 (neutral), 4 (confident), 5 (very confident) 130 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Child's confidence of statements: 1 (very unconfident), 2 (unconfident), 3 (neutral), 4 (confident), 5 (very confident) Child's anxiety: 1 (very relaxed), 2 (relaxed), 3 (neutral), 4 (anxious/fearful), 5 (very anxious/fearful) Child's sympathy/anger toward defendant: 1 (very sympathetic), 2 (somewhat sympathetic), 3 (neutral), 4 (somewhat angry), 5 (very angry) Child's cooperativeness/anger with attorney: 1 (very cooperative), 2 (cooperative), 3 (neutral), 4 (angry), 5 (very angry) Child's speech fluency: 1 (very faltering), 2 (somewhat faltering), 3 (relatively fluent), 4 (very fluent) Child's audibility/inaudibility: 1 (loud), 2 (audible), 3 (barely audible), 4 (inaudible) Child's ability to answer questions: 1 (silent or only said "I don't know"), 2 (answered some questions), 3 (answered most questions), 4 (answered all questions) Child's resistance/susceptibility to leading questions: 1 (very resistant), 2 (resistant), 3 (influenced), 4 (very influenced) Child's spontaneous detail provided to attorney's questions: 1 (no detail), 2 (little detail), 3 (some detail), 4 (a lot of detail) Recantation of assault: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Recantation of identity of perpetrator: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child provided inconsistent testimony about main actions of assault: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child provided inconsistent testimony about frequency of assault: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child provided inconsistent testimony about where assault occurred: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child provided inconsistent testimony about when assault occurred: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child provided inconsistent testimony about peripheral details: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Attorney's use of leading questions: 1 (no leading questions), 2 (some leading questions), 3 (many leading questions), 4 (almost exclusively leading questions) Attorney's focus: 1 (mainly assault or central information), 2 (peripheral details), 3 (irrelevancies) Age-appropriate language of attorney's questions: 1 (virtually all questions age inappropriate), 2 (most questions age inappropriate), 3 (half age appropriate, half not), 4 (most questions age appropriate), 5 (virtually all questions age appropriate) 131 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Age-appropriate content of attorney's questions: 1 (virtually all questions age inappropriate), 2 (most questions age inappropriate), 3 (half age appropriate, half not), 4 (most questions age appropriate), 5 (virtually all questions age appropriate) Child cried: 1 (no), 2 (a little), 3 (a lot) Child's credibility: 1 (not at all credible), 2 (not very credible), 3 (credible), 4 (highly credible) Child's overall demeanor: 1 (very calm), 2 (calm), 3 (some distress), 4 (very distressed) Child's fear of defendant: 1 (very unfrightened), 2 (unfrightened), 3 (neutral), 4 (frightened), 5 (very frightened) Child permitted to sit on parent's/supportive other's lap: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child permitted to hold a toy: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child permitted to testify with aid of props: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child permitted to testify via videotape: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Defendant seated out of view: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child's testimony given in judge's chambers: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child's testimony given via closed-circuit television: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Courtroom cleared of spectators: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Parent/loved one permitted to remain in courtroom: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Victim assistant permitted to remain in courtroom: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Judge questioned child about competency: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child deemed competent: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Judge actively took steps to protect the child: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Judge actively took steps that would increase child's discomfort: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Judge was passive in his/her dealings with the child: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Judge questioned child about factual information: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) 132 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Judge asks for clarifying information from child: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Attorney's demeanor toward child: 1 (very supportive), 2 (supportive), 3 (neutral), 4 (unsupportive), 5 (very unsupportive) Judge's demeanor toward child: 1 (very supportive), 2 (supportive), 3 (neutral), 4 (unsupportive), 5 (very unsupportive) Trial to jury: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Other events adding to child's possible stress: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Defendant present in courtroom when child testified: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Approximate number of people in courtroom when child testified: 1 (1-10), 2 (11-20), 3 (21-30), 4 (31-40), 5 (41-50) Total length of time child was in court Length of time child was placed under direct examination Length of time child was placed under cross-examination Length of time child was placed under redirect examination Length of time child was placed under re-cross-examination Length of time judge questioned child Number of recesses Length of recesses After-Court Measure Feelings about having gone to court: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about primary caretaker having been/not been in courtroom: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about having talked to judge: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about having talked to prosecutor: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about having talked to defense attorney: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about having seen defendant in court: Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) Feelings about having told the jury what happened: 133 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Verbal response, positive (1), ambivalent/neutral (2), negative (3) Faces scale, 1 (very happy), 2 (happy), 3 (unhappy), 4 (very unhappy) What could have made the child more comfortable? (write in) Legal Involvement Questionnairelo Did the child testify? 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Overall effect of testifying/not testifying: 1 (very positive), 2 (somewhat positive), 3 (somewhat negative), 4 (very negative) Satisfaction with case outcome (caretaker asked to indicate separately satisfaction for self and for child): 1 (very unsatisfied), 2 (somewhat unsatisfied), 3 (somewhat satisfied), 4 (very satisfied) Interactions with legal personnel (separate judgment made for victim advocate, prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, judge, social worker, police, guardian ad litem, district attorney investigator, researchers, and "other"): 1 (very positive), 2 (somewhat positive), 3 (somewhat negative), 4 (very negative) Has child ever testified in any other legal proceeding aside from this case (caretaker answers only): 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Effect of legal process (caretaker answers only): Marital relationship improved: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Marital problems: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Worked extra hours: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Missed time at work: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Increased income: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Loss of income: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Brought family closer together: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Family arguments: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child behavior improved: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Child behavior worse: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) 10 For questions children answered on the Legal Involvement Questionnaire, the terms "positive" and "negative" were replaced with "good" and "bad," respectively. 134 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Strengthened faith in God: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Lessened faith in God: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Friendships strengthened: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Friendships strained: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Increased social contacts outside family: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Decreased social contacts outside family: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Overall effect of participation in criminal investigation and prosecution on caretaker's/child's life (caretaker completed separately for self and child): 1 (very positive), 2 (somewhat positive), 3 (somewhat negative), 4 (very negative) Fairness/unfairness of criminal justice system: 1 (very fair), 2 (somewhat fair), 3 (somewhat unfair), 4 (very unfair) Speed/slowness of the criminal justice system: 1 (very fast), 2 (somewhat fast), 3 (somewhat slow), 4 (very slow) Communication about the case (caretaker answers only): 1 (very informed), 2 (somewhat informed), 3 (somewhat uninformed), 4 (very uninformed) How many times has child been questioned about the assault by officials, not counting days in court (e.g., by police, detectives, social workers, lawyers) (caretaker answers only) What changes needed in legal process? (write in) Case Progress Number of continuances Number of continuances involving the child Number of times child came to the courthouse (subpoenaed) Number of times child testified Length of the legal process Length of time from disclosure to preliminary hearing Length of time from preliminary hearing to trial or plea bargain Length of time from trial or plea bargain to sentencing Did the case "close" (reach conclusion) before the end of the study: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) Defendant still at large: 0 (no) and 1 (yes) 135 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms REFERENCES Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1983). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist and the Revised Child Behavior Profile. Burlington: University of Vermont. Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1986). Manual for the Teacher's Report Form and teacher version of the Child Behavior Profile. Burlington: University of Vermont. Achenbach, T. 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Behavioral comparisons of children from abusive and distressed families. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 51, 702-708. Wyatt, G. E., & Powell, G. J. (Eds.). (1988). Lasting effects of child sexual abuse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 141 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are grateful to many people for their help. The study would not have been possible without the support of the Denver, Arapahoe, and Ad- ams County District Attorneys' Offices. In Denver, we are especially grateful to Karen Steinhauser, chief deputy district attorney of the Domestic Vio- lence Unit, and her entire staff; Steve Siegel, director of program develop- ment; and Norman S. Early, Jr., Denver County district attorney. In Arapa- hoe, we enjoyed the support of John Jordan, chief deputy district attorney, and Jim Peters, deputy district attorney, both of whom provided invaluable assistance; the entire staff of the Victim Advocates Office, especially Sher Halford; and Robert Gallagher, Jr., Arapahoe County district attorney. In Adams, we thank Robert Grant, chief deputy district attorney; the entire staff of the Victim Advocates Office, in particular Natalie Maier and Betty North; and James F. Smith, Adams County district attorney. Kitty Arnold, director of the Arapahoe County Department of Social Services, also facili- tated our study. Ralph Mason, Shelley Bresnick, Shelle Kraft, Annette Hahn, and Michelle Allen provided valuable research assistance, and Drs. Phillip Shaver, Harry Gollob, Marshall Haith, and Kenneth Levy offered helpful editorial advice and statistical consultations. Two anonymous re- viewers offered a number of insightful suggestions concerning an earlier draft of this Monograph. We also express gratitude to the National Institute of Justice, especially Dr. Richard Titus and Dr. George Schollenberger, for overseeing the project. Finally, special thanks go to the children and families who participated in our research. Measures reported in this paper are available on request from the first author. This project was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Justice (85-IJ-CX-0020) to Dr. Gail S. Goodman. Correspondence concern- ing this research should be addressed to Dr. Gail Goodman, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616. 142 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms COMMENTARY STEPS TOWARD FORENSICALLY RELEVANT RESEARCH John E. B. Myers The research described in this Monograph is an important step forward in our understanding of children as witnesses. The research provides valu- able empirical support for reforms designed to make testifying less stressful for children. Although reducing children's stress is a worthy goal, the lasting importance of this research lies not in the finding that testifying is stressful or in the support that the research provides for techniques to reduce chil- dren's stress. In the final analysis, the most important contribution of this research is the discovery that, for some children, testifying in the traditional manner interferes with the child's ability to answer questions, thus un- dermining the very purpose of the trial-discovery of truth. This finding, more than any other, will improve the ability of the legal system to foster children's emotional well-being while protecting the rights of individuals accused of child abuse. A Lawyer's-Eye View of Litigation Psychologists, physicians, and social workers sometimes wonder at the machinations of lawyers. The gulf that so often separates lawyers from other professionals is not surprising when one contrasts the training and experience of the lawyer with that of the researcher, mental health profes- sional, or physician. To place the research in this Monograph in context, it is useful to dwell momentarily on the perspective that lawyers bring to the courtroom. In medieval England, certain legal disputes could be resolved through trial by battle. Litigants retained professional men-at-arms to wage battle 143 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS under the watchful eye of the king's judges (Blackstone, 1765). Vestiges of trial by battle linger in today's legal system. The professional soldier has become a lawyer. The suit of mail is now a three-piece suit. Sharp steel has given way to sharp words. Like the contest of old, however, modern trials are highly adversarial. Although the comparison of modern trials to trial by battle is exagger- ated, the similarities provide a measure of insight into today's criminal jus- tice system. Modern criminal trials are firmly grounded on the adversary model, where the goal is victory. In presenting evidence, attorneys do not strive for balance, nor do they attempt to paint the entire picture of what occurred. Rather, each attorney presents the evidence most favorable to his or her client. Cross-examination is conceived by many attorneys in martial terms, as a weapon deployed to undermine the opponent's case. The judge administers a complex set of rules designed to ensure a "fair fight." When all the evidence has been presented-when the dust of battle has settled- the jury considers the competing claims and renders a verdict. The theory of the adversary system is that the truth emerges from the orchestrated clash of opposing views. Additional insight into the perspective of many prosecutors and crimi- nal defense attorneys comes with an understanding of the lawyer's single- minded loyalty to the client. Clients are entitled to zealous representation (American Bar Association, 1969, 1983). No group of attorneys takes the responsibility of zealous representation more seriously than defense attor- neys. For defense counsel, the presumption of innocence is more than a platitude; it is a creed. Wolfram writes: "A defense lawyer's main responsi- bility is to further the interests of his or her client as defined by the client. Typically the client's interest is to obtain the least costly sanction and an acquittal of all charges if possible. .. . The lawyer's knowledge that the client is guilty does not substantially affect the kind of defense that should be afforded" (1986, p. 590). In view of the professional responsibility to put the client's interests first, it is not surprising that defense attorneys take aim at witnesses called by the prosecution, including children. Defense attorneys do not relish at- tacking children's credibility. Nevertheless, the defense attorney's duty is to the client, not the child, and defense attorneys act responsibly when they challenge the testimony of prosecution witnesses. The Importance of the Present Study With the highly adversarial nature of the criminal trial in mind, three aspects of the present research are discussed below. 144 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Despite the Stress Caused by Testifying, Society Is Justified in Asking Children to Testify The U.S. Supreme Court observed that "child abuse is one of the most difficult crimes to detect and prosecute, in large part because there often are no witnesses except the victim" (Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 1987, p. 60). In many cases, the child's testimony is the most vital evidence of wrongdoing. Yet parents and mental health professionals are understandably hesitant to subject children to the rigors of the courtroom. Testifying is stressful for nearly all witnesses, children and adults alike. Indeed, stress is an inevitable by-product of the adversary system. Thus, if children are to continue testifying, the goal of reform efforts cannot be the elimination of stress. Rather, reforms must concentrate on lowering stress and supporting children before and after they testify. One of the most important findings of the present research is that, although testifying is stressful, children weather the storm. The fact that most children who testify improve with time supports the continued use of their testimony. All child witnesses are entitled to humane and developmen- tally appropriate treatment at the hands of the legal system, and special accommodations must be made for children at risk of lasting trauma. The overriding theme of this research, however, is that children are strong and resilient. They bounce back. Because children's testimony is indispensable to their protection, the fact that testifying does not appear to cause perma- nent harm is tremendously reassuring. Provided that steps are taken to support children, judges and prosecutors can feel comfortable asking them to take that long walk from the courtroom door to the witness stand. Face-to-Face Confrontation with the Defendant Has a Deleterious Effect on Children's Testimony That Justifies Modification of Traditional Methods of Testifying The present study confirms that many children are anxious about testi- fying in front of the defendant. The anxiety and fear induced by face-to- face confrontation raise legitimate concerns about the psychological welfare of child witnesses. However, the importance of this study lies, not in con- firmation of the universally acknowledged fact that face-to-face confronta- tion is difficult, but in the finding that, for some children, face-to-face con- frontation undermines the completeness of testimony. The raison d'etre of the criminal trial is discovery of truth. Thus, it is vital that testimony be accurate and complete. The truth-seeking purpose of the trial is undermined by practices that impair the ability of witnesses to communicate. With the importance of accurate and complete testimony 145 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS in mind, the most important finding of the present study is that the children who appeared most frightened of the defendant were able to answer fewer of the prosecutor's questions. That is, children who were most intimidated by face-to-face confrontation with the defendant provided less complete testi- mony, undermining the truth-seeking purpose of the trial. The fact that face-to-face confrontation impairs some children's ability to communicate lends resolute and much needed empirical support to reforms that make testifying less stressful. Testimony via closed-circuit television.--If face-to-face confrontation with the defendant causes anxiety for most children and undermines the ability of some to communicate, the solution appears straightforward: allow chil- dren to testify outside the presence of the defendant, and use closed-circuit television to present the child's testimony to the jury. But it is not that simple. The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that, "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him." The Confrontation Clause "guarantees the defendant a face-to-face meeting with the witnesses" (Coy v. Iowa, 1988, p. 1016). In Maryland v. Craig (1990), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the defendant's right to face-to-face confrontation is not absolute and that "a State's interest in the physical and psychological well-being of child abuse victims may be sufficiently important to outweigh, at least in some cases, a defendant's right to face his or her accusers in court" (p. 3167). Thus, the defendant's right to face-to-face confrontation may be curtailed on a show- ing that confrontation will cause serious emotional distress. Dispensing with face-to-face confrontation is particularly appropriate where confrontation will "impair the child's ability to communicate" (p. 3170). The present study provides valuable support for the argument that face-to-face confrontation impairs the ability of certain children to communicate, thus supporting use of closed-circuit television to allow selected children to testify outside the physical presence of the defendant. During the past decade, tremendous energy was devoted to passing and defending the constitutionality of laws that allow selected children to testify via closed-circuit television. Such laws are now on the books in a majority of states. Although the present study supports the use of closed- circuit television, it is clear from the Supreme Court's decisions that face-to- face confrontation-although difficult-will remain the norm for child wit- nesses. Dispensing with confrontation will be the rare exception. Because closed-circuit television is rarely used, researchers, legislators, judges, and attorneys should redirect their attention elsewhere. The move- ment in research and practice should be away from "high-tech" solutions and toward readily available, inexpensive, less controversial, and, in the long run, more important methods of helping children cope on the witness stand. 146 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Allowing a supportive adult to accompany the child while the child testi- fies.-Probably the most obvious way to reduce children's stress is to allow a parent or other trusted adult to remain in the courtroom while the child testifies. The present study confirms the emotional importance of a support- ive adult, but the research does more than that. The study reveals that the presence of a supportive adult actually increases children's ability to testify. Presence of a support person increases children's ability to answer questions asked by the prosecutor. Of equal importance, the reassurance afforded by a supportive adult helps children cope with cross-examination by defense counsel. Thus, when a supportive adult is present, children are less likely during cross-examination to recant the identity of the perpetrator, recant central facts, or provide inconsistent answers regarding peripheral issues. These are extremely important findings. The truth-finding function of the criminal trial is measurably enhanced by the simple expedient of allowing a supportive adult to remain in the courtroom. These findings should be used to advocate for expanded use of support persons for child witnesses. Positioning the child to reduce eye contact with the defendant.-In addition to allowing supportive adults in court, other techniques are available to help children cope with the stress of testifying. Although the Constitution normally mandates face-to-face confrontation, the Constitution does not require witnesses to make eye contact with the defendant (Coy v. Iowa, 1988). Thus, children do not have to look at the defendant, and, in appropriate cases, the defendant can be seated outside the child's direct line of sight without affront to the Constitution. Altering the courtroom to make children more comfortable.-Most criminal courtrooms in the United States are similarly configured and furnished. Does the law permit modification of the solemn halls of justice so that chil- dren can be more comfortable? If modification decreases children's stress and increases their ability to provide accurate and complete testimony, the answer is a resounding yes. The origins of the contemporary American courtroom are found in England. Historical research discloses that "the courts, as we know them, were developed in the 12th and 13th centuries" (Doerksen, 1990, p. 480). The physical layout of today's courtroom is more the result of practical necessity and convenience than of law or principle. Birks writes that "during the Middle Ages, and even later, courts were rough and noisy places" (Birks, 1972, p. 2). The bar that separates the judge and attorneys from the specta- tors was initially installed to protect the former from the latter. In early times, the king's judges followed the monarch on his travels about the king- dom. Court was held in any convenient location: the great hall of a castle, a meeting room, even an open field. The judge sat on a wooden bench and had no writing desk. As courtrooms became permanent fixtures, and as "law reports began to be printed in the sixteenth century and the practice 147 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS of examining witnesses in open court was generally adopted, a desk for the judges obviously became desirable" (Birks, 1972, p. 3). Today, of course, the judge's desk is the most prominent feature in the courtroom. The point of this brief historical sojourn is that the configuration of the modern courtroom is not cast in stone. If altering the furnishings or formalities of the courtroom will make children more comfortable and im- prove their testimony, nothing in law or the Constitution forbids circum- spect modification that does not compromise the seriousness of the proceed- ing. This is not to say, of course, that judges will rush to change the courtroom. Birks (1972) observes that "there is no doubt that lawyers have always clung to the relics of by-gone days, be they antiquated laws, out- moded dress or ancient ceremonial" (p.1). Encouraging judges to take chil- dren's developmental needs into consideration takes time, but the dividends are worth the effort in terms of children's mental health and society's need for accurate decision making. A Unified Family Court Holds Promise for Reducing the Psychological Trauma of Testifying Multiple Times The present study and other research indicates that testifying multiple times has a deleterious effect on children. Unfortunately, there is no way to eliminate the likelihood that some children will testify more than once. Not only are children required to testify at various stages of the same legal proceeding, but in some cases there are multiple proceedings in different courts involving the same child, and the child may be required to testify one or more times in each proceeding. A model that holds promise for reducing the number of times that children testify is a unified family court where all proceedings concerning a child are handled by one court. Versions of the family-court model are in operation in several states (Florida, Hawaii, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont). A number of states, including California, Kentucky, Nevada, Virginia, and West Virginia, are experimenting with the unified family court. Research on Child Witnesses Should Focus Increasingly on Forensically Relevant Information Research that is relevant to children as witnesses falls into several cate- gories: first, research on children's developmental capabilities, including memory, suggestibility, and moral reasoning; second, research describing background characteristics of cases involving children; third, research on children's performance in actual and simulated forensic contexts. 148 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Developmental Research Needless to say, most research on child development does not focus on children as witnesses. Nevertheless, much of the basic child development literature has direct forensic relevance. For example, research on children's understanding of the concept of time (e.g., Friedman, 1991) has immediate implications regarding the constitutional principle that the defendant has a right to notice of the charges, including, in some instances, the time frame in which the crime allegedly occurred (Myers, 1992). Basic research on children's memory (e.g., Flin, Boon, Knox, & Bull, in press; Hudson & Fivush, 1991) helps dispel doubts lingering in the minds of some lawyers and judges concerning children's competence to testify. One of the most common methods of attacking the credibility of a witness is to point out discrepancies between the witness's trial testimony and the witness's earlier statements. Research that explains that it is developmentally normal for young children to be inconsistent (e.g., Fivush, 1992; Fivush, Hamond, Harsch, Singer, & Wolf, 1991) goes far toward rehabilitating children's credibility and blunting the sting of cross-examination focused on inconsis- tencies in the child's description of events. In the past decade, psychologists turned their attention to develop- mental research that is increasingly generalizable to actual forensic contexts (e.g., Goodman, Hirschman, Hepps, & Rudy, 1991; Saywitz, Goodman, Nicholas, & Moan, 1991; Saywitz & Nathanson, 1992; Saywitz & Snyder, 1992; Tobey & Goodman, in press; Warren, Hulse-Trotter, & Tubbs, 1991). This research has immensely important implications for the investigation and litigation of child abuse cases. Unfortunately, this valuable research- appearing as it does in the psychological rather than the legal literature- seldom finds its way into the hands of judges and attorneys who could put it to good use in the field. More effective channels are desperately needed to transfer the accumulating psychological knowledge about child witnesses to the legal and judicial professions. Research Describing Background Characteristics of Cases Where Children Are Involved Some research on children in the legal system focuses on what may be described as background or demographic features of cases. For example, researchers have studied the percentage of cases accepted for prosecution in a particular jurisdiction, the proportion of children who testify in ac- cepted cases, and the gender, age, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity of children who testify (Education Development Center et al., 1991). Although background and demographic information about cases is of some interest, such data are of very little practical utility in the day-to-day 149 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS world of child abuse litigation. Research to date on case characteristics is probably sufficient to explore such matters, and future research on children in the legal system should focus on issues of greater forensic relevance. Children's Performance in Actual and Simulated Forensic Contexts In addition to the forensically relevant developmental research de- scribed above, the most exciting research on child witnesses is typified by the study described in this Monograph. Research focused on improving the accuracy and completeness of children's testimony holds the greatest prom- ise of furthering the welfare of children and the interests of justice (e.g., Saywitz & Nathanson, 1992; Tobey & Goodman, in press). Directions for Future Research In 1987 Melton and Thompson observed that "psychologists interested in studying children as witnesses typically have not focused on the most pressing psycholegal issues" (1987, p. 210). Although researchers are in- creasingly sensitive to the need for greater forensic relevance, vitally impor- tant issues remain largely untouched. Psychological research is needed on the topics outlined below. Children's hearsay statements.-Children disclose abuse to parents, friends, teachers, social workers, therapists, and others. Children's disclo- sure statements often constitute vitally important evidence of abuse. Never- theless, disclosure statements are usually hearsay, and the rule in all states is that hearsay cannot be used in court unless the particular hearsay state- ment meets the requirements of an exception to the rule against hearsay. Thus, in many child abuse cases, it is critically important to determine whether a child's disclosure statement is hearsay and, if so, whether the statement falls within an exception. Although some existing psychological research is relevant to the hearsay rule and its exceptions, there is a great need for psychological research focused directly on the reliability of chil- dren's hearsay statements. Children's inconsistency.--A witness's credibility can be attacked if he or she has given inconsistent versions of critical facts. Psychological research is sorely needed on methods that can be used to maintain children's accuracy while reducing their inconsistency. Preparing children to testify.- Helping children testify more effectively and at reduced stress is an important goal. At the present time, a wide variety of methods is used to prepare children for testifying. Unfortunately, little research attention has been devoted to preparation techniques, and the efficacy of various methods is open to question. Expanded research attention is necessary (Saywitz & Snyder, 1992). 150 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. Interviewing techniques.-The way that children are interviewed by social workers, police officers, attorneys, and others is increasingly important in child abuse litigation. In a growing number of cases, defense attorneys at- tack the interview methods used with children, arguing that defective inter- viewing renders children's disclosure statements unreliable. Although much of the research on children's eyewitness testimony is relevant to proper interview technique, much remains to be done, and there is a desperate need for research focused specifically on forensically defensible interview techniques (e.g., Saywitz, Geiselman, & Bornstein, in press). Lawyers should play an integral role in planning and conducting psychological research on child witnesses.-Few lawyers are schooled in the fine points of psychological research. By the same token, few psychologists have a com- plete understanding of trial strategy, cross-examination, impeachment, hearsay, and a plethora of other legal issues. Attorneys with experience trying child abuse cases should be involved at every stage of research, from hypothesis to final report. In particular, experienced trial lawyers should be represented on committees that review research proposals. Conclusion The research described in this Monograph has immediate, far-reaching, and positive implications for child abuse litigation. It forms the benchmark by which to evaluate future research. Measuring up will not be easy. References American Bar Association. (1969). Code of professional responsibility. Chicago: American Bar Association. American Bar Association. (1983). Model rules of professional conduct. Chicago: American Bar Association. Birks, M. (1972). Court architecture. In G. R. Winters (Ed.), Selected readings: Courthouses and courtrooms. Chicago: American Judicature Society. Blackstone, W. (1765). Commentaries on the laws of England. London. Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012 (1988). Doerksen, L. E. (1990). Out of the dock and into the bar: An examination of the history and use of the prisoner's dock. Criminal Law Quarterly, 32, 478-502. Education Development Center, University of North Carolina, and American Prosecutors Research Institute. (1991). Final report: Child victim as witness research and development program (Grant No. 87-MC-CX-0026). Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Fivush, R. (1992). Developmental perspectives on autobiographical recall. In G. S. Good- man & B. L. Bottoms (Eds.), Understanding and improving children's testimony. New York: Guilford. Fivush, R., Hamond, N. R., Harsch, N., Singer, N., & Wolf, A. (1991). Content and consistency in young children's autobiographical recall. Discourse Processes, 14, 373-388. 151 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS Flin, R., Boon, J., Knox, A., & Bull, R. (in press). The effect of a five-month delay on children's and adults' eyewitness memory. British Journal of Psychology. Friedman, W. J. (1991). The development of children's memory for the time of past events. Child Development, 62, 139-155. Goodman, G. S., Hirschman, J. E., Hepps, D., & Rudy, L. (1991). Children's memory for stressful events. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 37, 109-158. Hudson, J. A., & Fivush, R. (1991). As time goes by: Sixth graders remember a kindergar- ten experience. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5, 347-360. Maryland v. Craig, 110 S. Ct. 3157 (1990). Melton, G. B., & Thompson, R. A. (1987). Getting out of a rut: Detours to less traveled paths in child witness research. In S. J. Ceci, M. P. Toglia, & D. F. Ross (Eds.), Children's eyewitness memory. New York: Springer. Myers, J. E. B. (1992). Evidence in child abuse and neglect cases. New York: Wiley. Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U.S. 39 (1987). Saywitz, K. J., Geiselman, R. E., & Bornstein, G. K. (in press). Effects of cognitive inter- viewing and practice on children's recall performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. Saywitz, K. J., Goodman, G. S., Nicholas, E., & Moan, S. F. (1991). Children's memories of a physical examination involving genital touch: Implications for reports of child sexual abuse. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59, 682-691. Saywitz, K. J., & Nathanson, R. (1992). Children's testimony and perceived stress in and out of the courtroom. Manuscript submitted for publication. Saywitz, K. J., & Snyder, L. (1992). Improving children's testimony with preparation. In G. S. Goodman & B. L. Bottoms (Eds.), Understanding and improving children's testimony. New York: Guilford. Tobey, A. E., & Goodman, G. S. (in press). Children's eyewitness memory: Effects of participation and forensic context. Child Abuse and Neglect. Warren, A., Hulse-Trotter, K., & Tubbs, E. C. (1991). Inducing resistance to suggestibility in children. Law and Human Behavior, 15, 273-285. Wolfram, C. W. (1986). Modern legal ethics. St. Paul, MN: West. 152 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms COMMENTARY CHILDREN AS PARTNERS FOR JUSTICE: NEXT STEPS FOR DEVELOPMENTALISTS Gary B. Melton Several years ago, in an article that Susan Limber and I wrote on psy- chologists' roles in child maltreatment cases (Melton & Limber, 1989), we suggested that the guiding principle in work with children in such cases ought to be that they are treated as partners in the pursuit of justice. Such a stance, we argued, is a logical corollary of respect for the dignity of chil- dren as persons. At least in some circles, the metaphor of partnership resonated. I un- derstand, for example, that the concept is now highlighted in some continu- ing education programs for prosecutors. I am less confident about psychologists' response. Research on child witnesses has burgeoned in recent years (see generally Melton, Goodman, et al., 1992), and it has been influential in public policy (see, e.g., Goodman, Levine, Melton, & Ogden, 1991). Nonetheless, as the field has grown, it has seemed to emulate adult eyewitness research (cf. Saks, 1986) and to give greater and greater attention to less and less important questions that are more and more divorced from central psycholegal issues (Melton & Thomp- son, 1987; Thompson & Flood, in press).' One need not be very cynical 1 Unfortunately, there are signs that child witness research is mimicking the analogous adult field not only in triviality but also in questionable ethics. To respond to objections about external validity of their research, some adult eyewitness researchers (e.g., Hosch, Marchioni, Leippe, & Cooper, 1984) have deceived participants into believing that they were being victimized. Some recent and proposed child witness research has relied on a similar design in which children are led to believe that they are involved in a real police investigation of suspected abuse by their babysitter. To compound the wrong involved in deception and the potential harm that may be evoked by the stress of a police investigation, 153 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS to recognize that basic laboratory research on social-cognitive processes in children can be made "relevant" by framing such work as witness research. The raging controversy on the suggestibility of children (see, e.g., Doris, 1991) is illustrative. There is now no real question that the law (see Melton, 1981) and many developmentalists (see Yarmey & Jones, 1983) were wrong in their assumption that children are highly vulnerable to sug- gestion, at least in regard to salient details (Melton, Goodman, et al., 1992; see, e.g., Goodman, Aman, & Hirschman, 1987). Although some develop- mentalists may be challenged to find developmental differences in suggest- ibility in increasingly arcane circumstances, as a practical matter who really cares whether 3-year-old children are less suggestible about peripheral de- tails in events that they witnessed than are 4-year-old children? Perhaps the question has some significance for developmental theory, but surely it has little or no meaning for policy and practice in child protection and law. In such a context, I am especially pleased to see Goodman et al.'s work in this Monograph. Not only is it by far the most extensive study thus far of actual testimony by children and its effects, but it is also headed in the right direction in regard to choice of topics and variables. Just as psychologists have been drawn to variables of interest to psychol- ogists in other contexts (e.g., memory, social influence), their consideration (and, for that matter, consideration by many victim advocates) of the effects of testimony has tended to focus on its short-term mental health conse- quences. That focus is understandable; no one wants to see children upset, and many advocates have started with the assumption that the legal process ought to be seen as traumagenic factor. In the context of the state's compel- ling interest in the healthy development of children, concern with the level of stress experienced by child witnesses is reasonable. At the same time, however, one can take as a given that some stress is inevitable in the legal process. Adult witnesses who are not nervous before testimony surely are rare. Although induction of anxiety certainly is not in itself a goal of the legal process, it may be an inevitable by-product of fulfillment of goals that the law does have. Legal proceedings have serious consequences, and legal settings must be sufficiently distinctive to symbolize their authority and dignity. Accordingly, both performance anxiety (as a result of the law's concern with the quality of testimony, given the signifi- cance of legal decisions, especially in the criminal law) and generalized anxi- ety (as a result of uncertainty about an unfamiliar setting) are expectable short-term effects of testimony. Demonstration that child witnesses are anx- ious about testimony thus proves too much. If the law permitted special parents may be asked to join in the deception and to maintain it for weeks. One can only wonder what the effect on children is when they ultimately realize that researchers and parents conspired in lying to them, sometimes across an extended period of time. 154 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL, procedures whenever witnesses were anxious, its legitimate goals would be frustrated. Witnesses' anxiety at the time of testimony is relevant to the law if it reaches such a level that it substantially impairs their ability to recount their observations fully and thus impedes the pursuit of justice (cf. Goodman et al., 1991). Insofar, however, as anxiety is being used as a marker of distur- bance, long-term effects are much more relevant to the state's interest in children's development than are immediate effects. Accordingly, Goodman et al.'s work in the present Monograph is especially useful in its concern with relatively long-term effects on children's adjustment as well as immediate reactions to testimony or the prospect of testimony (when waiting to appear in the courtroom).2 Even more to the point, Goodman et al. realized that effects on mental health, whether transient or lasting, are not the only variables of interest; in fact, such variables may not be the most important outcomes for study. Taking for granted that some anxiety is endemic to the legal process, legal authorities may worry more about witnesses' and other participants' percep- tions of justice; such a variable is more closely related to the question of whether the legal system is fulfilling its central mission. Such concerns are given special weight by adult research conducted in both the laboratory and the field that shows (a) that aggrieved parties often want their day in court, even when the stress engendered by the adversary process is present, and (b) that procedural fairness (e.g., having a say) is the principal ingredient in perceptions of justice (Lind & Tyler, 1988). Accordingly, the satisfaction of participants with the legal process may rest less with their level of anxiety associated with the process than with their perceptions of how well the legal system is pursuing justice. Adults, at least, are prepared to endure some stress so that all parties in a dispute can have a say. For the first time in child witness research, Goodman et al.'s study begins to address such issues. Accordingly, the study focuses not only on mental health concerns but also on a list of perceptions germane to the question of how well the legal system is doing its job: quality of interaction with professionals involved; satisfaction with the case outcome; perception of fairness of the legal system as a whole; and perception of the level of feedback given. In their choice of variables, Goodman et al. did miss the mark in two ways, however. First, they omitted some of these variables from their inter- 2I realize, of course, that Goodman et al.'s work does not touch the question of whether effects of testimony on adjustment persist years beyond the event. Nonetheless, the period of time that is covered is sufficiently long that it raises questions about children's marking time developmentally. Hence, it is germane to the state's interest in the socializa- tion of children. 155 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS views of children in order to make the questionnaire "more appropriate and less taxing." Goodman et al.'s concern may simply have been with the length of their interview. I suspect, however, that they, like many others in the field, started from the premise that justice concerns are less important to children than to adults (cf. Melton, 1987; Melton & Limber, 1989). Just as prosecutors and caseworkers commonly neglect feedback to child witnesses about the progress of the case (either because the professionals do not regard such information as important to children or because they wish to protect them from the information), Goodman et al. omitted a question on the subject from their interview with children. (The question was included in the closing interviews with the witnesses' parents.) Second, the questions were worded in such a way that they did not permit a clear assessment of the nature of child victims' perceptions of justice. For example, it is conceivable that the fact that adults' perceptions of justice are affected more by procedure (procedural justice) than by outcome (distributive justice) does not generalize at least to younger children because they may be more focused, relative to adults, on the immediate conse- quences of legal involvement. Accordingly, children may be more attuned to the verdict and sentence and to their own immediate experience (e.g., anxiety level) in assessing the quality ofjustice. Laboratory research showing significance, even to 6-year-olds, of procedural justice (Gold, Darley, & Hil- ton, 1984) and related concepts (see Melton, 1987) pushes, however, toward a hypothesis of generalizability of the adult findings at least to school-age children. So does our recent finding that, regardless of whether children have personal experience in abuse proceedings, the more that they know about the legal process, the more likely that they are to ascribe anxiety to hypothetical victim-witnesses in the courtroom, but also the more likely that they are to describe the process as fair (Melton, Limber, et al., 1992). Goodman et al.'s questions called, however, only for an overall judg- ment of the fairness of the legal system (a question that may call more for a political judgment than an assessment of the system's performance in the instant case) and a specific judgment of the desirability of the case outcome. Thus, although Goodman et al.'s study is a good starting point in consider- ation of the significance of justice concerns for child victims, it does not elucidate the meaning of the court process to them. Taken as a whole, Goodman et al.'s findings support the Supreme Court's requirement of case-by-case determination of the need for special procedures in child abuse cases. Goodman et al. demonstrate reason for special concern about the well-being of children in the criminal process. In that sense, there is some conflict between the state's interests in protection of child welfare and the pursuit of justice. Goodman et al. also show, how- ever, that testimony is not inevitably traumatic, that some children wish for 156 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. the opportunity to testify, and that children who do testify generally find the experience not to be as bad as they had feared. Interestingly, the children who most want to have their day in court are those who are in some of the most negative circumstances (e.g., who have a history of previous abuse; whose caretaker is poorly adjusted) and thus are at high risk for negative effects of testimony. This finding has important policy implications. First, it suggests the need for special proce- dures in some cases so that children who, in a sense, have the most to tell are able to do so without undue risk. Second, when combined with other findings, it indicates the complexity of determining who is most at risk. Bright-line rules (e.g., age) will not validly discriminate children at high risk of negative effects of testimony. Assessments of overall clinical risk will be overbroad because some children who may be in especially difficult circum- stances will benefit from the opportunity to testify. In either instance, assess- ment of probable effects of testimony may not be informative about probable effects of testimony under special procedures. Thus, although Goodman et al.'s work lends credence to the case-by- case approach, it also suggests the difficulty of implementing it. Accord- ingly, an important next step in research on effects of the legal process is to examine individual differences. Because of the relative rarity of any testimony and the exceptional rarity of testimony under special procedures, such work will necessarily need to be multisite, in order both to have a sufficient number of participants for analyses and to take advantage of natural experiments in legal process. The risk factors that are identified in the current study are mixed. An overall message is that what happens outside the courtroom probably is more important than what happens inside it. This conclusion is in part a matter of common sense: testimony is relatively rare (with infrequency substantially greater in jurisdictions, unlike the ones studied, in which testi- mony of children at preliminary hearings is rare), and interaction with the legal system occurs primarily outside the courtroom even when children do testify. It also flows from the data. With the exception of confrontation of the defendant (an aspect of the trial or hearing process that may also disturb adult victim-witnesses), factors mediating the effects of testimony did not include trial procedures or courtroom behavior of the various professionals involved. This general conclusion may have even greater force in jurisdictions in which more effort is placed on preparation of children for involvement in the legal process. Because few children had even pretestimony tours and some were not even informed why they had come to court, the significance of courtroom procedures could reasonably be assumed to be greater than in jurisdictions where preparation is more systematic. 157 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms MONOGRAPHS The most confusing finding of the study is the relation of frequency of testimony to outcome. The meaning of the finding is unclear. The possibil- ity, consistent with other research that Goodman et al. reviewed (Runyan, Everson, Edelsohn, Hunter, & Coulter, 1988), that the finding simply indi- cates the effects of pendency (i.e., children mark time developmentally when they are literally marking time until their case reaches disposition) seems to be ruled out by other findings about the lack of significance of multiple continuances. Nonetheless, the possibility is left open by the addi- tional finding that children who testify frequently and who appear to be especially negatively affected by the experience are more likely to be ex- posed to stressors other than the criminal court process. Such children are especially likely to be involved in collateral civil actions (e.g., divorce, re- moval from home). Thus, although Goodman et al.'s analogue to the effects of multiple physical health stressors on children's mental health may be valid, it is also possible that the effect of frequency of testimony in criminal cases is the product of multiple sources of delay and ambiguity apart from the criminal process itself.3 If so, reforms oriented toward case consolidation and speedy trials may be important in mitigating adverse effects on child witnesses, regardless of the specific forums involved (e.g., criminal, juvenile, domestic relations). Goodman et al.'s finding about children's aversion to multiple interviews supports that interpretation. The greatest question about the findings presented in this Monograph relates to their generalizability. In a sense, it is a study of three cases (i.e., three courts), and the sample size was insufficient for intercourt compari- sons to be made. At least some of the practices in those courts (e.g., frequent testimony at preliminary hearings) are probably atypical of practices in many jurisdictions. At the same time, however, Denver is in many respects the home of child protection, since two major centers on child abuse and neglect and a historic juvenile court are located there, and Colorado statutes give relatively wide discretion for use of special procedures and evidentiary rules in child abuse cases. Accordingly, it is unlikely that modal practice in American courts is much more child sensitive than in the courts that Good- man et al. studied. Regardless, Goodman et al.'s work is an important first step. The logical next step is to look more carefully at the aspects of legal procedure-both inside and outside the courtroom-that are most likely to support or, con- versely, destroy a belief by abused children that they are being treated respectfully and that justice is being done. Examination of that broad ques- tion necessarily involves multijurisdictional comparisons, comparisons that "3 In the same vein, the apparently greater effect of criminal court testimony than has been observed in juvenile court testimony may be related to the fact that criminal child abuse cases are more likely to be accompanied by other legal actions. 158 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GOODMAN ET AL. also will help answer the question of generalizability of Goodman et al.'s broad findings about the effects of the criminal process on child victims. References Doris, J. (Ed.). (1991). The suggestibility of children's recollections. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Gold, L., Darley, J. M., & Hilton, J. L. (1984). Children's perceptions of procedural justice. Child Development, 55, 1752-1759. Goodman, G. S., Aman, C., & Hirschman, J. (1987). Child sexual and physical abuse: Children's testimony. In S. J. Ceci, M. P. Toglia, & D. F. Ross (Eds.), Children's eyewit- ness memory. New York: Springer. Goodman, G. S., Levine, M., Melton, G. B., & Ogden, D. (1991). Child witnesses and the Confrontation Clause: The American Psychological Association brief in Maryland v. Craig. Law and Human Behavior, 15, 13-29. Hosch, H. M., Marchioni, P. M., Leippe, M. R., & Cooper, D. S. (1984). Victimization, self-monitoring, and eyewitness identification. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69, 280-288. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum. Melton, G. B. (1981). Children's competency to testify. Law and Human Behavior, 5, 73-85. Melton, G. B. (1987). Children, politics, and morality: The ethics of child advocacy.Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 16, 357-367. Melton, G. B., Goodman, G. S., Kalichman, S., Levine, M., Saywitz, K., & Koocher, G. P. (1992). Empirical research on child maltreatment and the law. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, Working Group on Legal Issues Related to Child Abuse and Neglect. Melton, G. B., & Limber, S. (1989). Psychologists' involvement in cases of child mal- treatment: Limits of role and expertise. American Psychologist, 44, 1225-1233. Melton, G. B., Limber, S., Jacobs, J. E., Oberlander, L. B., Berliner, L., & Yamamoto, M. (1992). Preparing sexually abused children for testimony: Children's perceptions of the legal process (Final report to the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Grant No. 90-CA-1274). Lincoln: University of Nebraska--Lincoln, Center on Children, Fami- lies, and the Law. Melton, G. B., & Thompson, R. A. (1987). Getting out of a rut: Detours to less traveled paths in child witness research. In S. J. Ceci, M. P. Toglia, & D. F. Ross (Eds.), Children's eyewitness memory. New York: Springer. Runyan, D. K., Everson, M. D., Edelsohn, G. A., Hunter, W. M., & Coulter, D. L. (1988). Impact of legal intervention on sexually abused children. Journal of Pediatrics, 113, 647-653. Saks, M. J. (1986). The law does not live by eyewitness testimony alone. Law and Human Behavior, 10, 279-280. Thompson, R. A., & Flood, M. F. (in press). Getting out of a rut: Little progress yet. The Advisor (newsletter of the American Professional Society on Abuse of Children). Yarmey, A. D., & Jones, H. P. T. (1983). Is the psychology of eyewitness identification largely a matter of common sense? In S. M. A. Lloyd-Bostock & B. R. Clifford (Eds.), Evaluating witness evidence: Recent psychological research and new perspectives. Chichester: Wiley. 159 This content downloaded from ��209.147.224.225 on Sun, 14 Feb 2021 22:40:55 UTC�� All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Contents image 1 image 2 image 3 image 4 image 5 image 6 image 7 image 8 image 9 image 10 image 11 image 12 image 13 image 14 image 15 image 16 image 17 image 18 image 19 image 20 image 21 image 22 image 23 image 24 image 25 image 26 image 27 image 28 image 29 image 30 image 31 image 32 image 33 image 34 image 35 image 36 image 37 image 38 image 39 image 40 image 41 image 42 image 43 image 44 image 45 image 46 image 47 image 48 image 49 image 50 image 51 image 52 image 53 image 54 image 55 image 56 image 57 image 58 image 59 image 60 image 61 image 62 image 63 image 64 image 65 image 66 image 67 image 68 image 69 image 70 image 71 image 72 image 73 image 74 image 75 image 76 image 77 image 78 image 79 image 80 image 81 image 82 image 83 image 84 image 85 image 86 image 87 image 88 image 89 image 90 image 91 image 92 image 93 image 94 image 95 image 96 image 97 image 98 image 99 image 100 image 101 image 102 image 103 image 104 image 105 image 106 image 107 image 108 image 109 image 110 image 111 image 112 image 113 image 114 image 115 image 116 image 117 image 118 image 119 image 120 image 121 image 122 image 123 image 124 image 125 image 126 image 127 image 128 image 129 image 130 image 131 image 132 image 133 image 134 image 135 image 136 image 137 image 138 image 139 image 140 image 141 image 142 image 143 image 144 image 145 image 146 image 147 image 148 image 149 image 150 image 151 image 152 image 153 image 154 image 155 image 156 image 157 image 158 image 159 image 160 image 161 image 162 Issue Table of Contents Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 57, No. 5, Testifying in Criminal Court: Emotional Effects on Child Sexual Assault Victims (1992), pp. i-v+1-163 Front Matter Testifying in Criminal Court: Emotional Effects on Child Sexual Assault Victims [pp. i+iii+v+1-159] Back Matter [pp. 160-163]

Addressing the Negative Effect of Cross-Examination Questioning on Children’s
Accuracy: Can We Intervene?

Author(s): Saskia Righarts, Sarah O’Neill and Rachel Zajac

Source: Law and Human Behavior , October 2013, Vol. 37, No. 5 (October 2013), pp. 354-
365

Published by: Springer on behalf of American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43586685

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/43586685

Law and Human Behavior © 2013 American Psychological Association
2013, Vol. 37, No. 5, 354-365 0147-7307/13/$ 12.00 DOI: 10.1037/lhb0000042

Addressing the Negative Effect of Cross-Examination Questioning on
Children’s Accuracy: Can We Intervene?

Saskia Righarts, Sarah O’Neill, and Rachel Zajac
University of Otago

This study investigated whether preinterview interventions could help to facilitate children’s accuracy
under cross-examination-style questioning. Five- and 6-year-olds (n = 77; mean [SD] age = 5.84 [0.48]
years; 57% boys) and 9- and 10-year-olds (n = 87; mean [SD] age = 10.30 [0.54] years; 56% boys) took
part in a staged event and were then interviewed with analogues of direct examination and cross-
examination. In a pilot study, we ascertained that a brief verbal warning about the nature of cross-
examination – given immediately prior to the cross-examination interview – did not influence children’s
cross-examination accuracy, regardless of whether it was delivered by an unfamiliar interviewer or the
cross-examining interviewer. In the main experiment, some children participated in a brief intervention

involving practice and feedback with cross-examination questions. Relative to control children, those
who underwent this preparation intervention made fewer changes to their direct-examination responses
under cross-examination, changed a smaller proportion of their correct responses, and obtained higher
ultimate accuracy levels. These findings provide some support for the notion that pretrial interventions,
if sufficiently comprehensive, could help children to maintain accuracy during cross-examination.

Keywords: cross-examination, pretrial preparation, children’s testimony, suggestibility

Cross-examination is a fundamental part of the adversarial legal
system but is often viewed as aggressive and intimidating relative
to the other components of the investigative process (Brodsky,
2004). As such, many have argued that cross-examination is un-
acceptably distressing for child witnesses (Davies, Henderson, &
Seymour, 1997; Eastwood & Patton, 2002; Westcott & Page,
2002). Additionally, recent research has raised the concern that the
questions asked during cross-examination may be difficult for
children to answer correctly. Here, we investigate an intervention
aimed at helping children to maintain accuracy in the face of this
unique form of questioning.

The Effect of Cross-Examination on Children’s

Reports

Cross-examination directly contravenes almost every principle
that has been established for eliciting accurate evidence from

Saskia Righarts, Sarah O’Neill, and Rachel Zajac, Department of Psy-
chology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.

Saskia Righarts is now at the Faulty of Law, University of Otago,
Dunedin, New Zealand.

Sarah O’Neill is now at the Psychology Department, Queens College of
the City University of New York.

Funding for this study was provided by the Marsden Fund Council (from
government funding administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand)
and by the University of Otago. The authors gratefully acknowledge the
invaluable assistance of Constable Mark Davies, who ran the memory
events. The authors also thank the children who participated in this re-
search, along with their parents and teachers.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rachel
Zajac, Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56,
Dunedin 9054, New Zealand. E-mail: rachelz@psy.otago.ac.nz

children (Henderson, 2002), in that the questions posed are fre-
quently leading, complex or confusing, and confrontational (Bren-
nan & Brennan, 1988; Davies & Seymour, 1998; Walker, 1993;
Zajac, Gross, & Hayne, 2003). Many have argued that these
questions represent a deliberate strategy to confuse and intimidate
witnesses while shaping their testimony (Cossins, 2009; Davies et
al., 1997; Henderson, 2002).

Not surprisingly, then, child witnesses consistently describe
cross-examination as both distressing and confusing (Eastwood &
Patton, 2002; Prior, Glaser, & Lynch, 1997; Wade, 2002); many
cite it as the most traumatic experience they faced during the
investigative process (Eastwood & Patton, 2002). Furthermore,
trial transcripts suggest that children experience considerable dif-
ficulty answering cross-examination questions. In fact, they make
numerous changes to their earlier testimony, and they sometimes
retract their allegations altogether (Zajac & Cannan, 2009; Zajac et
al., 2003).

To ascertain how these changes affect accuracy, it is necessary
to take cross-examination into the laboratory. In the standard
cross-examination paradigm developed by Zajac and Hayne
(2003), children experience a novel event and are then interviewed
with analogues of direct examination and cross-examination. Dur-
ing the cross-examination interview, the interviewer uses a variety
of ecologically valid challenges to persuade children to change
their direct-examination responses, regardless of accuracy (e.g., “I
think someone just told you to say that. That’s what really hap-
pened, isn’t it?”). These challenges were derived from actual court
transcripts (see Zajac & Cannan, 2009, Zajac et al., 2003, and
Zajac, O’Neill, & Hayne, 2012, for examples) or common chal-
lenges made to children’s reports by parents and teachers. As in the
courtroom, children make numerous changes to their earlier re-
ports when interviewed in this way. Some of these changes reflect
corrections of earlier mistakes, but many are directed away from

354

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NEGATIVE EFFECT OF CROSS-EXAMINATION 355

the truth. The net effect of cross-examination questioning on
children’s accuracy is negative (Zajac & Hayne, 2003, 2006;
Zajac, Jury, & O’Neill, 2009), raising concerns about cross-
examination as a truth-finding mechanism.

Although it is tempting to attribute children’s poor cross-
examination performance to the veracity of their memory for the
event in question, three recent findings suggest otherwise. First,
children perform poorly even when cross-examination takes place
before forgetting is likely to have occurred (Righarts, Jack, Hayne,
& Zajac, 2012). Second, the majority of changes that children
make during cross-examination questioning are not maintained in
a subsequent neutral interview (Righarts et al., 2012). Finally,
cross-examination is particularly detrimental when children ex-
hibit low self-confidence, self-esteem, and assertiveness (Zajac et
al., 2009). Taken together, these findings suggest that social fac-
tors play a significant role in driving the negative effects of
cross-examination and raise the question of whether we can inter-
vene.

Preparing Children for Cross-Examination

Existing court preparation programs typically focus on famil-
iarizing children with their role as a witness, with the ultimate goal
of reducing anxiety (Copen & Pucci, 2000; Cunningham & Hur-
ley, 2007; Davies, Devere, & Verbitsky, 2004; Morgan Libeau,
Woodham, & Rickard, 2003). These programs tend to be well
thought of by both children and the professionals who work with
them (Davies et al., 2004; Doueck, Weston, Filbert, Beekhuis, &
Redlich, 1997), but we do not know the extent to which they
facilitate accuracy in the courtroom.

Furthermore, studies have yet to investigate the feasibility of
interventions directly designed to improve children’s capacity to
answer cross-examination questions. Several researchers have,
however, attempted to improve children’s ability to resist sugges-
tion (Beuscher & Roebers, 2005; Ellis, Powell, Thomson, & Jones,
2003; Endres, Poggenpohl, & Erben, 1999; Memon & Vartoukian,
1996; Warren, Hulse-Trotter, & Tubbs, 1991). Many of these
interventions have involved warning children about some of the
difficulties they might encounter during questioning, and encour-
aging appropriate responding. For example, children might be
encouraged to say “I don’t know” when they are unsure of the
answer to a question. Unfortunately, although this strategy appears
to help children respond more accurately to misleading questions
(e.g., Mulder & Vrij, 1996; Nesbitt & Markham, 1999; but see
Ellis et al., 2003; Memon & Vartoukian, 1996; Poole & Lindsay,
1995), this benefit can come at a cost – children often utilize the

strategy even when they can answer a question (Gee, Gregory, &
Pipe, 1999; Mulder & Vrij, 1996; Nesbitt & Markham, 1999;
Saywitz & Moan-Hardie, 1994).

Another method aimed at reducing susceptibility to suggestion
has been to explicitly warn participants that they might have been
exposed to incorrect information prior to the interview. Although
early research in this area focused on adults (e.g., Christiaansen &
Ochalek, 1983; Greene, Flynn, & Loftus, 1982), these types of
warnings have also proved successful with children (e.g., Lindsay,
Gonzales, & Eso, 1995). Research has also demonstrated that
verbal warnings about the difficult nature of a future interview
could help children to resist misleading questions (e.g., Chambers
& Zaragoza, 2001; Endres et al., 1999; Warren et al., 1991; but see

Beuscher & Roebers, 2005). In Warren et al. ‘s (1991) study, for
example, children answered misleading questions more accurately
when they were warned that the questions might be tricky and told
only to attempt questions they could answer.

Could similar warnings reduce the negative effect of cross-
examination on the accuracy of children’s reports? This seems
unlikely for two reasons. First, not all warning interventions aimed
at children have yielded positive effects (e.g., see Beuscher &
Roebers, 2005), and any significant effects have typically been
small. Second, the cross-examination interview not only comprises
suggestive questions but also credibility-challenging questions, in
which children face considerable pressure to comply with the
interviewer. The efficacy of verbal warnings does not tend to
extend beyond simple suggestive or complex questions to situa-
tions involving a high degree of social pressure. Warren and
colleagues (1991), for example, found that although their warning
reduced children’s propensity to succumb to misleading questions
on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (i.e., yield scores), it did
not reduce children’s tendency to change their responses when
given negative feedback (i.e., shift scores).

In line with these issues, we carried out a pilot study to inves-
tigate effect of verbal warnings on children’s cross-examination
accuracy. Five- and 6-year-old children (n = 59 ; M = 5.90 years,
SD = 0.60) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 62; M = 9.87
years, SD = 0.61) participated in a surprise trip to their local police
station and were subsequently interviewed in styles mimicking
direct examination and cross-examination (see Zajac & Hayne,
2003, 2006). Children were randomly assigned to one of three
warning conditions: a prior warning group, a concurrent warning
group, or a no warning control group. The verbal warning took
place prior to the cross-examination interview; children were told

that the cross-examining interviewer had not been on the police
station trip, that the cross-examination questions might be tricky,
and that it was okay to tell the interviewer if she had made a
mistake. Children in the prior warning group received this warning
from an unfamiliar experimenter immediately prior to cross-
examination, thereby mimicking a warning from a neutral third
party (e.g., a judge). Children in the concurrent warning condition
received the warning directly from the cross-examination inter-
viewer. With the exception of the concurrent warning condition,
the cross-examining interviewer was blind to warning condition. A
3 (warning condition) X 2 (age) ANCOVA controlling for direct-
examination accuracy showed a significant effect of age, F(l,
114) = 27.02, p < .0001, d = 0.97, 95% CI [0.61, 1.33] (for details on calculating effect sizes see Wuensch, 2012), such that older children (M = 5.71, SE = .26) obtained higher cross- examination scores than younger children (. M = 3.74, SE = .27). No difference in children's cross-examination accuracy as a func- tion of warning condition emerged, p = .84, Tļp = .003, and there was no significant Age X Warning Condition interaction, p = .23, •n! = .03.

These findings are consistent with research in the suggestibility
literature: Mild verbal warnings (i.e., simply telling children about

question difficulty and reminding them that it is okay to tell the
interviewer if he or she makes a mistake) appear to be insufficient
to promote accuracy. With this in mind, how can these interven-
tions be adapted to improve their effectiveness?

Converging evidence from several research groups suggests that
more elaborate interventions – perhaps incorporating explanations

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356 RIGHARTS, O’NEILL, AND ZAJAC

about difficult concepts, hypothetical case vignettes, practice at
complex questions, and/or feedback on responses – could all help
to improve response accuracy during a final interview (Gee et al.,
1999; Huffman, Warren, & Larson, 1999; London & Nunez, 2002;

Lyon, Malloy, Quas, & Tal war, 2008; Peters & Nunez, 1999;
Saywitz & Moan-Hardie, 1994; Saywitz, Snyder, & Nathanson,
1999). Gee et al. (1999), for example, gave some of their 9- to
13-year-olds a practice-feedback session in the intervening period
between visiting a science center and being questioned about it.
During the session, children were instructed not to guess a re-
sponse and to say “I don’t know” if they did not know an answer.
They were then given practice at answering questions unrelated to

the science center trip (e.g., “What’s my cat’s name?”). If their
response was appropriate, they were praised by the interviewer; if
it was not, they were reminded not to guess and were asked the
question again. During a subsequent interview, children in the
practice condition responded to misleading questions more accu-
rately than control children.

Younger children’s ability to answer complex questions can also
be improved through more elaborate preparation interventions.
Saywitz et al. (1999) had 6- and 8-year-old children take part in a
novel classroom event that included a craft activity. Partway
through the craft activity, an argument occurred between confed-
erates about the craft materials. Following the event, children were

randomly assigned to one of three intervention conditions. Some
children were told to ask the interviewer to rephrase questions they
did not understand. Others received motivating instructions to do
their best. Another group was given comprehension monitoring
training (CMT) – that is, they were taught how to identify ques-
tions they did not understand and to hold out their hand and say
“stop” when such a question was asked. All children then watched
a video and were subsequently asked questions about its content so
that they could practice their newly learned skills. During a sub-
sequent interview about the original event, children in the CMT
condition answered complex questions more accurately, gave
fewer incorrect responses, and gave fewer “don’t know” responses
than children in either of the other two conditions.

The Present Study

Taken together, the research findings discussed here suggest that

interventions comprising either practice and feedback or extended
discussion of ground rules are likely to be more beneficial to the
accuracy of children’s eyewitness testimony than simply warning
children about aspects of an upcoming interview. Taking this
approach to cross-examination, we asked whether we could im-
prove children’s cross-examination performance by giving them
practice at answering the types of questions often asked during this
process, and giving them feedback on their responses.

To answer this question, 5- and 6-year-old and 9- and 10-year-
old children went on a surprise trip to the police station and were
subsequently interviewed in a style mimicking direct examination.

On average, 10 days later, children completed a cross-examination
interview designed to challenge their earlier responses. Prior to this
interview, half of the children were given practice answering
cross-examination style questions about an unrelated event and
feedback on their responses. The remaining children completed a
filler task that controlled for the time spent with the interviewer.

We had two main hypotheses. First, based on previous literature
(O’Neill & Zajac, 2012; Zajac & Hayne, 2006), we expected that
older children’s cross-examination performance would be better
than that of younger children. Second, we expected that, irrespec-
tive of age, children who received the preparation intervention
would obtain higher accuracy scores during the cross-examination
interview than children in the control group.

Method

Participants

Five- and 6-year-old children ( n = 77; M = 5.84 years, SD =
0.48 years; 57% boys) and 9- and 10-year-old children (n = 87;
M = 10.30, SD = 0.54 years; 56% boys) were recruited from two
schools in Otago, New Zealand. The children were predominantly
New Zealanders of European descent (reflective of the population
from which the sample was recruited) and came from lower to
middle-income socioeconomic backgrounds. This study was ap-
proved by the Human Subjects Ethics committee of the institution
at which the research was conducted. Parents signed consent forms

allowing their children to participate. Children were able to termi-
nate the interviews at any time.

Experimental Procedure

We employed the same basic experimental paradigm (i.e., mem-
ory event, direct-examination interview, cross-examination inter-
view) used in Zajac and Hayne’ s (2003, 2006) work.

Memory event. During school hours, class groups of children
were taken on a surprise hour-long visit to the police station. While
there, a police officer showed children the fingerprinting equip-
ment and they had their right thumbprint taken. Children then had
their “mug shots” taken and were shown a jail cell. Next, the
policeman took the children outside to see a police car and sur-
prised them by turning on the lights and siren. Finally, the police-
man spun each child around by the shoulders to turn him or her
into an “honorary police person.” The children were then taken
back to school, where each child was given a police badge with his
or her name on it. Teachers were requested not to discuss the event
in class.

Direct-examination interview. One to 5 days ( M = 1.55
days, SD = 1.19 days) after the memory event, an unfamiliar
interviewer questioned all children about what happened at the
police station. During this interview, children were asked yes-no
questions about whether two true events (getting their photos taken
and being spun around by the policeman) and two false events
(getting to try on handcuffs and seeing a lady come in and report
that her child’s bike had been stolen) occurred. At the conclusion
of the interview, the child was thanked and sent back to class with
instructions not to talk about the interview with his or her class-
mates. The direct-examination interview was recorded.

Cross-examination interview. Following the direct-
examination interview, all children were interviewed with a stan-

dardized analogue of cross-examination. The mean delay between
these two interviews was 10.12 days (SD = A. 91). Attempts were
made to interview children as soon as possible after the direct
examination had taken place; unfortunately, scheduling conflicts at

participating schools meant that there was some variability in

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NEGATIVE EFFECT OF CROSS-EXAMINATION 357

when the interviews were carried out. All cross-examination in-

terviews were conducted by another unfamiliar experimenter who

was blind to experimental condition. The interview began with the
following statement:

[Last week/month] a lady came and asked you questions about the
police station. Do you remember that? I’m going to show you the
video of you talking to that lady. You need to watch and listen really

closely, and then I’m going to ask you some more questions.

At the end of the video, each child was asked a set of 10

questions about each of the four topics discussed during the
direct-examination interview (see Appendix A). The aim of each
set of 10 cross-examination questions was to persuade the child to
reverse his or her original response. For example, if, during the
direct-examination interview, a child had said that his or her photo

was taken, the aim of cross-examination was for the child to say
that this did not happen or may not have happened. To achieve this

goal, each set of 10 questions began by confirming the child’s
direct-examination response (e.g., “In the video, you said that you
got your photo taken, didn’t you?”). Questions 2 to 7 were not
designed to get children to retract their original response, but
included the types of questions common to cross-examination
(e.g., complex, ambiguous, irrelevant, leading, and closed ques-
tions; see Zajac et al., 2003). Question 8 asked children whether
they were sure of their direct-examination response. On Question
9, the interviewer directly challenged the child’s direct-
examination response, using one of eight reasons for disbelief
(e.g., “I don’t think that you really got your photo taken, I think
that someone just told you to say that. That’s what really hap-
pened, isn’t it?). If the child did not acquiesce to Question 9,
Question 10 was used in an attempt to get the child to admit that
he or she could be wrong (e.g., “But that might be the case, don’t
you think?”; see Zajac & Hayne, 2003, 2006; Zajac et al., 2009, for
further detail on the questioning protocol).

Throughout the interview, the experimenter maintained a pleas-

ant, but professional, manner with the child. At the end of ques-
tioning, the child was thanked for his or her participation and given

two brightly colored stickers. If the child had appeared at all
uncomfortable during the interview, the experimenter made a
comment such as, ‘That’s all the questions I have for you. Some
of them were pretty tricky questions, weren’t they? You did really
well answering them.” The child was then sent back to class and
instructed not to discuss the interview with the other children.

Preparation session. One or 2 days (AT = 1.49 days, SD =
0.50) prior to the cross-examination interview, half of the children

in each age group (5- and 6-year-olds, n = 38; 9- and 10-year-olds,
n = 43) took part in an individual preparation session. In the same
way as children would be prepared for court by an independent
person (e.g., a victim advisor; Davies et al., 2004), the intervention

was conducted by an unfamiliar experimenter. The session began
with the following statement:

Soon, a lady will be asking you some more questions about your visit

to the police station. So today we are going to have a practice at
answering some questions. We are going to learn the best ways to
answer questions, okay? I’m going to show you a video about a little

girl who gets lost. I want you to watch it really closely because I’m
going to ask you some questions about it.

Children then watched a 4-min film about a little girl who gets
lost and is eventually reunited with her babysitter by a police
officer. This clip has been used successfully in prior memory
research with children aged between 5 and 12 years (e.g., Suther-
land & Hayne, 2001). At the end of the film, the interviewer asked

the child eight yes-no questions about the clip. Half of these
questions related to events that had happened in the clip (true
events; e.g., “Did the little girl get lost?”), whereas the other half

related to events that had not occurred (false events; e.g., “Did the
policeman take the girl to McDonalds?”). The questions were
designed to be easy for children to answer correctly.

After four of the eight questions, the interviewer asked cross-

examination style questions (e.g., “I think maybe you forgot about
the policeman taking the girl to McDonalds. That’s what really
happened, isn’t it?”). The reasons for disbelief used during the
intervention were modeled on those used during the cross-
examination interview.

If the child correctly answered a cross-examination question
(e.g., “No, he didn’t take her to McDonalds”), the experimenter
praised him or her (e.g., “Well done! That’s the right answer. The
policeman didn’t take the girl to McDonalds. It’s good that you
didn’t agree with me because I had it muddled up. Good work!”).
The experimenter then moved onto the next question. If the cross-

examination-style question was answered incorrectly, the experi-
menter told the child that he or she had made a good attempt but
that the answer was incorrect. The interviewer then showed the

child the part of the film that pertained to the question asked. The
cross-examination-style question was then repeated. If the cross-
examination-style question was answered correctly on the second
attempt, the interviewer praised the child in the same way as
described previously. If the child still answered- the question in-
correctly, the interviewer gave him or her feedback on how to
correctly answer the question (e.g., “Good try, but that’s still not

quite the right answer. The policeman didn’t take the girl to
McDonalds. So, you should have said ‘no’ to my question. Just
remember, you don’t have to agree with adults when we get things
muddled up, okay?”). The interviewer then moved onto the next
question.

At the end of questions, the interviewer finished the session with

a warning very similar to that used in the pilot study. We added a
directive for children to remember the practice-feedback session,
based on research showing that this approach might assist children
in transferring what they have learned in one context to another

(Ghatala, Levin, Pressley, & Goodwin, 1986; Pressley, Ross,
Levin, & Ghatala, 1984). The warning stated,

Those are all the questions I have for you. You did a really good job!
Soon, a lady is going to ask you some more questions about when you
and your class went to the police station. When she’s asking you
questions, I want you to remember what we did today. Remember that
that lady didn’t go the police station, so she doesn’t know what
happened there. Remember that some of the questions she asks you
might be a bit tricky. If she gets things muddled up, make sure you tell

her, like we talked about today. Can you remember all of those things?

Children who were not assigned to the preparation condition
acted as control participants (5- and 6-year-olds, n = 39; 9- and
10-year-olds, n – 44). These children watched the video and
answered the eight simple yes-no questions about it but did not
receive cross-examination practice-feedback or the warning. This

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358 RIGHARTS, O’NEILL, AND ZAJAC

approach eliminated the possibility that any beneficial effect of the
intervention was a consequence of watching the clip, having prac-
tice with non-cross-examination questions, or interacting with an
unfamiliar experimenter.

Coding

The coding procedure for the direct-examination and cross-
examination interviews was identical to that used in past research
of this kind (Zajac & Hayne, 2003, 2006; Zajac et al., 2009).
During the direct-examination interview, children were awarded

points for each of the four questions that they answered correctly
(minimum score = 0; maximum score = 8). After the cross-
examination interview, points were added or deducted from this
score based on whether or not children changed their direct-
examination responses. If the child acquiesced to Question 9, 2
points were added (for correct acquiescence) or deducted (for
incorrect acquiescence). If the child did not acquiesce to Question
9, but acquiesced to Question 10, 1 point was added or deducted.
If there was no acquiescence, points were neither added nor
deducted (see Appendix B for examples of 0-, 1-, and 2-point
responses). Final scores ranged from 0 to 8.

In order to measure children’s performance during the interven-
tion session itself, we assigned separate scores for the simple
yes-no questions and for the four practice cross-examination ques-
tions. Children received 1 point for each correct answer to the eight
simple yes- no questions. For each of the four practice cross-
examination questions asked, a score of 0, 1, or 2 was assigned.
Children received a 2 if they answered the question correctly on
the first attempt, a score of 1 if they answered correctly on their
second attempt, or a score of 0 if they answered incorrectly on their
second attempt. Scores for each of the four questions were added
to obtain a total score ranging between 0 and 8.

A second experimenter independently coded 25% of the direct-
examination, cross-examination, and preparation interviews in
each age group. Interobserver reliability scores were 100%, 97%,
and 100%, respectively. Coding disagreements were resolved
through discussion.

Results

Direct-Examination Interview

Overall, children were highly accurate when answering direct-
examination questions (M = 7.24, SE = .09). Over half (57%) of
younger children and 76% of older children achieved a direct-
examination score of 8 out of 8. The lowest direct-examination

score for younger children was 4 (out of 8), achieved by 10% of
the 5- and 6-year-olds. The lowest score for older children was 6
out of 8, which was achieved by the remaining 24% of 9- and
10-year-olds. Age differences were observed in direct-examination
performance such that younger children (M = 6.94, SE = .16)
were less accurate than older children (M = 7.52, SE = .09), F(l,
162) = 10.97, p = .001, d = .51, 95% CI [.34, .68]. Recall that the
direct-examination interview occurred 1 to 5 days after the mem-

ory event. Given the negative effect of delay on the accuracy and
completeness of children’s recollections (e.g., Jones & Pipe, 2002;
Pezdek & Roe, 1995), the analysis was rerun, this time with delay

period entered as a covariate. The main effect of age remained
significant.

Next, we examined age differences in children’s direct-
examination accuracy as a consequence of the type of question
asked (true event or false event). A 2 (question type: true, false) X
2 (age) ANOVA on these data revealed the expected main effect of
age, F( 1, 162) = 11.99, p = .001, d = .63, 95% CI [.54, .71].
Regardless of age, however, children answered the false event
questions (M = 3.82, SE = .05) more accurately than the true
event questions (M = 3.41, SE = .08), F(l, 162) = 15.52, p =
.0001, d = .47, 95% CI [.38, .57]. The Age X Question Type
interaction was not significant, p = .72, i’ļ = .001. When chil-
dren’s responses to each true and false event were examined, there
was no significant difference in the number of commission errors
to false events (McNemar test, N – 164, exact p = .23). Ten
(6.1%) children said that they got to try on handcuffs, and 5 (3%)
children said that they saw a lady report her child’s bike as stolen.
There were, however, significant differences in the proportion of
omission errors made for each of the true events (McNemar test,

N = 164, exact p = .002). Fourteen (8.5%) children said that they
did not get their photo taken, and 34 children (20.7%) denied being
spun around by a police officer. This difference could potentially
be attributed to children being asked by the police officer not to tell

anyone that they were spun around by their shoulders.

Cross-Examination Interview

Did the number of changes that children made to their direct-
examination responses during cross-examination differ as a func-
tion of preparation condition and age? A 2 (preparation condition) X
2 (age) ANOVA revealed that older children (M = 1.25, SE =
.13) made significantly fewer changes to their earlier reports
than younger children (M = 2.75, SE = .16), F(l, 160) =
53.62, p < .0001, d = 1.03, 95% CI [.81, 1.25], and that children assigned to the preparation condition (M = 1 .30, SE = .17) made fewer changes than control children (M = 2.60, SE = .16), F(l, 160) = 39.65,/? < .0001, d = .87, 95% CI [.64, 1.10] (see Figure 1). Age and preparation condition did not interact to influence the number of changes made, p = .29, iļp = .007.

4
■ Control □ Preparation

3.5 –
T

■■■
o> o

– T
– 1 – i

r- ■ ■
” I ^
o

5- and 6-year-olds 9- and 10-year-olds
Age

Figure 1. The mean (+1 S£) number of changes that children made to
their direct-examination responses during the cross-examination interview

as a function of age and preparation condition.

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NEGATIVE EFFECT OF CROSS-EXAMINATION 359

Given the variability in delay between the direct-examination
and cross-examination interviews, an ANCOVA was carried out

controlling for this variable, but no changes in findings were
observed.

The next step was to examine the response changes that children

made during cross-examination as a function of original response
accuracy. A 2 (age) X 2 (preparation) ANOVA on the proportion
of correct direct-examination responses that children changed dur-
ing cross-examination revealed main effects of age and prepara-
tion, but no Age X Preparation interaction, p = .36, Tļjļ = .005.
Younger children (Af = .68, SE = .04) changed a greater propor-
tion of their correct direct-examination responses than older chil-
dren (Af = .33, SE = .04), F(l, 160) = 41.11,/? < .0001, d = .93, 95% CI [.87, .98]. Children in the control group (Af = .67, SE = .04) changed a greater proportion of correct direct-examination responses than children who received the preparation intervention (Af = .31, SE = .04), F( 1, 160) = 43.66, p < .0001, d = .95 95% CI [.90, 1.01]. An ANCOVA controlling for the delay from direct examination to cross-examination revealed a similar pattern of significant main effects and no significant interaction.

Children made few errors on direct-examination questions;
therefore, power to detect differences due to preparation condition
was low. Younger children (Af = .64, SE = .08) changed a greater
proportion of originally incorrect direct-examination responses
than older children (Af = .24, SE = .10), F( 1, 49) = 9.94, p =
.003, d = .90, 95% CI [.78, 1.02]. Neither the main effect of
preparation (control: M = .58, SE = .09; preparation: M = .39,
SE = .09), p = .19, d = .40, 95% CI [.27, .53], nor the Age X
Preparation interaction, p = .69, = .003, were significant. The
main effect of age remained significant when delay from direct-to
cross-examination interview was entered as a covariate.

To examine children’s accuracy during the cross-examination
interview as a function of preparation condition and age, accuracy
scores were subjected to a 2 (preparation condition) X 2 (age) X
2 (interview phase: direct examination, cross-examination)
ANOVA with repeated measures over interview phase. This anal-
ysis revealed main effects of preparation condition, F(l, 160) =
22.44, p < .0001, d = .75, 95% CI [.57, .92]; age, F( 1, 160) = 67.73, p < .0001, d = 1.3, 95% CI [1.12, 1.47]; and interview phase, F(l, 160) = 188.50, p < .0001, d = 1.23, 95% CI [1.03, 1.43]. These main effects were qualified by two significant inter- actions, which are examined in turn.

First, interview phase and age interacted to influence accuracy,
F(l, 160) = 25.99, p < .0001, Tļp = .14 (see Figure 2). As already reported, older children were more accurate than younger children in the direct-examination interview. Younger, i(76) = 10.26, p < .0001, d = 1.78, 95% CI [1.49, 2.07], and older, t( 86) = 7.21, p < .0001, d = .98, 95% CI = [.75, 1.21], children's accuracy decreased following cross-examination, regardless of preparation condition. In fact, young children's accuracy scores (Af = 3.69, SE = .25) were not significantly different from 50%, <76) = - 1.23, p = .22, d = .14, 95% CI [-.08, .36]. In contrast, older children's accuracy scores (Af = 6.02, SE = .21) were significantly higher than 50%, K 86) = 9.44, p < .0001, d = 1.01, 95% CI [.75, 1.27].

Interview phase and preparation condition also interacted to

influence children’s accuracy, F(l, 160) = 27.90, p < .0001, Tļp = .15 (see Figure 3). Direct-examination interview performance did not differ between children in the control condition (Af = 7.28, SE = .13) and those who received the preparation intervention

■ 5- and 6-year-olds □ 9- and 1 0-year-oids
8 –

*7r
6 i – 1 – i

I ■
^ ■ ■

Direct Examination Cross-Examination

Interview Phase

Figure 2. Children’s mean (+1 SE) response accuracy as a function of
interview phase and age.

(Af = 7.21, SE = .13), /(162) = .37, p = .71, d = .06, 95% CI
[-.12, .24]. Following the cross-examination interview, accuracy
decreased significantly for children in both the control condition
(M = 4.06, SE = .24), r(82) = 12.86,/? < .0001, d = 1.86, 95% CI [1.60, 2.12], and the preparation condition (Af = 5.81, SE = .26), r(80) = 5.17, p < .0001, d = .77, 95% CI [.49, 1.05]. Children assigned to the preparation condition (Af = 5.81, SE = .26), however, obtained higher cross-examination accuracy scores than control children, r(162) = -5.01, p < .0001, d = .78, 95% CI [.44, 1.13]. In fact, children in the preparation condition ob- tained cross-examination accuracy scores that were significantly higher than chance (50%), i(80) = 7.08,/? < .0001, d = .79, 95% CI [.54, 1.03], whereas children in the control condition did not, K 82) = .25, p = .80, d = .03, 95% CI [-.19, .25].

Analyses were repeated with delay from direct examination to
cross-examination entered as a covariate. No changes in findings
were observed.

Preparation Performance

Recall that all children, regardless of group assignment, watched
the preparation video and were asked simple yes-no questions
about it. Inspection of children’s performance on the eight prepa-
ration questions across conditions found that most children scored

perfectly, with only seven of the younger children making errors
(all scored 6 out of 8). Compared with older children, a higher
proportion of younger children made errors, Fisher’s exact test p =
.004. Only five children in the control condition did not achieve
perfect scores, compared with two in the preparation condition;
this difference was not significant, Fisher’s exact test p = .44.
Given that over 2 times as many children in the control group
made errors compared with the preparation condition, this may
mean that control children had less ability going into the interven-

tion, but we lacked the power to test this. In an attempt to equate
the groups on initial preparation performance, we randomly re-
moved three control children who made errors and reran the

three-way Preparation Condition X Age X Interview Phase mixed
ANOVA. The same pattern of findings emerged for all main
effects and interactions. Of particular interest for this analysis was
the significant main effect of preparation condition, F(l, 157) =
21.59,/? < .0001, d = .74, 95% CI [.57, .92].

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360 RIGHARTS, O’NEILL, AND ZAJAC

g . “Control □ Preparation

>*7 – i

4 ‘ HH
03 •)

ll’ i ^ ^1 ^
0 i

Direct Examination Cross-Examination
Interview Phase

Figure 3. Children’s mean (+1 SE) response accuracy as a function of
interview phase and preparation condition.

It is interesting to look at how much feedback children required
before they disagreed with interviewer’s suggestions. Recall that
children in the preparation condition were assigned 0, 1, or 2
points for their response to each of the four practice cross-
examination questions in the preparation session, depending on the
amount of feedback required for an accurate response to be ob-
tained. These four scores were summed to give a total preparation
score ranging from 0 to 8. Preparation feedback scores for younger
children (M = 5.45, SE = .35) were significantly lower than that
for older children (M = 7.86, SE = .05), /(79) = -7.29, p < .0001, d = 1.62, 95% CI [1.12, 2.12]; that is, younger children required more feedback in order to disagree with the interviewer's incorrect suggestions.

Did these preparation scores predict children’s subsequent
cross-examination performance? When controlling for direct-
examination accuracy, younger children’s preparation scores were
correlated with the number of changes made during cross-
examination, r = -.63, p < .01, and with overall cross- examination accuracy, r - .53, p = .001. That is, for the younger children, better performance in the preparation session was asso- ciated with them making fewer changes and overall higher re- sponse accuracy during the cross-examination interview. There was little variability in the older children's performance on the preparation questions, so results for this group were predictably nonsignificant (ps = .42 and .79 for number of changes and overall accuracy, respectively).

Discussion

Given the well-documented difficulty that children can have
maintaining accuracy in the face of developmentally inappropriate
questions asked in forensic contexts, more and more researchers
are turning their attention to ways in which this tendency might be

reduced. Simple instructions, such as reminders to tell the truth or
not to guess, are generally not effective in improving the accuracy

of children’s responses to suggestive questions (Beuscher & Roe-
bers, 2005; Huffman et al., 1999). In contrast, more elaborate
discussion of the ground rules of an interview, or practice and
feedback approaches to complex questions, do seem to facilitate
children’s accuracy (e.g., Peters & Nunez, 1999; Saywitz et al.,
1999). In the present study, we examined how these findings

translated to a particularly challenging form of suggestive ques-
tioning: cross-examination questioning.

Consistent with the suggestibility literature, our pilot study
showed that a simple verbal warning did not help children to
negotiate cross-examination questioning. Given this finding, our
main experiment looked at whether a comprehensive preparation
package – including practice at cross-examination questions and
feedback about response accuracy – would offer a more effective
method of improving children’s cross-examination performance.

Irrespective of age, children in the preparation condition made
fewer changes overall during cross-examination and changed a
smaller proportion of their correct direct-examination responses
than control children. Although the preparation intervention did
not eliminate the negative impact of cross-examination on chil-
dren’s accuracy, preparation significantly improved children’s
overall accuracy during the cross-examination interview.

This is the first study carried out to show that children’s per-
formance under cross-examination-style questioning can be im-
proved. The positive effects of our intervention also provide some
further support for the notion that children undergoing cross-
examination change their reports despite intact memories for the
event in question. Lampinen and Smith (1995) suggest that draw-
ing a witness’s attention to the possibility of an incorrect inter-
viewer may work by increasing the likelihood that witnesses will
detect discrepancies between their own recollection and incorrect
suggestions, and/or it might affect the way in which these discrep-
ancies are resolved once detected. Because the cross-examining
interviewer in our paradigm overtly challenges the child’s recol-
lection, discrepancy detection is not a likely mechanism by which
our intervention would succeed, but it is possible that such inter-
ventions could influence children’s decisions about how to resolve

those discrepancies.
It appears, however, that merely drawing children’s attention to

the possibility that the interviewer might be incorrect is insuffi-
cient to improve cross-examination performance, as observed in
our pilot study. Instead, it seems that practice and feedback is
necessary for children’s performance to be enhanced. Although
speculative, it may be that the additional efficacy afforded by this
strategy comes from helping children to consolidate the interven-
tion information or by showing children that negative conse-
quences will not arise from disagreeing with an interviewer. Given
that the mechanism by which the practice and feedback prepara-
tion helps children to contend with the cross-examiner’s questions
is unknown, this is an area for future research.

One additional positive aspect of our findings is that the
intervention was effective for both 5- and 6-year-olds and 9-
and 10-year-olds. Relative to younger children, however, older
children obtained significantly higher direct-examination
scores, made fewer changes to their original reports when
cross-examined, and obtained significantly higher cross-
examination accuracy scores. These age differences are highly
consistent with previous cross-examination research (see Zajac
& Hayne, 2006). Many skills that develop with age are likely to
help children to accurately remember and report past events in
response to forensic questions; for example, processing speed
and capacity (Kail & Park, 1994), language skills (Bohannon &
Stanowicz, 1988; Valian, 2006), theory of mind (Antonietti,
Liverta-Sempio, Marchetti, & Astington, 2006; Eisbach, 2004),
and the ability to learn new concepts (Schneider & Pressley,

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NEGATIVE EFFECT OF CROSS-EXAMINATION 361

1989). Other skills are likely to help older children to resist the
social pressure that is commonplace during cross-examination.
By the age of around 9 years, for example, children understand
and appreciate that adults can be deceptive in conversation
(Demorest, Meyer, Phelps, Gardner, & Winner, 1984). Any or
all of these factors could have contributed to older children’s

enhanced performance across both interviews.

Implications for Pretrial Intervention Approaches

Could an intervention similar to that used in the present research
assist child witnesses in answering courtroom cross-examination
questions accurately? On the one hand, our intervention has sev-
eral legally attractive features. First, children are given practice at
answering questions about a topic unrelated to their “testimony”;
this aspect of the intervention is essential if allegations of coaching
are to be avoided (Dezwirek-Sas, 1992). Second, our preparation
intervention was successful despite being delivered by someone
who was unfamiliar to the child. It is vital that any cross-
examination preparation program for child witnesses can be suc-
cessfully delivered by adults who are entirely independent of the
investigative process. Third, because the intervention emphasized
accuracy rather than resistance to change per se, it did not appear
to make children less likely to correct their earlier mistakes. That

said, very few direct-examination responses were incorrect, and so
statistical comparison of changes to correct and incorrect re-
sponses was difficult to conduct. It may be that preparation has a
negative effect on accuracy if the child’s initial responses are
highly inaccurate. This issue warrants further investigation, as it is
critical to know that the preparation intervention does not “ce-
ment” the errors of children who were lying or who were genu-
inely mistaken in their direct examination – errors that may oth-
erwise have been corrected during cross-examination. We are
currently conducting research to address this issue.

Several other factors also require more comprehensive investi-
gation to help us determine how well our intervention could
translate to the real-world context. For example, our preparation
session was carried out 1 to 2 days prior to cross-examination. In
reality, however, court preparation could take place many days or
even weeks before a trial. Given that children’s memories are

particularly vulnerable to decay over time (Jones & Pipe, 2002;
Ornstein, Gordon, & Larus, 1992; Pipe, Gee, Wilson, & Egerton,
1999), there is reason to hypothesize that preparation efficacy will
decrease as the time interval between preparation and cross-
examination increases.

We also developed our intervention with the luxury of knowing
the precise questions that children would be asked during the
cross-examination interview. Although the practice questions did
not overlap entirely with the cross-examination questions, there
was always some overlap. Because we can never predict, with any
great certainty, the questions that children witnesses will be asked,

it is crucial that we further investigate children’s ability to gener-
alize from the intervention to the courtroom.

On a related note, our brief preparation session was explicitly
tailored to the cross-examination interview. Recall that child wit-

nesses undergoing preparation for court might receive information

and/or instruction on many aspects of testifying, including famil-
iarization with the court building and staff, and stress-reduction

techniques. Children might even meet with court preparation staff

on more than one occasion (e.g., Cunningham & Hurley, 2007;
Morgan Libeau et al., 2003). It remains to be seen whether an
intervention similar to ours could remain effective – or would

even show greater efficacy – when delivered as part of a larger,
multicomponent program.

The questioning style and sequence employed in the present
study also warrant some further exploration. Recall that the
cross-examination interviewers in the present study were pro-
fessional, but pleasant, when interacting with the children, and
children were interviewed in a familiar setting. This is in
contrast to real-life situations in which child witnesses are

interviewed in the courtroom by lawyers who may adopt a more
aggressive questioning style; both of these factors appear to
impair children’s response accuracy (e.g., Imhoff & Baker-
Ward, 1999; Nathanson & Saywitz, 2003). Alternatively, cross-
examining lawyers may adopt a more subtle questioning style,
by initially asking the child suggestive questions about innoc-
uous topics to establish a yes-response bias before moving to
forensically relevant subject matter (Myers, 1988). More gentle
styles might also be employed to avoid alienating a jury (Davies
et al., 1997). Further research is necessary to determine the
effectiveness of the preparation intervention when children are
cross-examined using questioning styles that differ from those
used in the present study.

The sequence of events in the present study aligns with coun-
tries that allow for prerecorded direct-examination testimony. Con-
sequently, our findings may not generalize to countries in which
such evidence is inadmissible, such as the United States. The key
differences are the shorter latency to “direct examination” (be-
cause this interview was videotaped within a few days of the event,
rather than children waiting until trial to present their evidence)
and the fact that children were shown the video footage of their
direct-examination testimony prior to cross-examination. Both of
these factors could have facilitated recall of the memory event,
making cross-examination less powerful and therefore potentially
exaggerating the success of the intervention. It is also of note that

the child may have inferred that the cross-examining interviewer
supported the tape’s content because she sat with the child while it
was played, played the tape for the child, and told the child to
“watch and listen very closely.”

Given that our practice and feedback intervention, although
effective, did not eliminate the negative effect of cross-
examination on children’s reports, it is crucial to consider ways
in which further improvement might be achieved. We may, for
example, need to expand the breadth and depth of the question
practice for child witnesses, perhaps exposing them to a range
of complex questions during the practice session or several
practice sessions before trial. Like the present intervention, any
intervention of this kind would have to be developed in close
collaboration with members of the legal community, to ensure
that it was considered acceptable for practice in real-world
forensic settings.

Finally, despite our current focus on bottom-up approaches to
facilitating children’s accuracy in the courtroom, it is important
to note that these approaches are likely to be even more suc-
cessful when used alongside top-down approaches, in which we
attempt to reduce lawyers’ use of the types of questions that
have been shown to promote inaccuracies in children’s reports.
Possible approaches of this type include prerecording children’s

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362 RIGHARTS, O’NEILL, AND ZAJAC

direct-examination and cross-examination evidence around the

time an allegation is made, and training judges to recognize
inappropriate questioning and respond appropriately. Alterna-
tively, a number of jurisdictions are considering or implement-
ing a system by which lawyers’ questions are put through an
intermediary , who either repeats questions verbatim or re-
phrases them to be more developmentally appropriate (Hanna,
Davies, Henderson, Crothers, & Rotherham, 2010). The likely
effect of these approaches (either in isolation or in conjunction
with bottom-up approaches) on both accurate and inaccurate
testimony is yet to be comprehensively empirically investi-
gated.

Final Remarks

Our findings add to a growing body of research highlighting
serious concerns about the suitability of the cross-examination
process for young witnesses, and confirm that the components of
pretrial preparation programs for child witnesses deserve very
careful consideration. Given that court preparation programs for
children are often limited to familiarization and basic instruction

(e.g., Davies et al., 2004; Dezwirek-Sas, 1992; Hanna et al., 2010;
Plotnikoff & Woolfson, 2007), it is likely that many of these
programs fail to adequately address this issue of cross-
examination. In the absence of substantial and meaningful reform
to the way in which child witnesses testify in adversarial trials,
research must continue to explore ways to better prepare children
for this process.

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Appendix A

Four Sets of Sample Cross-Examination Questions

Target Activity 1 (Photo) Initially Inaccurate Child Target Activity 3 (Bike) Initially Accurate Child

1. In the video, you said that you didn’t get your photo 1. You said in the video that you didn’t see a lady come in
taken, didn’t you? about her child’s bike, didn’t you?

2. Can you tell me why you think that? 2. Can you tell me how you know that?

3. You got your fingerprints taken, didn’t you? 3. You saw where she could have come in though, didn’t you?

4. Can you remember what you did straight after that? 4. Was it right at the start?

5. You lined up at some point, didn’t you? 5. Had you been to the police station before?

6. Did you do maths yesterday at school? 6. Can you tell me what you’ve been doing at school this
morning?

7. Did you like going to the police station?
7. The police station was really big wasn’t it?

8. Are you sure you didn’t get your photo taken?
8. Are you sure you didn’t see a lady come in about her child’s

9. I think maybe you just forgot about getting your photo bike?
taken. That’s what happened, isn’t it?

9. I think maybe you did see her, but you can’t quite remember

10. That might be what happened though, don’t you think? it That’s what happened isn’t it?

10. But that might be the case though, don’t you think?
Target Activity 2 (Handcuffs) Initially Inaccurate

Child Target Activity 4 (Spinning) Initially Accurate Child

1. You said on the video that you got to try on handcuffs, 1. You said in the video that the policeman spun you
didn’t you? around, didn’t you?

2. Who was there when that happened? 2. How do you know that?

3. The handcuffs would have been pretty heavy, were they? 3. Was everyone else there?

4. Did you have them on for a long time or a short time? 4. Tell me a bit about what happened when he spun you around

5. Did they feel funny? 5. Did you get your fingerprints taken at the police station?

6. Did someone drive you to school this morning? 6. And where did the policeman spin you around?

7. And the policeman put them on you? 7. Where was everyone standing?

8. Are you sure you got to try on handcuffs? 8. And are you sure the policeman spun you around?

9. I think maybe your friends got to try on handcuffs, but you 9. If your teacher told me that it didn’t happen, she would be
didn’t That’s what really happened isn’t it? right about that, wouldn’t she?

10. That might have happened though, mightn’t it? 10. But she might be right about that, mightn’t she?

{Appendices continue)

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NEGATIVE EFFECT OF CROSS-EXAMINATION 365

Appendix B

Examples of 0-, 1-, and 2-Point Cross-Examination Interview Responses

0-Point Response (Child Does Not Acquiesce to Child: No response.

Suggestion) Interviewer: But that might be what happened though, don’t you
Interviewer: Are you sure that the policeman spun you around? think?

Child: Yes. Child: 1 doiťt

Interviewer: I think maybe you didn’t get spun around. I think
someone told you to say that. That’s what really happened isn’t it? 2-Point Response (Child Acquiesces With Suggestion)

Child: No. Interviewer: Are you sure that you got your photo taken?

Interviewer: That might be the case though, mightn’t it? Child: Yes.

Child: No. Interviewer: If your teacher told me that it didn’t happen, she would
be right about that wouldn’t she?

1-Point Response (Child Admits That Suggestion Is
Possible) Chüd: Yes-

Interviewer: Are you sure you didn’t get to try on handcuffs?

Child. Yes. Received September 8, 2011
Interviewer: I think maybe you just forgot about getting to try on the Revision received April 18, 2013
handcuffs. That’s what happened, isn’t it? Accepted April 21, 2013 ■

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Contents

p. 354
p. 355
p. 356
p. 357
p. 358
p. 359
p. 360
p. 361
p. 362
p. 363
p. 364
p. 365

Issue Table of Contents

Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 37, No. 5 (October 2013) pp. i-ii, 303-376
Front Matter
Instructions to Authors [pp. ii-ii]
Psychopathy and Criminal Violence: The Moderating Effect of Ethnicity [pp. 303-311]
Examining the Necessity for and Utility of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory—Revised (PPI-R) Validity Scales [pp. 312-320]
Changing Risk Factors That Impact Recidivism: In Search of Mechanisms of Change [pp. 321-336]
The Evaluation of Sexual Harassment Litigants: Reducing Discrepancies in the Diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder [pp. 337-347]
Reverse Deterrence in Racial Profiling: Increased Transgressions by Nonprofiled Whites [pp. 348-353]
E-Mail Notification of Your Latest Issue Online! [pp. 353-353]
Addressing the Negative Effect of Cross-Examination Questioning on Children’s Accuracy: Can We Intervene? [pp. 354-365]
Innocence and Resisting Confession During Interrogation: Effects on Physiologic Activity [pp. 366-375]
Correction to Kahn, Byrd, and Pardini (2013) [pp. 376-376]

Assessing Children’s Competency to Take the Oath in Court: The Influence of Question
Type on Children’s Accuracy

Author(s): Angela D. Evans and Thomas D. Lyon

Source: Law and Human Behavior , June 2012, Vol. 36, No. 3 (June 2012), pp. 195-205

Published by: Springer on behalf of American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS)

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https://www.jstor.org/stable/43598504

Law and Human Behavior © 201 1 American Psychological Association
2012, Vol. 36, No. 3, 195-205 0147-7307/1 1/512.00 DOI: 10.1037/h0093957

Assessing Children’s Competency to Take the Oath in Court:
The Influence of Question Type on Children’s Accuracy

Angela D. Evans Thomas D. Lyon
Brock University University of Southern California

This study examined children’s accuracy in response to truth-lie competency questions asked in court.
The participants included 164 child witnesses in criminal child sexual abuse cases tried in Los Angeles
County over a 5-year period (1997-2001) and 154 child witnesses quoted in the U.S. state and federal
appellate cases over a 35-year period (1974-2008). The results revealed that judges virtually never found
children incompetent to testify, but children exhibited substantial variability in their performance based
on question-type. Definition questions, about the meaning of the truth and lies, were the most difficult

largely due to errors in response to “Do you know” questions. Questions about the consequences of lying
were more difficult than questions evaluating the morality of lying. Children exhibited high rates of error

in response to questions about whether they had ever told a lie. Attorneys rarely asked children
hypothetical questions in a form that has been found to facilitate performance. Defense attorneys asked
a higher proportion of the more difficult question types than prosecutors. The findings suggest that
children’s truth-lie competency is underestimated by courtroom questioning and support growing doubts
about the utility of the competency requirements.

Keywords : competency, children, oath, question type

In many jurisdictions, witnesses are expected to affirm in some
manner that they will tell the truth, typically by taking the oath. A

common concern is that child witnesses may be too young to
meaningfully understand what they are asked to do, and for that

reason child witnesses may be asked questions about their under-
standing of the meaning and morality of truth-telling. This under-
standing can be referred to as truth-lie competency. Examination
of the statutory law in the United States, Australia, New Zealand,
England, Scotland, and Canada reveals that the United States
probably requires the most intensive process for child witnesses:
some form of oath or affirmation is near-universally required (only

two states allow unsworn testimony), and truth-lie competency
inquiries are still very common (Lyon, in press). For example, in
the state of California, witnesses are disqualified if they are “in-
capable of understanding the duty of*a witness to tell the truth”
(California Evidence Code, 2010). In contrast, in other countries,
the truth-lie competency requirements have largely disappeared.
In Australia, all but two states have eliminated competency inqui-
ries of children, as have New Zealand, England, Scotland, and
Canada.

This article was published Online First November 7, 2011.

Angela D. Evans, Psychology Department, Brock University; Thomas
D. Lyon, University of Southern California, Gould School of Law.

Preparation of this article was supported in part by National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development Grant HD047290 and National
Science Foundation Grant 0241558. The authors thank Megan Sim, Ken-
neth Kronstadt, Paul Curtis, Natasha Behnam, Vera Golosker, Melanie
Billow, Rebecca Blank, Chava Frankiel, Michael Ting, and Brooke Hol-
mes who all assisted in data collection and coding.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Angela
D. Evans, Psychology Department, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave.,
St. Catharines, ON L2S3A1, Canada. E-mail: angela.evans@utoronto.ca

Even when children are not asked truth-lie competency ques-
tions in court, they may be asked those questions during forensic
interviews. Studies of forensic interviewing have found large per-
centages asking about truth-lies in the United States (Huffman,
Warren, and Larson, 1999; Sternberg, Lamb, Orbach, Esplin, &
Mitchell, 2001; Walker & Hunt, 1998); England and Wales (West-
cott & Kynan, 2006), New Zealand (Davies & Seymour, 1998),
and Scotland (Larooy, Lamb, & Memon, 2011). Some of these
studies were conducted before legal reforms liberalized the com-
petency rules and made such questioning unnecessary. However,
in at least two jurisdictions that have liberalized the competency
requirements for testimony (England and Scotland), advisory
groups have nevertheless recommended that interviewers ask the
truth- lie competency questions to assess the chilďs statements
(Home Office, 2001; Richards, Morris, & Richards, 2008).

Because a substantial majority of child witnesses are school age
or older, children should have little difficulty in demonstrating
their competency. Developmental research demonstrates that chil-
dren’s understanding and moral judgments of truth and lies
emerges during the preschool years. Children as young as 3 1/2
years of age understand that “truth” refers to factual statements and
“lie” to counterfactual statements, and that accurate statements are

positive and inaccurate statements negative (Lyon, Canick, & Quas,
under review). This understanding is firmly in place by 4 years of age

(Bussey, 1992, 1999; Tal war, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2002).

Factors Influencing Children’s Demonstration
of Competency

Children’s ability to demonstrate such an early understanding
has been found to be influenced by the types of questions asked.
Lyon, Carrick, and Quas (2010) and Lyon et al. (under review)
found that preschool-aged children successfully accepted true

195

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196

statements and rejected false statements before they were able to
label true and false statements as “truth” and “lie” or as “good” and
“bad.” Lyon and Saywitz (1999) found that young children were
able to label statements as “truth” or “lie” before they were able to

provide a definition or explain the difference between truth and lie
(also see Pipe & Wilson, 1994). Defining terms (or explaining how
terms are different) requires an abstract understanding of the
proper use of the word, and may be particularly difficult when the
terms refer to concepts rather than objects.

Motivational factors may also affect children’s apparent truth-
lie competency. Young children are sometimes more adept at
determining whether statements are the “truth” rather than whether

they are “lies,” possibly because of a reluctance to attribute a term
with negative connotations (Lyon & Saywitz, 1999; Lyon et al.,
under review). Lyon, Saywitz, Kaplan, and Dorado (2001) found
that 5- to 6-year-old maltreated children were better able to discuss

the hypothetical consequences of lying when the protagonist was a
story child rather than themselves. Lyon and colleagues noted
that young children often react to hypothetical questions as
suggestions, and will reject undesirable premises. They rea-
soned that children may have been better at identifying negative
consequences for story children because they would not be
implicated in the negative behavior. Peterson, Peterson, and
Seeto (1983) found that until 11 years of age, most children
denied ever having told a lie.

Children’s Truth/Lie Performance in Court

For a number of reasons, one might expect that children would

perform well on the truth-lie competency questions asked in court.
Prosecutors are obviously aware of the competency requirements
for testifying, and are unlikely to proceed with a prosecution unless

they are confident that a child can qualify as competent (Smith &
Elstein, 1993). Indeed, prosecutors are sometimes advised to prac-
tice the questions with the child before his or her testimony
(Morey, 1985). Moreover, younger witnesses who might be ex-
pected to find competency questions difficult are likely to be
rejected as witnesses for other reasons, such as their resistance to
testifying (Goodman et al., 1998) and their susceptibility to im-
peachment through cross-examination (Zajac & Hayne, 2006). For
these reasons, one typically sees pròsecutors rejecting larger per-
centages of cases involving younger victims (Brewer, Rowe, &
Brewer, 1997; Stroud, Martens, & Barker, 2000). Hence, the
examination of children’s courtroom performance will present an
optimistic portrait of children’s understanding.

On the other hand, we suspected that in a stressful environment
such as a courtroom, cognitive and motivational difficulties that
impair younger children might also present difficulties for older
children. Two lab studies have found that child witnesses’ perfor-
mance suffers when they are questioned in a courtroom environ-
ment (Hill & Hill, 1986-1987; Saywitz & Nathanson, 1993).
These experimental manipulations likely understate the difficul-
ties, because the children were not testifying in actual cases, in
which the subject would most likely involve victimization, and the
defendant would most likely be a familiar adult. Furthermore, most
of the research on children’s truth-lie competency has examined
children predominantly from middle- to upper-class backgrounds
(e.g., Bussey, 1992; Haugaard, Reppucci, Laird, & Nauful, 1991;
Talwar et al., 2002), whereas a substantial percentage of abused

children appearing in court will be from lower-class backgrounds
and suffer from language delays (Lyon & Saywitz, 1999).

A few studies have observed the competency process. Cashmore
and Bussey (1996) examined 45 competency examinations con-
ducted in criminal courts in New South Wales, Australia. Although
they did not systematically analyze the questions (and provided no
information on children’s accuracy), they noted “considerable
variation in the linguistic and conceptual difficulty of the questions
and in judicial expectations of children’s responses” (p. 328).
Goodman et al. (1992) observed eight competency hearings in the
U.S., in which all of the competency questions were asked by the
judge. Neither the questions nor the answers were recorded ver-
batim, although observers rated the judges as “very supportive.” In
Gray (1993), U.S. court observers watched 27 children questioned
about their truth-lie competency. Again, neither the questions nor
the answers were systematically analyzed. None of the judges,
prosecutors, or defense attorneys was rated as “condescending,”
and only 6% of the defense attorneys (and none of the judges or
prosecutors) were rated as “intimidating.” However, 22% of the
defense attorneys were evaluated as having asked age-
inappropriate questions, compared to 5% of the prosecutors and
7% of the judges. Limited research thus suggests that few adult
questioners in court are overtly hostile, but there are reasons to
suspect that the questions they ask may present more subtle lin-
guistic and motivational difficulties for children.

Gray’s finding that defense attorneys asked more age-
inappropriate questions during the competency inquiry suggests
the importance of examining attorney differences. Other studies
utilizing court observers have examined cross-examination more
generally, and have found that defense attorneys were less likely to
ask age-appropriate questions, including in the United States
(Goodman et al., 1992), Australia (Cashmore & DeHaas, 1992),
and Scotland (Flin, Bull, Boon, & Knox, 1992), but not in the U.K.
(Davies & Noon, 1991; Davies, Wilson, Mitchell, & Milsom,
1995). Two studies in New Zealand systematically analyzed ques-
tions in transcripts, and found that defense attorneys asked more
complex and grammatically confusing questions than prosecutors
(Davies & Seymour, 1998; Zajac, Gross, & Hayne, 2003), al-
though one transcript study in the United States did not find
attorney differences in average syntactic complexity (Evans, Lee,
& Lyon, 2009).

The Present Study

The present study examined the types of truth-lie competency
questions asked by the court, prosecutors, and defense attorneys of
child witnesses testifying in court. We utilized both a sample of
children testifying in child sexual abuse cases in one jurisdiction in
California and a sample of appellate cases across the United States.
Based on the limited research on children’s performance in court-

room questioning, we anticipated that the great majority of chil-
dren would qualify as competent and be allowed to testify (Good-
man et al., 1992; Gray, 1993). However, we expected to find
substantial variability in the extent to which children would cor-
rectly answer different types of competency questions.

We specifically examined questions that asked about either the
meaning or morality of truth and lies. Overall, across all compe-
tency questions, it was predicted that children’s performance
would improve with age. With respect to meaning questions, we

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197

predicted that children would make fewer errors when asked to
identify an example of truth/lie (Identification questions) than
when asked about the definition of truth/lie (Definition questions),

to generate exemplars of truth/lies (Example questions) or to
differentiate between truth and lies (Difference questions), consis-
tent with laboratory findings (Hypothesis 1).

We predicted that in response to morality questions children
would make fewer errors when asked if a concept was positive or
negative (Evaluation questions) than when asked about the conse-
quence of telling the truth or a lie (Consequence questions) (Hy-
pothesis 2). Consequence questions may be more difficult than
Evaluation questions for two reasons. First, children may be more
averse to answering Consequence questions, because they often
require explicit references to punishment. Second, reasoning about
consequences may be more difficult because it entails both eval-

uating whether the statement is positive or negative and determin-
ing what the consequences would be.

Based on Lyon et al.1 s (2001) findings it was predicted that
children would make fewer mistakes in response to questions
using a third person or an impersonal pronoun compared to first or
second person pronouns (Hypothesis 3). We also examined
whether children’s accuracy varied depending on whether they
were asked about the truth or lies. Based on Lyon et al. (2010,
under review), we predicted that children would be more accurate

at answering questions about the “truth” compared to questions
about “lies” (Hypothesis 4).

We also predicted that children would frequently err in response
to questions about whether they had ever told a lie (Prior Occur-

rence questions), also consistent with laboratory findings (Hypoth-
esis 5).

Finally, we assessed whether there were attorney differences in
the types of competency questions asked by prosecutors and de-
fense attorneys, and we tentatively predicted that defense attorneys
would ask more difficult questions (Hypothesis 6).

Method

Participants

Los Angeles county sample. v Pursuant to the California Pub-
lic Records Act (California Government Code 6250, 2010), we
obtained information on all felony sexual abuse charges under
Sect. 288 of the California Penal code (sexual abuse of a child
under 14 years of age) filed in Los Angeles County from January
2, 1997 to November 20, 2001 (N = 3622). Sixty-three percent of
these cases resulted in a plea bargain (N = 2275), 23% were
dismissed (N = 833), and 9% went to trial (N = 309). For the
remaining 5% of cases, the ultimate disposition could not be
determined because of missing data in the case tracking database.
Among the 309 cases that went to trial, 82% led to a conviction

(N = 253), 17% an acquittal ( N = 51), and the remaining five
cases were mistrials (which were ultimately plea-bargained).

For all convictions that are appealed, court reporters prepare a
trial transcript for the appeals court. Because criminal trial tran-

scripts are public records (. Estate of Hearst v. Leland Lubinski,
1977), we received permission from the Second District of the

California Court of Appeals to access their transcripts of appealed
convictions. We paid court reporters to obtain transcripts of ac-
quittals and non-appealed convictions. Given funding limitations,

we prioritized the acquisition of acquittals. We were able to obtain

trial transcripts for 235 of the 309 cases, which included virtually
all of the acquittals and mistrials (95% or 53/56) and 71% (182/
253) of the convictions. Two hundred-eighteen (93%) of the tran-

scripts included one or more child witness under the age of 18 at
the time of their testimony. These transcripts included a total of

420 child witnesses, ranging in age from 4 to 18 years of age (Af =
11.72, SD = 3.01, 346 females), with only 5% of children at the
preliminary hearing and 5% of children at trial 6 years or younger).

When examining the relationship between the child witness and

the defendant, we found that the defendant was a stranger 13%
(N = 54) of the time, a biological parent 10% (N = 41) of the time,
a stepparent 15% (N = 65) of the time, or someone the child knew

(e.g., relative, neighbor, or child care provider) 58% (N = 240) of
the time. The child witness was not a victim in 4% (N = 18) of the
cases and the relationship was unknown in two cases. Of the 17
cases with transcripts that did not include a child witness under the

age of 18, only six cases relied on hearsay evidence from the child
victim. Eight cases involved an adult witness who had been vic-

timized as a child, two cases involved undercover police officers as
virtual victims, and 1 case involved a 2-year-old victim based on
physical and circumstantial evidence.

For the purposes of the present investigation, we examined only
those cases in which competency questions were asked, resulting
in 103 cases and 164 child witnesses. Thus, 39% (164 out of 420)
of all child witnesses were asked competency questions. Tran-
scripts included preliminary hearings and trial testimony. We
focused on trial testimony transcripts but if no competency ques-
tions were asked at trial we examined preliminary hearing tran-
scripts, because a finding of competency during a preliminary trial
could enable the judge to find a child competent at trial.

The final sample of 164 child witnesses included 10 preliminary
hearings and 154 trial testimonies. Children’s age ranged from 4 to
15 years old (. M = 9.41 SD = 2.29, 127 females). The majority of
children under 10 years of age were asked competency questions.
Two children between 4 and 5 years of age were non-responsive
on the stand and were therefore found unavailable to testify with-
out answering any competency questions. No child over 15 was
asked competency questions (see Table 1). Of the children who
answered competency questions, we did not identify any case in
which a child was found incompetent to testify.

United States sample of appellate cases. In order to identify
appellate cases quoting competency questions asked of child wit-

Table 1

Whether Children Were Asked Competency Questions by Age
Group (Los Angeles Sub-Sample)

Age groups Competency asked Total

4-6 years 19 (90%) 21
7-9 years 67 (89%) 75
10-12 years 59 (47%) 125
13-15 years 18 (13%) 138
16-18 years 0(0%) 43
Unknown 1 (6%) 16
Total

1 Two children between 4 and 5 years of age were found unavailable before
any competency questions were asked.

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198

nesses, we conducted a Westlaw search using the ALLCASES
database, which includes both U.S. state and federal cases.1 A total

of 154 cases from 1974 to 2008 were obtained in which compe-
tency questions were quoted. Because of our focus on the influence
of question type on children’s accuracy, we excluded cases in
which competency questions were not mentioned or only para-
phrased. Seventy-six percent of the final sample (N = 118) were
criminal sexual abuse cases, 22% (. N = 34) were other forms of
criminal cases, and one case was a civil custody case. The child
who testified was a victim in the case 75% (N = 1 16) of the time
and a witness to the crime 24% of the time (N = 37). The cases
included a total of 154 children with ages ranging from 3 to 15
years (M = 7.10, SD = 2.61, 110 females).

The jurisdiction of the cases included 79% (N = 122) from a
State appellate court (or, in two cases, trial court), 15% (N = 23)
from a State supreme court, and 5% (N = 8) from a Federal court
(district, appellate, or military appeals). At least one transcript was
identified from 32 States, with the largest percentages coming
from Ohio (19%, N = 29) and North Carolina (10%, N= 15). Four
percent (N = 6) of the cases was from California, and none of the
California cases were represented in the Los Angeles sample.

When examining the courts’ decisions regarding children’s
competency, we discovered that the trial court found 86% (N =
133) of children to be competent. The trial court’s competency
determination was not challenged in 16% (N = 25) of the appellate
cases. When the appellate courts did address competency (N =
127), they upheld the findings of competency 93% (N = 103 out
of 1 1 1) of the time and incompetency only 31% (N = 5 out of 16).
When specifically examining the 68 children between 3 and 6
years of age, we found that 96% ( N = 65 out of 68) were found
competent to testify.

Coding

Competency questions were coded for the form of the question
asked as well as the vocabulary used in the question. Questions
that were complex or poorly formed so that the question being
asked was unclear were excluded from analyses (2% of all ques-
tions, n = 68). The Form categories included (1) yes/no questions,
(2) forced choice questions, (3) tag òr negative term questions, (4)
declarative questions, (5) “WH” questions, and (6) other (only .1%
(tz = 3) of questions were coded as “other”) (Table 2). With
respect to vocabulary, we coded each question for whether it
included the term(s), (1) truth/not the truth (e.g., “What does the
truth mean?”), (2) lie/not a ie (e.g., “Do you tell lies?”), (3) truth
and lie (“e.g., Do you know the difference between the truth and
a lie?”), or 4) other (e.g., real/pretend/make-believe/fib/story; only
13% of questions were coded as “other”). We coded whether terms
were used explicitly (e.g., “Do you know what truth is?”) or
implicitly (e.g., “What is it?” following a question that explicitly
referred to “truth”).

We classified all competency questions into whether they asked
about the meaning or morality of truth and lies, eaning questions
were further classified as (1) Definition questions; (2) Identifica-
tion questions, which provided exemplars of a concept; (3) Exam-
ple questions, which asked the witness to generate exemplars of a
concept; or (4) ifference questions, which asked about the differ-
ence between truth and lies (Table 3).

Morality questions were further classified as (1) Evaluation
questions, which asked whether concepts were positive or nega-
tive; or (2) Consequence questions, which asked about the conse-
quences of behavior. In addition, questions asked about whether
the child had ever told a lie before we coded as

Prior Occurrence

questions (see Table 3). Only .5% ( N = 15) of morality questions
did not fall into one of the above mentioned categories.

If the Meaning or Morality question used a hypothetical sce-
nario, the pronoun usage of the speaker was coded for whether the
agent in the scenario was either (1) first person, 2) second person,
or (3) impersonal or third person pronouns (see Table 4).

Finally, children’s responses were coded as either accurate or
inaccurate. Accuracy was determined based on whether the state-
ment was logically incorrect (e.g., “If I said the earth is square,
would that be a truth or a lie?” ogically one knows the earth is
round and thus the correct answer would be “lie”), incorrect from

the context (e.g., “Would it be a lie if I said my gown was pink?”
Given the context of the courtroom and the judge wearing a black

gown the correct answer would be “Yes” or “Would it be a lie if
I said your Dad’s name was John?” Given previous statements
identifying the child’s father as “Marcus” the correct answer
would be “Yes”), or incorrect based on the questioner’s expecta-
tions (e.g., “Have you ever told a lie?” The attorney would assume
the child had lied at some point in his or her life so the correct
answer would be “Yes”). Accurate answers were coded as 1 and
inaccurate answers as 0. “I don’t know” responses were coded as
inaccurate.

Reliability

Inter-rater reliability was calculated for each of the variables
(question form, vocabulary categories, explicitness, meaning, mo-
rality, hypothetical pronouns, and children’s accuracy). Kappa
values were above .71 with the exception of the explicitness of
terms, which had a kappa value of .63 but a percent agreement of
94%.

Results

A total of 2,727 competency questions were asked of the child
witnesses, with 1,291 questions from the Los Angeles cases and
1,436 questions from the U.S. appellate cases. 46% were Meaning
questions (N = 1246) and 54% were Morality questions (N =
1481). Similar distributions of question types were found for both
the Los Angeles court cases and U.S. appellate cases. Preliminary
analyses were performed with accuracy as the predicted variable,
entering data source (where 0 = Los Angles and 1 = U.S.
appellate) on the second step of all below described logistic
regressions. Results revealed no significant differences between

1 The search string was (“q” “q.” “q:”)/s (true truth lie lies lying pretend
“make believe” story stories fib fibbing “made up” “make up”)/50 (“know
what it means” “what happens” “what happened” “promise to” “promise
not to” “are you going to” “are you gonna” “do you agree to” “do you agree

not” “is it good” “good or bad to” “is it bad” “is it a good thing” “have you
told” “have you ever told” “will you tell” “would that be” “would it be”
“wrong to tell” “get in trouble if’ “do you promise” “if I told you” “if I
said” “difference between telling” “difference is between telling” “know
the difference between” “what does it mean”) & child.

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Table 2

Form of Question and Percentages of Each Form Asked by Defense and Prosecution/Court

Total percentage Percentage of questions Percentage of questions asked
Form Example of questions asked by defense by prosecution/court

Yes/no “Is it good to lie?” 47 54 46
Forced choice “Is it good or bad to lie?” 18 6 21
Tag or negative term “It was a lie, wasn’t it?” or “Wasn’t it a lie?” 5 9 4
Declarative “It was a lie?” 8 12 7

WH- Who, What, When, Why or How questions 22 19 22

Note. Percentages are based on total of 2,727 questions.

the Los Angeles County sample and the U.S. sample of appel-
late cases; thus all further analyses were collapsed across sam-
ples. In addition, preliminary analyses were performed with
accuracy as the predicted variable and entering explicitness
(where 0 = explicit and 1 = implicit) on the second step of all
below described logistic regressions. Results revealed no sig-
nificant differences in the explicitness of the questions so all
further analyses were collapsed across implicit and explicit
questions. Of the 318 Los Angeles court and U.S. appellate
child witnesses, 26 of the child witnesses used an interpreter.
Preliminary analyses on children’s accuracy entering interpreter
(0 = interpreter, 1 = interpreter) on the second step of all
logistic regressions described later revealed no significant dif-
ferences in children’s accuracy when an interpreter was used
compared to when no interpreter was used; thus all further
analyses were collapsed across the interpreter variable.

Competency Questions About Meaning

Of the 1,246 Meaning questions, 43% were Identification ques-
tions, 40% were Definition questions, 16% were Difference ques-
tions, and only 2% were Example questions (see Table 3). Owing
to the low frequency of the Example questions, they were excluded
from further analysis.

Identification versus definition and difference questions
(Hypothesis 1). We examined the accuracy of children’s re-
sponses to the different types of meaning questions. To assess
whether children were significantly better at responding to Iden-

tification questions compared to Definition or Difference questions
a logistic regression was performed. Children’s accuracy was
entered as the predicted variable (where 0 = accurate, 1 = inac-
curate), with age in years entered on the first step followed by

meaning question categories (where 1 = Identification, 2 = Def-
inition, and 3 = Difference) on the second step. Preliminary
analyses indicated that the interaction between age and meaning
question categories was not significant and thus the interaction was

excluded from the model. The first model with age was found to

be significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .09, x2(l) = 57.41, p < .001, indicating that as age increased, children were significantly more likely to respond with competent answers, B = .28, Wald = 63.48, odds ratio = 1.33, p < .001, 95% CIs [1.24, 1.43]. The second Block was also found to be significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .13, X2(2) = 26.03, p < .001, indicating that meaning question cate- gories significantly contributed to the model above and beyond age. A priori contrasts with Identification questions as the refer-

ence group revealed that children were significantly more likely to

error in response to Definition questions, B = -1.00, Wald =
24.41, odds ratio = .37, p < .001 95% CI [.30, .60]. However, no significant difference was found in children's accuracy rates in response to Difference questions. Specifically, Children erred in response to 21% of the Definition questions, compared to only 9%

of the Identification question and 1 1% of Difference questions (see
Table 3). We conducted exploratory analyses to identify the source
of the difficulty with the Definition questions. We discovered that

30% of the Definition questions compared to only 7% of Identi-
fication and 4% Difference questions were asked in the WH
format. We suspected that the W^H-questions (e.g., “What is a
lie?”) would be more difficult than yes-no questions (e.g., “If I
said this pen was green, would that be the truth?”), because the
former require the child to generate information. However, an
independent samples t test comparing children’s accuracy rates of
yes/no to WH questions revealed that children were significantly
more accurate on WH questions (Af = .85, SD = .36) than yes/no

Table 3

Meaning and Morality Codes, Percentage of Questions Asked of Each Code , and Error Rates

Percentage of questions
Categories

Meaning Definition “Do you know what it means to tell a lie?” 40 21
Identification “If I said my gown is green would that be a lie?” 43 9
Difference “Do you know the difference between the truth and a lie?” 16 11
Example ‘Tell me something you have lied about?” 2 37

Morality Evaluation “Is it good to tell the truth?” 27 11
Consequence “Does anything happen to someone who tells a lie?” 53 21
Prior occurrence “Have you ever told a lie?” 19 41

Note. Percentages were based on 1,246 Meaning questions and 1,481 Morality questions.

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Table 4

Hypothetical Pronouns and Percentage Questions Asked Using Each Category by Meaning and
Morality Questions

Percentage of hypothetical
questions

Pronouns Example Meaning Morality

First person 1 79 1
Second person You 11 91
Impersonal or third person Somebody, he/she, or they 9 8

Note. Percentages are based on 427 meaning hypothetical questions and 518 morality hypothetical questions.

questions (Af = .70, SD = .46), /(395) = 3.31, p < .05, d = .33. We then examined the yes/no Definition questions that children found difficult, and discovered that 92% were in the form of "Do

you know. . .?” (e.g., “Do you know what it means to tell a lie?”).
Personal pronouns in hypothetical meaning questions ( Hy-

pothesis 3). To examine the use of personal pronouns in hypo-
thetical questions, we began by assessing how many questions
were asked using hypothetical phrasing. Overall, 447 meaning
questions were asked hypothetically. Given that 427 of these
questions were Identification questions, we focused our analyses
of personal pronoun use on the Identification questions. When
examining the Identification questions, we found that 79% of
hypothetical Identification questions were asked using first person
pronouns (e.g., “If I told you. . .”). Second person pronouns were
used 11% of the time, and impersonal and third person pronouns
were used 9% of the time. Owing to the low frequency of non-first
person pronouns, we were unable to statistically compare the
accuracy of children’s responses by pronoun use. Descriptively,
children’s accuracy rates were in the predicted direction, with
children being highly accurate when asked questions using imper-
sonal or third person pronouns (M = .99, SD = .06), somewhat
less accurate when asked questions using first person pronouns
( M = .90, SD = .30), and least accurate when asked questions that
used second person pronouns ( M = .78, SD = .42).
Questions about the truth versus a lie (Hypothesis 4). To

test possible differences in accuracy responding to questions about
the “truth” or “lies,” we first examined whether “truth” or “lie”

questions predominated, excluding questions that asked about both
terms simultaneously. We identified 567 questions that asked
about the truth/not the truth or a lie/not a lie. Of these questions
63% were about the truth and 37% were about a lie. A nonpara-
metric Chi-square test revealed a significant difference in the rate
of truth and lie questions, x2(l, N = 567) = 37.08, p < .001. To assess whether children's accuracy rates were related to whether meaning questions were asked about the truth or a lie, we con- ducted a logistic regression. Children's accuracy was entered as the predicted variable (where 0 = accurate, 1 = inaccurate), with age in years entered on the first step followed by whether the question was the truth or a lie (where 0 = truth and 1 = lie). Preliminary analyses indicated that the interaction between age and honesty was not significant, and thus we excluded the inter- action from the model. The first model with age was found to be significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .09, x20) = 32.42, p < .001, indicating that as age increased, children were significantly more likely to respond with accurate answers, B = .29, Wald = 28.36,

odds ratio = 1.33, p < .001, 95% CIs [1.20, 1.48]. The second Block was not found to be significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .10, X2(l) = .39, p = .53. Results revealed no significant difference between children's accuracy in response to questions about the truth (M = .79, SD = .41) or a He (M = .81, SD = .39).

Competency Questions About Morality

When examining the types of Morality questions asked by the
court as well as both defense and prosecution attorneys, we found
that of the 1,481 questions 43% (. N = 637) were Consequence
questions, 22% (N = 318) were Evaluation questions, 1 6% (N =
233) were Prior Occurrence questions, and 20% ( N = 293) fell into
the category of “other”.
Evaluation versus consequence questions (Hypothesis 2).

We began by examining whether children were significantly more
accurate at answering Evaluation questions compared to Conse-
quence questions. A logistic regression was performed with chil-
dren’s accuracy score as the predicted variable (0 = incorrect, 1 =
correct). Age in years was entered on the first step followed by
morality question type (1 = Evaluation questions, 2 = Conse-
quence questions) on the second step. Preliminary analyses re-
vealed that the age by morality question type interaction was not
significant and thus was excluded from the model. The first model
was significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .08, x2(l) = 37.57, p < .001, indicating that as age increased, children were significantly more accurate at answering morality questions in general, B = .25, Wald = 33.31, odds ratio = 1.29, p < .001, 95% CIs [1.19, 1.38]. After controlling for age, Block 2 was also found to be significant, Nagelkerke R2 = .10, x2(l) = 11.84, p = .001 indicating that children were significantly less likely to error when answering Evaluation questions than Consequence questions, B = -.78, Wald = 10.72, odds ratio = 2.17,p = .001, 95% CIs [.31, .70]. Specifically, children erred 21% of the time in response to Con- sequence questions compared to 11% of the time in response to Evaluation questions (see Table 3).

Personal pronouns in hypothetical morality questions (Hy-
pothesis 3). To examine the use of personal pronouns in hypo-
thetical morality questions we began by assessing how many
questions were asked using hypothetical phrasing. Overall, 524
morality questions were asked hypothetically. Given that 518 of
these questions were Consequence questions we focused our anal-
yses of personal pronoun use on this category. When examining
the Consequence questions, we found that 91% of hypothetical
questions were asked using second person pronouns (e.g., “If you

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told a lie. . In addition, impersonal or third person pronouns
were used 8% of the time, and first person pronouns were used 1%
of the time. Owing to the low frequency of non-second person
pronouns, we were unable to statistically compare the accuracy of
children’s responses by pronoun use. Descriptively, children’s
response accuracy was in the predicted direction with quite high
accuracy rates for hypothetical Consequence questions that used
impersonal or third person pronouns (M = .91, SD = .19) but
children had some difficulty answering hypothetical Consequence
questions that used second person pronouns (M = .80, SD = .40),
and struggled with first person pronouns (M = .50, SD = .55).

Prior Occurrence questions (Hypothesis 5). To assess
whether children would admit to previously telling a lie we exam-
ined children’s responses to the Prior Occurrence questions. A
logistic regression was performed with accuracy as the predicted
variable [0 = incorrect (denial of ever previously telling a lie), 1 =
correct (admission to previously telling a lie)] with age in years
entered as the predictor. The model was significant, Nagelkerke
R2 = .08, x2(l) = 11.81, p = .001, indicating that as age in-
creased, children were significantly more accurate at answering
Prior Occurrence questions, B = .23, Wald = 10.09, odds ratio =
1.26, p = .001, CIs [1.12, 1.45]. To further examine these age
differences a median split on age was performed. Based on the
median split children under the age of 6 were classified as
“younger children” and children 7-14 years of age were classified
as “older children”. An independent samples t tests with age as the
grouping variable was performed on children’s accuracy scores in
response to the Prior Occurrence questions. Results revealed that
older children (Af = .72, SD = .45) were significantly more
accurate at answering the Prior Occurrence question than younger
children (M = .49, SD = .50).

Attorney differences in questioning child witnesses (Hypoth-
esis 6). Next we examined whether defense attorneys tended to
ask more questions that children had difficulty answering com-
pared to the prosecution or court. For the following analyses,
questions asked by the prosecution and court were combined and
compared to the defense.

Leading Questions
v.

We began by examining whether défense attorneys asked sig-
nificantly more leading questions than the prosecution or court.
Based on the form of the question, leading questions were classi-
fied as tag or negative term questions and declarative questions. A
Chi-square analysis was performed and revealed a relation be-
tween the questioner (defense vs. prosecution/court) and the num-
ber of leading questions, x2(l, 2611) = 2.49, p < .001, Cramer's V = .10. Specifically, the defense asked proportionally more leading questions (20%) compared to the prosecution/court (1 1%). Next the relation between the questioner and the use of less leading "WH" questions was assessed using a Chi-square analysis com- paring the number of "WH" questions compared to "non-WH" questions. However, no significant difference was found for the prçportion of "WH" questions asked by the defense (19%) com- pared to the prosecution/court (22%), x2(l, 261 1) = 1.04, p = .31, Cramer's V = .02. Given that attorneys asked "WH" questions approximately 20% of the time, almost 80% of the time they asked closed-ended questions including yes/no, forced-choice, negative term, tag questions, and declarative questions (see Table 2).

Meaning Question Type

Given our previous finding that children have more difficulty
answering Definition questions compared to Identification or Dif-
ference questions, we examined whether there was a relation
between interviewer and Meaning question type. Since there was
no significant difference in children’s accuracy rates in response to
Identification and Difference questions, these categories were col-
lapsed to compare with Definition questions. To assess whether
there was a relation between meaning questions asked (Definition
vs. Identification/Difference) and interviewer (defense vs. prose-
cution/court) a Chi-square analysis was performed. Results re-
vealed that the defense asked proportionally more Definition ques-
tions (50%) compared to the prosecution/court (39%), x2(l>
1172) = 6.80, p = .01, Cramer’s V = .08.

Morality Question Type

Next, based on our earlier finding that children had more diffi-

culty answering Consequence questions compared to Evaluation
questions, we examined whether there was a relation between
interviewer and the type of morality questions asked. A Chi-square
analysis was performed comparing interviewer (defense vs. pros-
ecution/court) by morality question type (Consequence vs. Evalu-
ation) and revealed that the defense asked proportionally more
Consequence questions (85%) compared to the prosecution/court
(63%), x2(l, 916) = 2.72, p < .001, Cramer's V = .17.

Prior Occurrence

Finally, we examined interviewer differences (defense vs. pros-
ecution/court) in asking Prior Occurrence questions. A Chi-square
analysis revealed a significant relation between interviewer and the

rate of Prior Occurrence questions, x2(l, 1416) = 9.59, p < .001, Cramer's V = .26. Specifically, the defense was found to ask proportionally more (34% of all morality questions) Prior Occur- rence questions compared to the prosecution/court (11% of all morality questions).

Discussion

This study examined the types of truth-lie competency ques-
tions asked by the courts, defense attorneys, and prosecution
attorneys as well as children’s ability to successfully answer such
questions. As we expected, the vast majority of child witnesses
were found competent, and children were generally accurate at
answering competency questions. This was as anticipated, given
the fact that child witnesses are screened before trial, and tend to

be over 6 years of age, which makes them well-equipped to
demonstrate a basic understanding of truth-telling. Nevertheless,
consistent with our hypothesis that the courtroom context would

present difficulties, there was substantial variability in accuracy
depending on the types of questions asked, and performance im-
proved with age.

With respect to Meaning questions, children were significantly
more likely to err in response to Definition questions compared to
Identification and Difference questions. Although we predicted
that Difference questions would be more difficult than Identifica-

tion questions, this pattern of results was not found. We anticipated
that both Definition and Difference questions would lead to more

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202

errors because of the difficulty of generating definitions and dif-
ferences. However, examining the form of the questions, children
erred more on yes/no questions – which merely require a “yes” or
a “no” – than WH-questions, and the most frequent errors were in
response to “do you know” questions (e.g., “do you know what it
means to tell the truth?”). Specifically, children were answering
“no” to such questions. We suspect that children may misunder-
stand the pragmatics of “do you know” questions, which anticipate
a “yes” response and an answer to the implied question (“what
does it mean?”) (Clark, 1979). Children may be accustomed to “do
you know” questions as precursors to the provision of information
by the adult questioner (cf. “do you know why you are here?”), in
which case a “no” response is polite. This is a promising area for
further study, because questioners are likely to use the “do you
know” frame in many different contexts (Walker, 1999).

With respect to Morality questions, children were significantly
more accurate at answering Evaluation questions than Outcome
questions, consistent with our prediction. As previously noted, this
may be attributable to cognitive or motivational difficulties. Reason-

ing about evaluation (are lies good or bad) may be simpler than
reasoning about consequences (given that lies are good or bad, what
will happen when I tell them), and may be less aversive, because
imagining negative consequences is likely to be unpleasant

Consistent with Lyon and Saywitz’s (1999) findings of the study
involving children up to 7 years of age, the present investigation
also found that while there was a general developmental improve-
ment with age, no signifi-cant interaction was found between age
and question type (for both Meaning and Morality questions).
These findings indicate that the difficulty with such questions is
consistent across age, even into adolescence. One possible expla-
nation for why children and adolescents demonstrate similar dif-
ficulties is that the stressful environment of the courtroom may

result in cognitive and motivational difficulties which may impair
their performance (e.g., Hill & Hill, 1986-1987; Saywitz & Na-
thanson, 1993).

We also examined children’s accuracy in response to questions
about whether they had ever told a lie (Prior Occurrence ques-
tions). Although younger children were particularly likely to deny
having ever lied, 30% of the older children (7-14 years) did so as

well. It is likely that children misunderstood the purpose of the
question, which is not to determine whether the child is likely to be
lying on this particular occasion (in which case a “no” answer
might, from the child’s perspective, suggest honesty), but to lay the
foundation for a question about the consequences to the child when
he or she lied in the past. Ironically, the child’s “no” response is
itself a lie, which, as we will discuss below, may serve to under-
mine the child’s credibility. There are other possible problems with
questions of this sort as well. Questions about whether the child
has “ever” performed a misdeed are vague, in that the child has to
search a wide range of experiences in order to answer the question,
and problematic, because the word “ever” is what linguists refer to
as a “negative polarity item.” Negative polarity items are words
that typically occur in negatively framed declarative sentences
(e.g., “I haven’t ever seen that”) and are normally inappropriate in
positively framed declarative sentences (e.g., “I have ever seen
that”; Israel, 1998). Because negative polarity items typically
occur in negative contexts, their use in questions has been found to
be conducive to a “no” response. For example, the word “any” is
another negative polarity item, and Heritage, Robinson, Elliott,

Beckett, and Wilkes (2007) found that whereas only 10% of adult
patients presenting with multiple complaints answered “no” when
asked by their physicians “is there something else,” 50% answered
“no” when asked “is there anything else?” Further experimental
work can help to tease apart the reasons for children’s difficulty
with Prior Occurrence questions.

With respect to both Meaning and Morality questions, we were
interested in determining if children’s accuracy in response to
hypothetical questions would vary depending on the pronouns
used. We suspected that children might fare worse if they were
asked to label their statements or the statements of adult question-
ers’ lies or immoral, as opposed to commenting on statements
made by third persons (e.g., “someone”). Because questioners only
very rarely asked children questions using an impersonal or third
person pronoun, we were not able to systematically test this
prediction. Nevertheless, the descriptive accuracies were consis-
tent with our hypothesis. When children were asked Meaning
questions about a third person, they erred 1% of the time, com-
pared to 22% of the time when asked about their own statements
and 10% of the time when asked about the questioner’s statements.
When children were asked Morality questions about a third person,
they erred 9% of the time, compared to 20% of the time when
asked about their own statements and 50% of the time when asked

about the questioner’s statements.
This study also examined whether prosecutors, judges, and

defense attorneys asked different types of questions. Overall, a
greater proportion of defense attorney’s questions that children
found most difficult included Definition Meaning questions, Con-
sequence Morality questions, and Prior Occurrence Morality ques-
tions. This might suggest that defense attorneys intentionally asked
more difficult questions, either to justify a finding of incompetency
or to undermine the credibility of the child (Gray, 1993). Indeed,
in a survey of U.S. defense attorneys, two-thirds acknowledged
that they would “often” or “always” take advantage of child
witnesses’ vulnerabilities during cross-examination (Leippe,
Brigham, Cousins, & Romanczyk, 1989). On the other hand, if one
examines the overall pool of questions, prosecutors (as well as the
judges) asked a substantial percentage of the difficult questions:
Definition Meaning, 50%; Consequence Morality, 63%; and Prior
Occurrence Morality, 52%. This suggests that many of the difficult

questions were unwittingly challenging, and that the court players
were largely unaware of the most sensitive means of assessing
children’s understanding.

The potential limitations of the findings should be noted. Our
sample of trial transcripts came from only one jurisdiction (Los
Angeles County) and a relatively narrow time frame (5 years), and
limitations of the computer database and funding prevented us
from obtaining all the cases. Fortunately, we were able to obtain
virtually all of the acquittals/mistrials, and there is no reason to
believe that the convictions we were unable to obtain are system-

atically different than the convictions in the sample. The appellate
court sample may not provide a representative sampling of com-
petency questions, because not all cases are appealed, not all
appellate decisions are reported, and the appellate decisions only
selectively quote competency questions. The strength of the
method was that by combining the two samples, we offset some of
the limitations of each. For example, the possibility that Los
Angeles is much different than the rest of the United States in its
approach, or the likelihood that the appellate cases selected unrep-

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203

resentative questions, is minimized by the consistency of the
findings across both the samples.

Perhaps the most important limitation is that we were unable to
determine whether cases were never brought to trial because of

prosecutor’s judgments implying that the witnesses were incom-
petent. Hence, our finding that children were rarely if ever found
incompetent supports the proposition that the courts do not use the

questions to screen out child witnesses, but cannot answer the ques-
tion whether apparently incompetent child witnesses are screened out

earlier. Truth-lie competency questions are frequently asked by in-
vestigators (Huffman et al., 1999; Sternberg et al., 2001; Walker &
Hunt, 1998), and prosecutors assert that they use success or failure on

the competency questions as a factor in deciding whether to file
criminal charges (Smith & Elstein, 1993). Although we suspect that
some of children’s difficulties in our study were attributable to the
intimidating context of the courtroom, laboratory research has
demonstrated the influence of question- types on children’s appar-
ent understanding (e.g., Lyon et al., 2001). It is therefore likely that

many of the difficulties encountered by children in court occurred
before trial as well. Clearly, there is a need for further research on

the types of questions that investigators or prosecutors ask at
pre-trial, children’s accuracy in response to these questions, and
the effects of children’s accuracy on subsequent prosecution.

The findings have several implications for practice. First, it
seems clear that children’s actual understanding of the meaning
and morality of truth-telling is underestimated by courtroom ques-
tioning. Laboratory research has demonstrated that most children
can identify statements as the truth or not and evaluate statements

as positive or negative by the time they reach school age (Bussey,
1992, 1999; Talwar et al., 2002), whereas the questions asked in
court are leading to errors among substantial percentages of older
children. Not only are the questions unnecessarily difficult; many
are simply unnecessary. There is no legal requirement that prose-
cutors ask children if they know the meaning of truth and lie before

testing their understanding. Moreover, questions about whether a
child has ever lied are not a necessary prerequisite to asking the
child to evaluate truth and lie. Indeed, questions about a child’s
history of honesty are presumptively inadmissible as character
evidence, insofar as they may be used to assess the likelihood that

the child is currently telling the^ truthv (Mueller & Kirkpatrick,
2009). The fact that prosecutors, who are hardly inclined to at-
tempt to disqualify their witnesses, nevertheless ask a substantial

percentage of the more difficult questions suggests that they would
benefit from training regarding sensitive methods for assessing
competency.

To the extent that widespread education of court personnel is
unlikely to occur, the findings also support growing doubts about
the utility of the competency requirements. As noted in the intro-
duction, many nations have abolished the truth-lie competency
inquiry, with the notable exception of the United States. Canada,
for example, has prohibited questions about the meaning of truth
and lies and only requires that child witnesses promise to tell the
truth (Bala, Evans, & Bala, 2010). These changes have been
motivated, at least in part, by research demonstrating a lack of
relation between children’s truth- lie understanding and their
honesty or eyewitness abilities (Goodman, Aman, & Hirshman,
1987; London & Nunez, 2002; Pipe & Wilson, 1994; Talwar et al.,
2002), and research finding that eliciting a promise to tell the truth
increases honesty (Lyon & Dorado, 2008; Lyon, Malloy, Quas, &

Talwar, 2008; Talwar, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2004; Talwar et al.,
2002). Although there is support for the proposition that children
who better understand the meaning of “truth” are more likely to be

influenced when asked to “promise to tell the truth” (Lyon &
Dorado, 2008; Lyon et al., 2008; Talwar et al., 2004), children who
fail truth-lie tasks are nevertheless likely to be influenced by a
promise, suggesting that even laboratory tasks underestimate chil-
dren’s actual understanding. Hence, the courts might do well to
move away from attempts to assess children’s understanding and
towards administering a child-friendly version of the oath.

A final implication of the research concerns how competency
questions might affect the jurors’ assessment of children’s credi-
bility. Although a request by a party to assess the child’s truth-lie
competency outside the presence of the jury is likely to be granted,
few states have a per se rule that the jury must be excluded, and
trial courts are required to do so only if the “interests of justice
require” ( People v. Wittrein, 2009, p. 1080). In the Los Angeles
sample, the jury was excluded in only 13% of the 164 cases. Ten
cases were preliminary hearings, which are held without a jury,
and the court excused the jury at trial in another 1 1 cases. In five
of those cases, some competency questions were nevertheless also
asked in front of the jury. Although there is little research on the

subject, the inclusion of a competency inquiry in which children
correctly answer questions increases jurors’ ratings of child wit-
nesses’ credibility (Connolly, Gagnon, & Lavoie, 2008), making it
reasonable to infer that errors decrease credibility. Overall, the
present investigation demonstrates that children are rarely found
incompetent to testify. However, children’s performance on the
competency exam varied greatly based on the type of question
asked. These findings suggest that children’s truth-lie competency
is underestimated by the types of questions asked in the courtroom

and sheds doubt on the utility of the competency requirements.

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Contents

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Issue Table of Contents

Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 36, No. 3 (June 2012) pp. i-ii, 159-255
Front Matter
Instructions to Authors [pp. ii-ii]
Do PCL-R Scores from State or Defense Experts Best Predict Future Misconduct Among Civilly Committed Sex Offenders? [pp. 159-169]
ORDER FORM [pp. 169-169]
The Impact of Mental Health Services on Arrests of Offenders With a Serious Mental Illness [pp. 170-176]
The Effect of Listenability Factors on the Comprehension of Police Cautions [pp. 177-183]
An Explanation for Camera Perspective Bias in Voluntariness Judgment for Video-Recorded Confession: Suggestion of Cognitive Frame [pp. 184-194]
Assessing Children’s Competency to Take the Oath in Court: The Influence of Question Type on Children’s Accuracy [pp. 195-205]
E-Mail Notification of Your Latest Issue Online! [pp. 205-205]
The Effect of Post-Identification Feedback, Delay, and Suspicion on Accurate Eyewitnesses [pp. 206-214]
The Self-Regulation Model of Sexual Offending: Relationship to Risk and Need [pp. 215-224]
Field Reliability of the SAVRY With Juvenile Probation Officers: Implications for Training [pp. 225-236]
A Bayesian Approach to the Group Versus Individual Prediction Controversy in Actuarial Risk Assessment [pp. 237-246]
Sequential Lineup Presentation Promotes Less-Biased Criterion Setting but Does Not Improve Discriminability [pp. 247-255]

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