Dr. Maggie Bruck's Analysis
I, Maggie Bruck, say as follows:
I hold a doctorate in experimental psychology and am an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Department of Pediatrics at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. I specialize in research in the field of developmental psychology. My particular research interests focus on children's language and memory development.
I received my undergraduate degree in Psychology from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, in 1967. In 1969, I received my Master's degree in Experimental Psychology from McGill University. I earned my Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from McGill University in 1972.
My academic/research history includes experience as a Research Associate in the McGill University Department of Psychology (1972) and at the McGill-Montreal Children's Hospital Learning Center (1972-1975). I served as a Senior Staff Member of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 and 1976. From 1976 through 1993 I was the Research Director at the McGill-Montreal Children's Hospital Learning Center. From 1976 through 1992 I was an Associate Member of the Department of Psychology at McGill University. Since 1991 I have been an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Department of Pediatrics at McGill University.
Since 1971 I have taught the following subjects: Educational Psychology (McGill); Tests and Measurement (McGill); Language Development (Sir George Williams University); Research Methods in Psycholinguistics (McGill); Childhood Psychopathy (McGill & Concordia Universities); Graduate Clinical Seminar (McGill); Psychology of Language (McGill); Graduate Cognitive Seminar (McGill); Experimental Problems (McGill); Reading Ability and Reading Disability (McGill); and Children in the Courtroom (McGill). I have also served as a Senior Lecturer in the Senior Resident Ambulatory Rotation in the McGill University Department of Pediatrics.
My administrative experience includes tenure as: Research Director at the McGill University Children's Hospital Learning Center; Acting Director, McGill-Montreal Children's Hospital Learning Center; and Assistant Director of the Learning Center of Quebec.
I have served on several University committees including the Cyclical Review Committee for the Department of Otolaryngology; Graduate Faculty Social Science Research Grants Committee, Graduate Faculty Social Science Research Grants Committee (Chair), Graduate Faculty Council, and Graduate Fellowship Committee.
I have also reviewed numerous grants for organizations including: the Social Science and Humanities Research Council; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; the McGill-Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute; the Fonts de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec; B.C. Health Care Research Foundation; the National Institute of Health; and the Ontario Mental Health Foundation.
I have reviewed articles for the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science; Reading and Research Quarterly; Canadian Journal of Psychology; Developmental Psychology; Memory & Cognition; International Journal of Behavioral Development; Journal of Experimental Psychology; British Journal of Psychology; Law & Human Behavior; and Applied Cognitive Psychology.
I have served as a member of the following Review Committees: National Health and Welfare Canada Development Program; American Psychological Association (Division 7); Society for Research in Child Development; and the Advisory Committee Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professionals. I also serve or have served on the Editorial Boards of the following scientific peer review journals: Applied Psycholinguistics; Journal of Experimental Psychology; Psychology, Public Policy and Law; Child Development; and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
I am a member of the American Psychological Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, the Psychonomics Society, and the Society for Scientific Study of Reading.
I have received nearly two dozen research grants during the last 20 years. I have published some 60 articles in peer reviewed publications, 16 book chapters and co-authored with Steven Ceci, Ph.D., Jeopardy in the Courtroom: A Scientific Analysis of Children's Testimony, American Psychological Association: Washington, D.C. (1995). Dr. Ceci and I won the Robert Chin Memorial Award for the most outstanding article on child abuse in 1994 for our article The Suggestibility of Child Witnesses: An Historical Review, 113 Psychological Bulletin, 403-439 (1993). I have also presented more than 40 peer reviewed papers at professional conferences and presented more than 50 invited addresses.
I have testified as an expert trial witness in North Carolina v. Robert Fulton Kelly; R. v. Linda Sterling (Saskatchewan); and at an evidentiary hearing in California v. Scott Kniffen, Brenda Kniffen, Alvin McCuan, and Debora McCuan. I have participated as amicus curiae in New Jersey v. Margaret Kelly Michaels (New Jersey Supreme Court) and Snowden v. Singletary (United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit). Facts and issues in these cases were similar to those present in this case. My curriculum vitae is appended hereto.
For the past seven years, I have conducted research in the area of the reliability of children's testimony. With my colleague, Dr. Stephen Ceci, I have also conducted a number of experimental studies on the factors that influence children's suggestibility; these have been published in peer-review journals. I have reviewed the materials of a number of actual cases of alleged sexual abuse of children, either in the capacity of an expert witness or consultant. To a large extent, many of these materials have motivated my research studies.
I have been asked by Michael Snedeker to offer an opinion regarding the reliability of the reports of the child witnesses in the Malcom case. To reach an opinion I have relied on the material listed in the Index of this report. This material is sufficient for me to form an expert opinion that the circumstances that surrounded and promoted the children's disclosures resulted in a substantial risk of producing false and misleading reports from the child witnesses in the Malcom case, and that the statements by the children related to sex abuse are therefore unreliable.
Introduction
During the 1980s and early 1990s, there were a number of cases similar to that of Lynn Malcom's in which young children claimed that their parents or other adults sexually abused them. The claims were sometimes fantastic, involving reports of ritualistic abuse, pornography, multiple perpetrators and multiple victims (e.g, Kern County; McMartin Day Care; Jordan, Minnesota; Kelly Michaels; Fels Acres Day Care; Little Rascals Day Care). For the most part, there was never any medical evidence of sexual abuse in these cases nor were there any adult eyewitnesses. Nonetheless, the children's often fantastic and uncorroborated claims were believed by mental health professionals, by police officers, by prosecutors, and by jurors. This belief was reflected in the common slogan, "Believe the Children." As a result, in the absence of direct scientific evidence regarding how children might come to make false allegations regarding sexual abuse, many of these cases eventuated in the conviction of the alleged perpetrators.
Now, 10-15 years later, we have developed a better sociological as well as psychological understanding of the possible factors that might influence children's testimonies in cases such as that of Lynn Malcom. Specifically, in the past decade, there has been an exponential increase in research on the accuracy of young children's memories and the degree to which young children's memories and reports can be molded by suggestions implanted by adult interviewers. Although some of these studies document the strengths of young children's memories, increasing numbers of studies highlight their weaknesses when they are interviewed under certain conditions. As will be explained, these same interviewing conditions, which have a high risk of contaminating young children's reports, characterize the available descriptions of the interviews carried out with the child witnesses in the Malcom case.
Based on the materials that I was given to review, it is my opinion that the circumstances that surrounded and promoted the children's disclosures have a substantial risk of producing unreliable reports from young preschool children. These preschool children's reports were then used to elicit a confession from Jennifer Malcom. However, because so many of the preschool children's reports were unreliable and also retracted by at least one of the children, then logically, the accuracy of Jennifer's confession is also highly doubtful and unreliable. This conclusion is supported by Jennifer Malcom's recantation at the age of 18. Finally, it is my opinion that the record of the case may not present an accurate account of the way that the children's accounts evolved or were elicited.
This document begins with a discussion of the conditions under which young children disclose sexual abuse. The second section covers the pertinent social science research that addresses the issues of children's suggestibility and the conditions under which children may make false allegations. In the final section, evidence is cited from the interviews with the Malcom child witnesses to substantiate the expert opinion that the interviewing procedures used with the child witnesses in Malcom were so faulty that there is a substantial risk that the children's subsequent reports were mere reflections of the interviewers' suggestions.
Patterns of Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse
In evaluating the child's testimony, it is of primary importance to understand the evolution of the child's reports. The following pattern has raised the most concerns. The child is initially silent: He does not make any unsolicited or spontaneous statements about abusive acts. Rather, the allegations emerge once an adult has a suspicion that something has occurred and starts to question the child. At first, the child denies the event happened, but with repeated questioning, interviewing, or therapy, the child may eventually come to make a disclosure. Sometimes after the disclosure is made, the child may recant, only to later re-state the original allegation.
Disclosures in the Malcom Case
This pattern of disclosure characterizes the child witnesses in the Malcom case. The first allegation of sexual abuse was made on January 29, 1987. It was made by a four-year-old child, “Brian Logan”, when he was watching a video on "strangers" with his mother Lori. Based on the mother's suspicions that Kirk Malcom may have molested “Chuck Morgan” during the summer, she asked Ben if Kirk had done anything to him. According to Lori's report of that conversation, Ben claimed that Kirk inserted a screwdriver into his rectum, that there was oral copulation, and that the three “Morgan” children and Jennifer Malcom were present.[1]
Lori “Logan” immediately told Gail “Morgan”, her next door neighbor, the details of Ben's allegations. When questioned by his parent, “Chuck”, the oldest of the “Morgan” children (seven years old) denied that Kirk had done anything to him, although according to the mother, he said that it did happen to other children.[2] “Chuck”'s denial should be contrasted against his disclosure several months before when he had disclosed to his mother that Kirk had shown him how to masturbate.[3] Gail “Morgan” also questioned her other two children “James” (five years) and “Niel” (three and one-half years); according to the mother, both reported some abuse by Kirk.[4]
On February 2, Lori “Logan” called the parents of “Mark Mason” (six years, nine months) who attended a daycare run by Lynn Malcom. Lori told the “Mason”s about the other children's allegations.[5] When first questioned by his father, Mickey denied any abuse, but finally admitted that Kirk put his hand down his pants and inserted something like an "Easter toy" into his buttocks. When his father falsely told Mickey that Kirk was in jail, Mickey claimed that Kirk did penetrate his rectum with a screwdriver.[6] When Mickey's mother attempted to interview him about his participation or knowledge about sexual abuse, Mickey would not tell her anything for the first two days of her questioning.[7]
The sixth child was "Bertil Swanson" (four years, nine months) who also attended Lynn Malcom's daycare. There is no information on whether he disclosed to his parents. However, in his first interview at the police station on February 19[8], he made no allegations of abuse. Further, when seen for a medical examination the day before, he made no allegations of abuse.[9] Jennifer Malcom was interviewed by Sharon Krause on February 6.[10] Prior to this interview she denied to her parents any abuse by Kirk. During this interview, she did eventually make claims of abuse by Kirk. But she did not make any allegations regarding anal penetration by a screwdriver.
The children were interviewed through the weeks of February and except for "Bertil", they all made claims of abuse against Kirk. During some of these interviews, some of the children claimed that Kirk would threaten them if they told.[11]
The next set of allegations emerged toward the middle of April 1987. In the first week of April, apparently Ben reported that Lynn was present during the abuse.[12] Lori called Gail “Morgan” to relate this news. Gail interviewed each of her children separately and they each denied any knowledge of Lynn being present. On April 12, however, the children begin to make allegations about Lynn. On that day, “Mark Mason” and his parents were visiting the “Logan” and Mickey was beginning to "open up" about Lynn. Lori called Gail to tell her to come over. The children were questioned one at a time and they made drawings making allegations about Lynn.[13] On April 13, Mr. “Logan” called Jim Malcom to tell him of these allegations. On that same day, Mr. “Logan” called Sharon Krause to report that Lynn had threatened to kill the children if they told.[14] On that same day, Ms. Gladyschild (the therapist of Ben and Mickey) also called to report that Lynn had threatened to kill Ben with a gun.[15] The thrust of this new set of allegations was that the abuse was perpetrated by Lynn and not by Kirk. These are the allegations that were the basis of Lynn's conviction.
The allegations continue to evolve. On April 17, Mickey's allegations involved dead bodies.[16] On that same date, Ben told his mother that people had been killed. The children were taken into the woods by their parents in attempt to dig for these bodies. No evidence was ever found.[17]
After several interviews by the police, Jennifer confessed that Lynn Malcom sexually abused her.[18] On May 13, there was a new set of allegations. Mickey reported that Lynn's boyfriend hurt children and that he took pictures of the children.[19] On the next day, May 14, the therapist, Gladyschild, called the police to relate that Ben had just reported that Lynn and Kirk had murdered six people and that Lynn's roommate Donna was involved in the sexual assault and murder. Ben also related in that session that the bodies were buried in a junk yard in Ridgefield. Later that day, Gladyschild called the police again to report that in his session that day, Mickey alleged that Jeff Williams (a friend of Lynn's) had molested him. That same day, Gail “Morgan” reported to the police that “Chuck” had made allegations about another male molesting him and about a computer that was stored near Ridgefield in a junkyard.[20]
On June 2, “Chuck” recanted most of his prior allegations about Lynn Malcom.[21]
Interpretation of Patterns of Disclosures
There are two different interpretations of the evolution of these allegations. The first interpretation is that the progression from silence to denial to disclosure to recantation to re-statement is common and perhaps even diagnostic of sexual abuse. Some professionals claim that children have a great deal of difficulty disclosing and may later recant either because they are afraid (due to threats), ashamed, or even believe themselves to be culpable (see Bradley & Wood, 1996, for a review). Although there are some formal models of the disclosure process (e.g., Summit's (1983) Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome), these models were not derived from scientific studies, but from clinical intuitions. Furthermore, there is little scientific evidence to support the view that children may not readily or consistently disclose sexual abuse. In the most recent study, Bradley and Wood (1996) found that among 249 validated cases of child sexual abuse, 5% of the children denied the abuse and only 3% recanted their earlier reports of abuse. The available evidence also does not support the common assumption that sexually abused children do not disclose because of explicit threats made by the perpetrators. In one study, the likelihood of disclosure was unrelated to threats of the offender (Sauzier, 1989). When the offender used aggressive methods to gain the child's compliance to keep the secret, children were as likely to tell about the abuse immediately following the event as to never disclose the abuse. In a large study of child victims of sexual abuse, Gray (1993) reported that although 33% of the children in her study were threatened by the perpetrator not to tell, nevertheless two-thirds of these children still disclosed.
To summarize, although a small percentage of youngsters do appear to disclose their abuse reluctantly, with a smaller percentage subsequently recanting their disclosures, the overwhelming majority of children appear to maintain their claims, never denying them to officials once they are questioned. Thus, although there are validated cases of abuse that fit the disclosure pattern, it represents a distinct minority of sexually abused children. Furthermore, although threats are sometimes used to silence sexually abused children, these are not predictably effective. Despite the frail empirical evidence for the "disclosure process," it has been and continues to be a well established belief among some professionals (see Bruck, Ceci & Hembrooke, in press). Unfortunately, this belief can and does get translated into the following practices: Abused children must be relentlessly pursued or they will never disclose their abuse; one should not readily accept their denials or recantations because truly abused children usually show these very behaviors. Sometimes, interviewers assure themselves of the safety and necessity of such techniques by stating that children cannot be influenced to "lie" about sexual abuse (Faller, 1984; Sgroi, 1982). This certainly seems to have been the prevailing belief and procedure in the Malcom case. There is a second interpretation of a disclosure pattern that begins with silence, then progresses to denial, and eventuates in disclosure (and sometimes ends in recantation). The disclosures are the product of suggestive influences that can sometimes eventuate in false allegations.
In order to discuss of this hypothesis, we focus on the concept of "suggestive interviewing techniques."
Suggestive Interviewing Techniques
Interviewer Bias
"Interviewer bias" is a term used to characterize those interviewers who hold a priori beliefs about the occurrence of certain events and, as a result, mold the interview to elicit statements from the interviewee that are consistent with these prior beliefs. One of the hallmarks of "interviewer bias" is the single-minded attempt to gather only confirmatory evidence and to avoid all avenues that may produce negative or inconsistent evidence. Thus, while gathering evidence to support his/her hypothesis, an interviewer may fail to gather any evidence that could potentially disconfirm that hypothesis. The biased interviewer does not ask questions that might provide alternate explanations for the allegations (e.g., "Did your mommy and daddy tell you that this happened or did you see it happen?"). Nor does the biased interviewer ask the child about events that are inconsistent with his/her hypothesis (e.g., "Who else beside your teacher touched your private parts? Did your mommy touch them, too?"). And the biased interviewer does not challenge the authenticity of the child's report when it is consistent with his/her hypothesis (e.g., "It's important to tell me only what you saw, not what someone may have told you," or, "Did that really happen?" or, "It's OK to say you don't remember or you don't know"). When provided with inconsistent or bizarre evidence, biased interviewers either ignore it or else interpret it within the framework of their initial hypothesis. It is important to note that within this context, a biased interviewer may be a police officer, a therapist, and even a parent. It takes no special skills to be a biased interviewer.
Research has documented how interviewer bias can result in the generation of false reports from children, even about touches on their own bodies (see Ceci & Bruck, 1995 for a detailed description of studies). One study is described below.
Clarke-Stewart, Thompson and Lepore (as described in Goodman & Clarke-Stewart, 1991) conducted a study in which five- and six-year-olds viewed a staged event that could be construed as either abusive or innocent. Some children interacted with a confederate named "Chester" as he cleaned some dolls and other toys in a playroom. Other children interacted with Chester as he handled the dolls roughly and in a mildly abusive manner.
The children were questioned about this event several times on the same day by different interviewers. The interviewers were either (1) "accusatory" in tone (suggesting that the janitor had been inappropriately playing with the toys instead of working), (2) "exculpatory" in tone (suggesting that the janitor was just cleaning the toys and not playing), or (3) "neutral" and non-suggestive in tone. In the first two types of interviews, the questions changed from mildly to strongly suggestive as the interview progressed.
Following the first interview, all children were asked to tell in their own words what they had witnessed and then they were asked some questions about the event. Then, each child was interrogated by a second interviewer who either reinforced or contradicted the first interviewer's tone. Finally, children were asked by their parents to recount what the janitor had done.
When questioned by a neutral interviewer, or by an interviewer whose interpretation was consistent with the activity viewed by the child, children's accounts were both factually correct and consistent with the janitor's script. However, when the interviewer was biased in a direction that contradicted the activity viewed by the child, those children's stories quickly conformed to the suggestions or beliefs of the interviewer. By the end of the first interview, 75% of these children's remarks were consistent with the interviewer's point of view, and 90% answered interpretive questions (e.g., "Was he doing his job or just being bad?") in agreement with the interviewer's point of view, as opposed to what actually happened. When the second interviewer contradicted the first interviewer, the majority of children then fit their stories to the suggestions of the second interviewer. If the interviewers' interpretations were consistent across two interviews, though inconsistent with what the child had observed, the suggestions planted in the first session were repeated by the children in the second session. When questioned by their parents, the children's answers were consistent with the interviewers' biases.
Similar studies have been conducted whereby naive interviewers are explicitly given true and false information about events in which children or even adults participated (e.g., see Ceci & Bruck, 1995, for descriptions of studies by Ceci, Leichtman & White and by Pettit, Fegan & Howie). If the interviewers believe that a certain event has occurred, then the child they are interviewing will often make statements consistent with the belief even though the statements are false.
These studies provide important evidence that interviewers' beliefs about an event can effect the accuracy of children's answers. The data highlight the dangers of having only one hypothesis about an event, particularly an event that is ambiguous in nature.
Biased Interviewers in the Malcom Case
There are a number of pieces of evidence that the parents, professionals, and police in the Malcom case believed that the children had been abused and that inconsistent or disconfirmatory evidence was generally ignored. Because there was a great deal of communication among the adults in this case, the bias seemed to have been strengthened.
The following are some examples of bias among the parents, professionals and police in this case.
1. “Brian Logan”' first allegation of abuse was not spontaneous but was the result of his mother's questions based on her prior suspicions about Kirk Malcom.[22]
2. Lori “Logan” told the “Morgan”s and the “Mason”s about Ben's allegations. Thus when they questioned their children, they knew about the details of Ben's reports. The belief that something happened to another child may have set up the expectation that similar events happened to their own children.
3. The time course at which different allegations emerged is remarkably similar, suggesting that each time a new allegation emerged, it was believed by the adults who then questioned their children until they assented to a specific type of crime. Thus, five of the six child witnesses all made allegations about Kirk between January 30 and February 2. The next set of allegations involving Lynn emerged and were confirmed by the child witnesses within one week of April. Allegations of murders were made between April 14-17. And finally the allegations of other adults' involvements occurred on May 13 and May 14.
4. The belief system of the adults was so strong that they interpreted many ambiguous behaviors as consistent with abuse, regardless of how bizarre the claims or beliefs were. For example, the therapist Gladyschild believed her clients, no matter how bizarre their stories. She thought she could tell from Ben's body language that his stories about the murders of other children were true.[23]
Gail “Morgan” was unwilling to give up her belief that her children's reports were false. For example, she argued with Krause, who doubted the reliability of “James”'s report that a child named Megan had been killed. Gail “Morgan” said, "I will never forget “James”'s face when he talked about Megan" and she knew that “James” was telling the truth.[24]
When the child witnesses became tired or distressed during an interview, the police officers never commented that perhaps this was because the questioning was coercive or unpleasant; the children's reticence was seen as a symptom consistent with disclosing abuse. For example, when Mickey was interviewed by Krause and Nelson on April 14, they noted, "When we attempted to ask him about the urinating and defecations as reported by “Chuck Morgan”, Mickey immediately went to the furthest corner of the interview room, and keeping his body towards the corner would only turn his face and look at us as we spoke."
The police investigation appeared to be one of seeking confirmatory evidence and ignoring disconfirmatory evidence.
5. Even though Krause and Nelson had been told about earlier abuse of Kirk and Jennifer, they did not follow-up these reports. Such evidence would have been important for interpreting the medical findings of Jennifer as well as Jennifer's and Kirk's sexual knowledge.
6. The police's major hypothesis was that Lynn abused the children. They did not pursue the children's claims that her roommate Donna was also involved. Nor is there any evidence that they interviewed Lynn's assistant who helped her take care of the children during the period of the alleged abuse.
7. There are also suggestions in the reports that the parents, at least, and possibly one therapist thought that the children were being ritualistically abused. One mother bought a book and questioned her son about its contents.[25] The characteristics of this type of abuse (e.g, multiple perpetrators, pornography, drugs, satanic symbols, talk of the devil) all permeated the children's reports, possibly reflecting the bias of their interrogators.
8. The police did not seem to consider the sexual materials that were present in the “Logan” home. Specifically, on April 16[26] Lynn Malcom told Sharon Krause that Jennifer had watched a video at Benjamin's house that was a cartoon that showed intercourse. Perhaps the children's statements were based on details of this videotape. Jennifer confirmed this in her April 20 interview. There is no indication that the police investigated the video.
There were also adult magazines at the “Logan” household. Mr. “Logan” showed “Chuck Morgan” pictures of dildoes from one of these magazines. However, even though the police had xeroxed a page from the magazine, they did not consider that perhaps some of the children's reports were based on exposure to these magazines.
9. Detective Nelson's search warrant of April 16 reveals many of his beliefs about pedophiles which were used to justify his search of Lynn Malcom's home. These beliefs include:
--pedophiles gain gratification from pornographic pictures of children
--pedophiles rarely dispose of these treasured materials
--pedophiles collect pictures of their own victims; these photos are kept as a constant threat to the child of blackmail and exposure
--pedophiles usually run or own their own photographic reproductions systems
--pedophiles often keep the illicit materials in rental boxes outside their own homes
--pedophiles use sexual aids
--pedophiles keep diaries or informal notes, or audiotapes
At the end of his request, Nelson stated, "All of the materials requested for seizure will identify children who are being sexually exploited through child molestation and child pornography. The materials may also identify other adults who are engaging in the sexual exploitation of children by these means."
The search warrant was carried out and none of the alleged materials were found. Nevertheless, Jennifer was removed from her mother's care and the interviews with the children continued despite the lack of any evidence.
10. Although “Chuck Morgan”'s recantation interview on June 2 appears to contain many interviewing techniques that characterize unbiased interviewers (are you sure this happened, are you getting mixed up, it is important to tell the truth), as discussed below the use of these techniques is limited to certain topics and not fully exploited in the interview. Specifically, the interviewer does not use these to challenge the child about the primary allegations of the case. Details of this extraordinary interview are discussed below.
Interviewer bias can influence the architecture of interviews and it is revealed through a number of different component features that have been found to be highly suggestive and to have a high risk of tainting young children's reports. In the next sections, some of the suggestive features that were used in the interviews with the Malcom child witnesses are identified and discussed.
Repeated Interviews
Sometimes when interviewers do not obtain the desired information, they repeatedly question children. Often these interviews contain a host of leading questions and information that the interviewer thinks happened. Sometimes after a number of interviews, children come to make reports consistent with the interviewers' beliefs.
This hypothesis is supported by results from a number of studies showing that when misleading questions or inaccurate information are repeated across multiple interviews, then the final reports become highly tainted, as illustrated by the following study.
In this study (Bruck, Ceci, Francoeur & Barr, 1995) five-year-old children visited their pediatrician. During that visit, a male pediatrician gave each child a physical examination, an oral polio vaccine, and an inoculation. During that same visit, a female research assistant talked to the child about a poster on the wall, read the child a story and gave the child some treats. Approximately one year later, the children were interviewed on three different occasions about the inoculation visit. During these interviews some children were given false information: they were told that the female research assistant gave them the inoculation and the oral vaccine. A number of the children later reported that the research assistant had indeed performed a number of medical procedures on them during the initial visit.
In the Malcom case, the child witnesses were repeatedly interviewed, by their parents, by the police and by their therapists. Because of the way that the interviews were reported (see below), it is not possible to determine exactly how much leading or misleading information children were actually told during each interview. But there are indications that the children were told what other children said (for example, Mickey was asked about urination and defecation as reported by “Chuck”;[27] "Bertil" was told by Krause that other children have told that their private parts were touched;[28] and Jennifer was asked about getting shots,[29] based on what the other children had told Krause). Thus, it is possible that the children initially denied abuse and then later made allegations of abuse because they were repeatedly interviewed and provided with information about the alleged abuse.
Even if the interviews did not contain much leading information, the fact that the children's stories changed and became more elaborated with time in a synchronized manner is problematic and raises concern about the reliability of later reports. It has been found that reports that emerge in a child's first interview are the most accurate, if the interviewer is neutral and uses a minimal number of suggestive techniques. When children are later interviewed about the same event and report new details not mentioned in the first interview, these have a high probability of being inaccurate (Bruck, Hembrooke & Ceci, in press b; Salmon & Pipe, in press). These recent findings are discrepant with the more common claim that children need to be re-interviewed because it helps them to remember new and important details. However, it seems that this is not always the case, and repeated interviewing may be especially detrimental when the child is interviewed by a biased interviewer.
Repeating Questions Across and Within Interviews
Biased interviewers sometimes repeatedly ask the same question until the child provides a response that is consistent with their hypothesis. A number of studies have shown that asking children the same question within an interview, especially a yes/no question, often results in the child changing his original answer. Children often do this, reasoning that the question is being asked a second time either because the first answer given was wrong or that the interviewer must not have like the first answer, regardless of its accuracy (e.g., Siegal, Waters, & Dinwiddy, 1988).
Poole and White (1991) examined the effects of repeated questioning within and across sessions. Four, six, and eight-year-olds witnessed an ambiguous event. Half of the subjects were interviewed immediately after the event as well as one week later. The remaining subjects were interviewed only once -- one week after the event. Within each session, all questions were asked three times. Repeated open-ended questions (e.g., "What did the man look like?"), both within and across sessions had little effect, positive or negative, on children's responses. However on repeated yes/no questions (e.g., "Did the man hurt Melanie?"), the younger children were most likely to change their responses, both within and across sessions. Also, when children were asked a specific question about a detail for which they had no information (i.e. "What did the man do for a living?"), many answered with sheer speculations. Furthermore, with repeated questions, they used fewer qualifiers, omitting phrases such as "it might have been," and consequently they sounded increasingly confident about their statements. In other words, children will often cooperate by guessing, but after several repetitions, their uncertainty is no longer apparent.
As will be noted in a section below, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what questions the children were asked when interviewed, especially by the police. But it is clear that children's responses were sometimes inconsistent in these interviews. Sometimes they would begin the interview denying specific facts but by the end of the interview they would make allegations. It is entirely possible that these children changed their answers in order to please their interviewers.
Emotional Tone of the Interview
Interviewers can use verbal and nonverbal cues that communicate their bias. At times these cues can be subtle. They can set the emotional tone of the interview and they can also convey implicit or explicit threats, bribes, and rewards for the desired answer. Children are quick to pick up on the emotional tones in an interview and to act accordingly. For example, in some studies when an accusatory tone is set by the examiner (e.g. "It isn't good to let people kiss you in the bathtub," or "Don't be afraid to tell"), then children in these studies are likely to fabricate reports of past events even in cases when they have no memory of any event occurring. In some cases, these fabrications are sexual in nature.
In one such study, children played with an unfamiliar research assistant for five minutes while seated across a table from him. Four years later, researchers asked these same children to recall the original experience, and then asked them a series of questions, including abuse-related suggestive questions about the event (Goodman, Wilson, Hazan & Reed, 1989). The researchers created "an atmosphere of accusation," telling the children that they were to be questioned about an important event and saying things like, "Are you afraid to tell? You'll feel better once you've told." Although few children had any memory of the original event from four years earlier, five out of the fifteen children incorrectly agreed with the interviewer's suggestive question that they had been hugged or kissed by the confederate, two of the fifteen agreed that they had their picture taken in the bathroom, and one child agreed that she or he had been given a bath. In other words, children may give inaccurate responses to misleading questions about events for which they have no memory when the interviewer creates an emotional tone of accusation.
There are many other studies in the social science literature to show that reinforcing children for certain behaviors also increases the frequency of these types of behaviors. Telling children "you are really brave for telling" is one example of this. If used inappropriately, the use of such supportive statements can produce inaccurate statements. When interviewers are overly supportive of children, the children tend to produce many inaccurate as well as many accurate details (e.g., Geiselman, Saywitz & Bornstein, 1990). Sometimes interviewers' use of reinforcement becomes so intense that statements that are intended to be rewarding seem more like bribes and statements that are intended to be mildly discouraging seem more like threats. Finally, rewards and threats can be very tangible such as offering the child treats if he tells what happened.
In the Malcom case, there are glimpses from the transcripts of how the detectives tried to create an atmosphere of accusation in order to promote the accusations of abuse.
Krause with Jennifer (Feb 6): "We need people to help us; children need to tell things to feel better about something that was happening."
Krause with "Bertil": (April 30): "It is hard for children to say things to their parents."
Krause with "Bertil": (April 30): Sometimes when things happened that bother children or grownups it would make that person feel better if they were able to talk to someone about it, so it wasn't bugging them anymore. I asked "Bertil" if there was anything that was bothering him that he wanted to talk to me about. Sometimes these enjoinders to tell contain information about the types of activities that it would be good to talk about.
Krause with Jennifer (Feb 6): Sometimes it is hard for children to talk especially about touching things.
Finally, there is information from both Krause and Gail “Morgan” that Lori “Logan” bought Benjamin toys for telling so much.[30]
Interviews with Adults of High Status
Young children are sensitive to the status and power of their interviewers and as a result they are especially likely to comply with the implicit and explicit agenda of such interviewers. If their account is questioned, for example, children may defer to the challenges of the more senior interviewer. To some extent, the child's recognition of this power differential may be one of the most important causes of their increased suggestibility. Children are more likely to believe adults than other children, they are more willing to go along with the wishes of adults, and to incorporate adults' beliefs into their reports. This fact has long been recognized by researchers since the turn of the century and has been demonstrated in many studies (Ceci & Bruck, 1993, for review). For example, children are less open to suggestive influences when the suggestions are planted by their peers than when they are planted by adults (Ceci, Ross, & Toglia, 1987).
But children may also be sensitive to status and power differentials among adults. This is a particularly important issue for the testimony of child witnesses who are interviewed by police officers, judges, and medical personnel.
A study by Tobey and Goodman (1992) suggests that interviews by high status adults who make such statements may have negative effects on the accuracy of children's reports. In their study, preschoolers played a game with a research assistant who was called a "baby-sitter." Eleven days later, the children returned to the laboratory. Half of the children met a police officer who said
"I am very concerned that something bad might have happened the last time that you were here. I think that the baby-sitter you saw here last time might have done some bad things and I am trying to find out what happened the last time you were here when you played with the babysitter. We need your help. My partner is going to come in now and ask you some questions about what happened."
A research assistant dressed up as a police officer then questioned these children. The other children never met the police officer; they were only questioned by a neutral interviewer about what happened with the baby-sitter. When the children were asked to tell everything they could remember, the children in the police condition gave fewer accurate statements and more inaccurate statements than children in the neutral condition. Two of the 13 children in the police condition seemed to be decisively misled by the suggestion that the baby-sitter had done something bad. One girl said to her mother, "I think the baby-sitter had a gun and was going to kill me." Later, in her free recall, the same child said, "That man he might try to do something bad to me . . . really bad, yes siree." The second child inaccurately reported his ideas of what something bad might be, by saying, "I fell down, I got lost, I got hurt on my legs, and I cut my ears."
Goodman (1993) summarizes these findings as follows:
"One should be concerned not only with the actual questions but also with the context of the interview. An accusatory or intimidating context leads to increased errors in children's reports (p. 15)."
It appears that Krause and Nelson told children that they were the police in an attempt to get them to open up. Detective Nelson's interview with “Neil Morgan” on February 2 illustrates how children may make allegations when the authority of the interviewer is made explicit. At the beginning of the interview “Niel” was unforthcoming about specific allegations. He originally claimed that Kirk had inserted a screwdriver in his bottom, but then reported that Kirk was not there. He claimed that Kirk told "Bertil" to insert the screwdriver but that he had kept his clothes on. Nelson wrote in his report, "I then told “Niel” that I am a policemen and I like to help people and I would like to help him." Nelson asked “Niel” if he knew anybody who needed a doctor because they were sick and needed help. Now “Niel” replied "(Kirk) . . . He's sick in his thinking . . . because he pulled my pants down and licked my butt."
Another feature of some of the interviews in this case was that there was often more than one adult questioner present in the interview (Krause and Nelson conducted a number of interviewers; Krause and Peters conducted one interview with Jennifer). One might argue that this might be a safe-guard to ensure that the child tells the truth. However, it also seems that additional adults merely multiply the number of questions and suggestive interview strategies to which the children are subjected. These increased questions may increase children's willingness to defer to the adults' agenda rather than to their own memories of whether an event actually occurred.
Stereotype Induction
Suggestions do not have to necessarily be in the form of an explicit (mis)leading question such as, "She touched your bottom, didn't she?" One component of a suggestive interview involves the induction of stereotypes. That is, if a child is repeatedly told that a person "does bad things," then the child may begin to incorporate this belief into his or her reports, as illustrated by the next study by Lepore & Sesco (1994).
Children ranging in age from four to six years old played some games with a man called "Dale." Dale played with some of the toys in a researcher's testing room and he also asked the child to help him take off his sweater. Later, an interviewer asked the child to tell her everything that happened when Dale was in the room. For half the children, the interviewer maintained a neutral stance whenever they recalled an action. For the remaining children, the interviewer re-interpreted each of the child's responses in an incriminating way by stating, "He wasn't supposed to do or say that. That was bad. What else did he do?" Thus, in this incriminating condition, a negative stereotype was induced: "Dale does bad things." At the conclusion of these incriminating procedures, the children were asked three highly suggestive-misleading questions ("Didn't he take off some of your clothes, too?" "Other kids have told me that he kissed them, didn't he do that to you?" and, "He touched you and he wasn't supposed to do that, was he?") All children were then asked a series of direct questions, requiring "yes" or "no" answers, about what had happened with Dale.
Children in the incriminating condition gave many more inaccurate responses to the direct yes-no questions than did children in the neutral condition; this was largely because these children made errors on items related to "bad" actions that had been suggested to them by the interviewer. Interestingly, one-third of the children in the incriminating condition embellished their incorrect responses to these questions, and the embellished responses were always in the direction of the incriminating suggestions. The question that elicited the most frequent embellishments was: "Did Dale ever touch other kids at the school?" Embellishments to this question included information about whom Dale touched (e.g., "He touched Jason, he touched Tori, and he touched Molly."), where he touched them (e.g., "He touched them on their legs."), how he touched them (e.g., "and some he kissed . . . on the lips"), and how he took their clothes off ("Yes, my shoes and my socks and my pants. But not my shirt."). When they were re-interviewed one week later, children in the incriminating stereotype condition continued to answer the yes/no questions inaccurately and they continued to embellish their answers.
Finally, the incriminating condition had a very powerful effect on children's interpretations of Dale's character and actions. In comparison with children in the neutral interview condition, children in the incriminating interview condition were more likely to spontaneously make negative statements about Dale (e.g., "the guy came in and did some bad things") and to agree that Dale intended during the play session to be bad, mean, fool around, and not do his job.
It appears that the child witnesses in the Malcom case were also told that the Kirk and Lynn did something bad or that some of them needed help because they were sick. The children were told (sometimes falsely) that the defendants were in jail (e.g, Mickey's dad told him on Feb. 2 that Kirk was in jail), a statement that presupposes that the defendants did bad things. Sometimes, the children were able to provide details of their bad or sick deeds; other times, they simply repeated that they were bad. For example on May 20, after repeated interviews with therapists, parents, and police, “Brian Logan” tells Krause that it is so hard to remember everything and then reports that "They did bad things to us" and that "Lynn did bad things and she did a lot of stuff." Specific allegations only emerge with prodding. In another example, "Bertil" knew that Kirk was bad but he didn't know why he was bad (Feb. 19) and on April 30, the most he could say about Lynn was "Me knows why Lynn's in jail . . . Bad people get arrested and put in jail." It is possible that these children lived in an atmosphere where they heard so much talk about the bad things that the defendants did, that they came to believe this themselves and also at times created detailed reports of false events that were consistent with the stereotype of doing bad things.
The Use of Props and Cues
Anatomically detailed dolls are frequently used by professionals when interviewing children about suspected sexual abuse. The major rationale for the use of anatomical dolls is that they allow children to manipulate objects reminiscent of a critical event, thereby cuing recall and overcoming language and memory problems. It is also argued that the dolls are used to overcome motivational problems of embarrassment and shyness.
The use of anatomically detailed dolls has raised concerns, however, for at least two reasons. First, the dolls are themselves suggestive (especially when used by a biased interviewer) and encourage the child to engage in sexual play even if the child has not been sexually abused (e.g., Terr, 1988). A child, for instance, may insert a finger into a doll's genitalia simply because of its novelty. Second, it is impossible to make firm judgments about children's abuse status on the basis of their doll play because, until recently, there were no normative data on non-abused children's doll play. Over the past several years, researchers have conducted a number of studies to address these concerns.
There are several important findings. First, there is no consistent evidence to suggest that there are characteristic patterns of doll play for "abused" children. Many studies show that the play patterns thought to be characteristic of abused children, such as playing with the dolls in a suggestive or explicit sexual manner, or showing reticence or avoidance when presented with the dolls, also occur in samples of non-abused children. For example, Goranson (1986) conducted doll-centered interviews with 14 preschool children. The interviewer asked each child if anyone had touched their genitalia. The interviewer then followed up with more specific questions. None of the children used the dolls to demonstrate sexual intercourse. However, 50% of the children did insert their finger in the opening for the vagina or anus, and most stroked or tugged the penis or used it as a handle to swing the dolls.
Second, more recent studies indicate that use of the dolls does not improve accuracy of reporting by young children. In some cases, children are more inaccurate with the dolls, especially when asked to show with the dolls certain events that never happened. For instance, three-year-old children visited their pediatrician for their annual check-up (Bruck, Ceci, Francoeur & Renick, 1995). Half the children received a genital examination where the pediatrician gently touched their buttocks and genitals. The other children were not touched in these areas. Immediately after the examination, an experimenter pointed to the genitalia or buttocks of an anatomically detailed doll and asked the child, "Did the doctor touch you here?" Only 45% of the children who received the genital exam correctly answered yes; and only 50% of the children who did not receive a genital exam correctly answered "No" (i.e. 50% of these children falsely reported touching). When the children were simply asked to "Show on the doll" how the doctor had touched their buttocks or genitalia, accuracy did not improve. Now only 25% of the children who had received genital examinations correctly showed how the pediatrician had touched their genitals and buttocks. Accuracy decreased in part because a significant number of female subjects inserted their fingers into the anal or genital cavities of the dolls; the pediatrician never did this. Fifty-five percent of the children who did not receive genital examinations falsely showed either genital or anal touching when given the dolls. Researchers have obtained similar results in a study of four-year-old children (Bruck, Ceci & Francoeur, 1995).
The interview procedures used by Bruck and her colleagues also elicited a number of other behaviors that adults might misinterpret as sexual. When the children were given a stethoscope and a spoon and asked to show what the doctor did or might do with these instruments, some children incorrectly showed that he used the stethoscope to examine their genitals and some children inserted the spoon into the genital or anal openings or hit the doll's genitals. A number of other children showed aggressive behaviors with the dolls, hitting them with some of the props provided.
Some data suggest that repeated exposure to the dolls may lead young children to fabricate highly elaborate accounts of sexual abuse. For example, after a third exposure in a period of a week to an anatomically correct doll, a non-abused three-year-old child reported to her father how her pediatrician had strangled her with a rope, inserted a stick into her vagina and hammered an earscope into her anus (see Bruck et al, 1995).
Other researchers have reported similar results with the use of line drawings (Rawls, 1996) and with the combined use of line drawings, dolls, and props (see Steward et al., 1996). For example, in the Rawls study, five-year-old children played a dress-up game with a male research assistant. Four interviews were conducted over the next one to two weeks. A body parts diagram (i.e. a line-drawing) was introduced into the second interview. Rawls found that over the course of the four interviews children became increasingly inaccurate: many of the children first made errors in the second interview when they were asked closed-ended questions about the body-parts diagram. Although many of the errors seemed benign, over a quarter of the total sample reported inappropriate adult-child touching. These results suggest that using body-parts diagrams could result in a number of false positive errors especially when children are repeatedly asked close-ended questions.
The "sexualized" behaviors that the children demonstrated in the above studies do not necessarily reflect young children's sexual knowledge or experiences but two other factors. First, the types of questions and props used in an interview (asking children to name body parts, including genitals, showing children anatomically detailed dolls and asking children to manipulate these dolls) make children think that it is not only permissible but expected that they respond to the interviewers' questions using these same terms. Second, these props are interesting to young children, and they may insert fingers into cavities or show sexual acts because these are creative ways of playing with the dolls, especially if they are encouraged to do so by their adult interviewers.
Finally, the use of any types of props or photographs in interviews with young children produces unreliable reporting. In laboratory studies it has been found that when children are provided with a prop that was not present during the target event they are likely to report that they did use it (e.g., Gee & Pipe, 1995; Salmon, Bidrose & Pipe, 1995; Steward & Steward, 1996). Similarly if children are shown photographs and asked to select a suspect, they will commonly select a picture even though the suspect is not in the photo line-up (King & Yuille, 1987; Parker & Carrazna, 1989).
The child witnesses in the Malcom case were interviewed with line drawings. The police used these to determine the children's linguistic terms for "private parts" (when the children did not know the names, these were provided by the police). In addition, they asked the children to refer to the line drawings when they were questioning them about sexual abuse. Similar procedures were used with the dolls. Sometimes the dolls and the line drawings were used in the same interviews and children were repeatedly interviewed with these instruments. At times children were shown pictures of objects (e.g, dildoes or screwdrivers) and children reported that these had been used in their abuse. All of these techniques could result in inaccurate reports.
Without videotapes of the interactions it is impossible to determine the degree to which the children were instructed in sexual manners with these dolls and props. But nevertheless, as reviewed above, even when interviewers do not show sexual acts on the dolls, young children naively but falsely do show how they were touched or abused. The use of dolls and drawings seems to provide the children with an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to talk about "sexual" matters. They are allowed to use words that are not permitted in other domains and the interviewing methods may encourage them to come up with false allegations. Thus it is possible that the allegations made by the Malcom child witnesses were a product of interviews with dolls and other similar materials.
Less Invasive Suggestive Techniques: Thinking, Imagining and Hearing
In order to get children to report or to remember an event, interviewers sometimes ask children to first try to remember or pretend if a certain event occurred and then to create a mental picture of the event and think about its details. Sometimes children are encouraged to think about events by "pretend" play with props or with toys. Although there are problems with using these techniques with people of all ages (see Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Lindsay & Read, 1994), there are particularly serious deleterious effects for young children who have fragile boundaries between reality and fantasy. Young children sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between memories of actual events and memories of imagined events (e.g., Parker, 1995; Welch-Ross, 1995). Thus, when young children are asked to pretend or try to think about certain events, they may later come to believe that these imagined activities actually did happen. This is illustrated by the results of the following study.
Ceci and his colleagues (1994a, 1994b) examined the effects of repeatedly asking young children to think about some event, creating mental images each time they did so. Children were asked to think about events that according to their parents had happened in the distant past (e.g., being punished for crossing the street alone). Children were also asked to think about fictitious events that, according to their parents, they never experienced (e.g., falling off a bike and getting stitches). In one of these studies, explicit memory induction procedures were used to encourage children to think about real and fictitious events. The same interviewer asked each child about four real and four false events for 11 consecutive weeks. The interviewer told the child that they would hear about something that had happened to them when they were little and that they should try to make a picture of it in their head. They should think about what they were wearing, who they were with and how they felt at the time. With each session children increasingly assented to false events.
In another study, Ceci and colleagues found that when asked to think about false events (e.g, the child's finger caught in a mousetrap) a significant number of children falsely assented to these events in the first interview. Thus, when asked to think about a non-event, false assents can occur during one interview.
The police often asked the Malcom child witnesses to think hard about alleged abusive events that the children claimed they could not remember.
"Think real hard and see if you can remember how old he was the first time something happened" (“Chuck Morgan”, Feb. 4)
"Close your eyes, think really hard" (Mickey, Feb. 4)
Krause left the room during Jennifer's interview so that she could think for a few minutes (April 16)
Krause told a non-divulging "Bertil" that it is hard to remember, but if he closes his eyes and thinks really heard sometimes we are able to remember things that are stuffed down in our thinking. Krause writes in her report, "I asked "Bertil" if he would close his eyes and think for me." (April 30)
From these examples, it is clear that when the children had problems producing allegations, the police interpreted these "problems with remembering" rather than with "not having anything to remember." It is possible that their subsequent allegations emerged as a result of these suggestive interviewing techniques that included "thinking" about events.
Sometimes suggestions can be very subtly introduced into the child's environment and the child can incorporate this into his reports. In a series of studies, Poole and Lindsay (1995, 1996) have shown how parents can suggest false events to their children. In their initial study (Poole & Lindsay, 1995), preschoolers played with "Mr. Science" for 16 minutes in a university laboratory. During this time, the child participated in four demonstrations (e.g, lifting cans with pulleys). Four months later, the children's parents were mailed a story book that was specially constructed for each child. It contained a biographical description of their child's visit to Mr. Science. However, not all of the information was accurate; although the story described two of the experiments that the child had seen, it also described two that the child had not seen. Furthermore, each story finished with the following fabricated account of what had happened when it was time to leave the laboratory:
Mr Science wiped (child's name) hands and face with a wet-wipe. The cloth got close to (child's name) mouth and tasted really yuckie.
The parents read the story to their children three times. When later interviewed by the experimenters, the children reported that they had participated in demonstrations that, in actuality, had only been mentioned in the stories read to them by their parents. When asked whether Mr. Science put anything "yuckie" in their mouths, more than half of the children inaccurately replied "yes," and many of these children elaborated their "yes" answers. Moreover, inaccurate reports of having something "yuckie" put in their mouths increased on repeated questioning. When asked, "Did Mr. Science put something yuckie in your mouth or did your Mom just read you this in a story?" 71% of the children said that it really happened. The children made these claims even though they had been previously warned that some of the things in the story had not happened and they had been trained to say "no" to non-experienced events.
This study demonstrates how subtle suggestions can influence children's inaccurate reporting of non-events that, if pursued in follow-up questioning by an interviewer who suspected something sexual had occurred, could lead to a sexual interpretation. The study also along with several others also illustrates preschoolers' susceptibility to "source monitoring" confusions. That is, preschoolers have particular difficulty in identifying the source of the suggestion. That is, the children confused their parent reading them the suggestion with their experiencing the suggestion; they incorrectly answer questions such as: "Did that really happen or did you mom just tell you about it?" or, "Did that really happen of did you just imagine it?"
Poole and Lindsay (1996) recently replicated these findings with children from a wider age range (three- to eight-year-olds). The findings were similar across ages with one exception: the source monitoring procedures enabled the older but not the younger children to reduce the rate at which they reported having experience the suggested events. That is when asked, "Did Mr. Science really put something yuckie in your mouth or did your Mom just read you this in a story?" the older children recanted their previous claims and said that their mom had told them.
The results of the Poole and Lindsay studies suggest that it is possible for children to incorporate suggestions that are delivered by their parents. These suggestions need not be very salient but could be buried in a mass of other details some of which are actually true. But the results also suggest the importance of asking children source monitoring questions (e.g., Did you see this or did you hear about it?) when they make allegations of a serious nature. The major problem of course is that, for the most part, younger children will not be able to correctly answer these questions, although older children may be more successful.
In the Malcom case, because the police seldom asked the children to be sure that they were only reporting what really happened (see below for a discussion of their procedure), we will never know whether the children were actually reporting their own experiences or whether their reports were based on what they had been told by their parents, therapists, investigators and even peers (see below). Some of the children when directly asked do say where the information came from.
--”Chuck” knew that the first time something had happened right before Thanksgiving was because his (younger) brother had told him (Feb. 4 interview)
In the June 2 recantation interview, “Chuck” reported the sources of some of his false reports: he drew the picture of a round bulb because his little sister has one like that; he drew a picture of a dildo because Mr. “Logan” had magazines with similar pictures. But most importantly, “Chuck” seems to remember his suggesters and suggestions. According to Krause's report, “Chuck” said "Lori, she's the one that asked the most questions. Whenever I go over there she asks me to write something down that Lynn did, and I can't think of anything else so I to make up stuff. And people are making me make stuff up and it's making me really nervous." (p. 18). In the same interview he has similar comments about Mr. “Logan”, who asks questions too and he as to make things up because "I don't know anything else." “Chuck” also reported that his mother had asked him the most questions. Later in the same interview, he claimed that his mother gave him the idea for claiming that other adults had been involved in the abuse.
--Mickey (Feb 4) reported that Kirk stuck his potty in "Bertil"'s butt. It happened in the hallway of Kirk's house and Lynn was sitting at the table to talking to somebody. Mickey then said ""Bertil" told me this. I didn't see it cause I wasn't there."
Based on the scientific literature, one would predict that based on their ages, the source monitoring judgments of these children might be quite accurate. And if this is so, then it highlights how these children were being persistently questioned to the point of discomfort and how they incorporated unexperienced events into their false reports.
However, the difficulties that younger children might have on this task is reflected in “James”'s (five-year-old) interview on April 23 when he reported,
"Lynn killed a rabbit and I think she held it up in front of our face." Krause asked him how he knew that and he stated, "My brother told my mom and she told me."
Perhaps this report is based on “Chuck”'s comments in the June 2 interview, "Like Kirk would kill a rabbit for my dad and so he could feed 'em to the dogs."
Peer Pressure
The effects of letting children know that their friends have "already told" is a much less investigated area in the field of children's testimonial research. Certainly, the common wisdom is that a child will go along with a peer group; but will a child provide an inaccurate response just so he or she can be one of the crowd? The results of three studies suggest that the answer is "yes."
First, Binet (1900) found that children will change their answers to be consistent with those of their peer group even when it is clear that the answer is inaccurate. Second, children who were absent from their classroom when a special event occurred later indicated to their interviewers that they had been present. One presumes that these children gave false reports so that they would feel like they were part of the same group as their friends who did participate in the special event. Importantly, this study shows how the peer group's actual experiences in an event can lead non-participants to fabricate reports of the event.
Finally, Pynoos and Nader (1989) studied people's recollections of a sniper attack. On February 24, 1984, from a second story window across the street, a sniper shot repeated rounds of ammunition at children on an elementary school playground. Scores of children were pinned under gunfire, many were injured, and one child and a passerby were killed. Roughly l0% of the student body, 113 children, were interviewed 6 to l6 weeks later. Each child was asked to freely recall the experience and then to respond to specific questions. Some of those children who were interviewed were not at the school during the shooting, including those already on the way home or on vacation. Yet, even the non-witnesses had "memories":
"One girl initially said that she was at the school gate nearest the sniper when the shooting began. In truth she was not only out of the line of fire, she was half a block away. A boy who had been away on vacation said that he had been on his way to the school, had seen someone lying on the ground, had heard the shots, and then turned back. In actuality, a police barricade prevented anyone from approaching the block around the school." (p. 238)
One assumes that children heard about the event from their peers who were present during the sniper attack and they incorporated these reports into their own memories.
In the Malcom case, there are different types of instances in which peer pressure was used. First police officers told children that other children had told them about touching.
--Krause told Jennifer: We have talked to the other boys who said other things occurred. Later in the interview she says that she is concerned with what the boys are saying and she wants Jennifer to be safe. (April 16)
--Krause told "Bertil": "Some of the children I talked to were children whose private parts got touched by somebody bigger than them (April 30)
Second, parents used children to get other children to talk. Sometimes it appears that the children were told what their friends had said. As a result of these techniques, it seems that children began to make allegations that contained many details found in other children's allegations. The degree to which such techniques could set up an atmosphere of competition is revealed in the following examples:
Benjamin: "Did “Chuck” tell you about Lynn and Kirk touching us?" "“Chuck” didn't tell before I told. I told the first." (interview with Krause, May 2)
“Chuck”: (Krause asks), When I asked him what gave him the idea to draw that, “Chuck” stated, "Well there was this one Mickey drew that looked sorta like that, and they showed it to me and asked me if I could draw it better. I just make the diamond up and then added that end, and Mickey said that's what it looked like, but I never saw it." (“Chuck” explaining to Krause why he made up a false drawing, June 2)
One of the more glaring examples of the use of peer pressure occurred on April 12 when Gail “Morgan” and her children went over to the “Logan” house with the “Mason” family. “Chuck” had denied that Lynn had been involved in the abuse. However, other children were beginning to "open up." At the “Logan” house, after learning that Lynn had done sexual things to all of the children, Gail “Morgan” called “Chuck” into the house and told him what Mickey had said, and again “Chuck” denied that Lynn had abused him. Next, Mickey was called into the room and told that “Chuck” was having a hard time remembering. Mickey said, "You were there “Chuck”." At that point, “Chuck” opened up and began to draw pictures about the alleged abuse (see above example for “Chuck”'s memory of this interaction). At this time all the children were around and had access to these events. During that day it appears that "all the children independently asserted that Lynn would insert BB's into their urethas." Two of the “Morgan” children began relating incidents involving Lynn and the children urinating and defecating on each other.[31] In that these events were never corroborated and later recanted by “Chuck”, it seems likely that the children were making allegations to be like their friends. The social context in which the allegations about Lynn first emerged thus raises doubt about the reliability of the claims that she sexually abused any of the children.
Combinations of Suggestive Interviewing Techniques
The studies discussed above have predominantly examined the effect of using a single suggestive technique on the accuracy of children's reports. However, when a number of techniques are combined in one interview, as was the case with the Malcom child witnesses, these procedures have detrimental effects much larger than might be expected. Two recent studies support this conclusion.
The first study (Bruck, Ceci, & Hembrooke, in press b) examined the impact of repeatedly interviewing children with a combination of suggestive procedures. Preschool children were asked to tell about two true events and about two false events. Each child participated in one of the true events that was staged at their school. This involved the child helping a visitor in the school who had tripped and hurt her ankle. The second true event varied across all the children: It involved an actual recent incident where the child had been punished by the teacher or the parent. One of the false events involved helping a lady find her monkey who had become lost in the park. The second false event involved witnessing a man steal food from the daycare. Unlike the other events, this false event is a criminal act and thus there are potentially serious implications of assenting to such scenarios.
Children were interviewed on five different occasions about the four events. In the first interview, the children were asked if the event had happened and if so to provide as many details as possible about its occurrence. The next three interviews included a combination of suggestive interviewing techniques that have been shown to increase children's assents to false events. These techniques included: the use of peer pressure ("Megan and Shonda were there and they told me you were there, too"), visualization techniques (try to think about what might have happened), repeating (mis)information, and providing selective reinforcement ("It's so wonderful that there are such nice kids like yourself to help people out when they need it. You know it's really important to help people out."). The same interviewer questioned the children for the first four interviews. In the fifth interview, a new interviewer questioned each child about each event in a non-suggestive manner.
Across the five interviews, all children consistently assented to the true-helping event. However, children were at first reluctant to talk about the true-punishment event; many of the children denied that the punishment had occurred. With repeated suggestive interviews, the children agreed that the punishment had occurred. Similar patterns of disclosure occurred for the false events; that is, children initially denied the false events but with repeated suggestive interviews they began to assent to these events. By the third interview, most children had assented to all true and false events. This pattern continued to the end of the experiment. Thus the combination of suggestive techniques (that were also used with the Malcom children) produced high assent rates for true and false events, some of which were of a criminal act.
In addition with repeated suggestive interviews, the children's narratives became more embellished and detailed so that by the third interview, it was impossible to differentiate the true from the false narratives. Generally, they contained the same number of spontaneous statements, details, adjectives, emotional terms, and dialogue statements. Although it was only suggested to the children that they might have seen a theft, many of those who did assent falsely, created narratives in which they were participants. Children reported chasing the thief, being chased by the thief, hitting the thief and similar types of actions. Finally, when children were repeatedly interviewed about true events (e.g, helping a woman who fell), their stories contained highly inaccurate statements (e.g., She had to go to the hospital; A man came and helped her; There was lots of bleeding"). Therefore, it appears that if children are interviewed with a combination of suggestive techniques, many will assent to and create complex narratives of false negative events and add inaccurate details to true events.
This study also illustrate both the beneficial as well as baleful consequences of using suggestive techniques to elicit reports from young children. For children who may not want to talk about unpleasant but true events (the punishment), the use of repeated interviews with suggestive components did prompt them to correctly assent to previously denied events. However, the use of these very same techniques promoted children to assent to events that never occurred. As a result, when suggestive techniques are used, it makes it impossible to determine whether the children's reports are true or false.
A study by Garven, Wood, Shaw, & Malpass (1997), shows how a combination of suggestive interviewing techniques that were used in the McMartin case can compromise the accuracy of children's reports in one short 10-minute interview. In this study, a stranger visited children at their daycare and read them a story. One week later, children (between the ages of three and six) were interviewed about the visit. Half the children were asked leading questions (e.g, "Did Manny break a toy?"). The other children were also asked the leading questions but in addition other suggestive techniques were used including peer pressure ("The other kids said that . . ."), positive consequences (giving the child praise for certain answers and telling him that he is a good helper), negative consequences (telling the child that this was not the appropriate answer, and reasking the question), enjoinders to think about it (children were asked to think hard about questions they said no to) and enjoinders to speculate (asking children to pretend or to tell what might having happened). Children in the combined technique condition inaccurately answered approximately 60% of the questions compared to 17% of the children who were just asked leading questions. The children in the combined suggestion group claimed that Manny said a bad word, that he threw a crayon, that he broke a toy, that he stole a pen, that he tore a book and that he bumped the teacher. Another important result of this study is that over time the children in the combined suggestion condition came to make more false claims as the interview progressed: that is within a short five- to 10-minute interview, children made more false claims in the second half than in the first half of the interview.
Taken together these studies suggest that with combined suggestive influences, young children can quickly come to make false reports that involve harm and wrong doing. With repeated interviewing, not only do false assents rise, but most importantly the children's false narratives have the characteristics of true narratives. This pattern of results explains another common finding of the research literature: often professionals (e.g., law enforcement personnel, mental health professionals) cannot differentiate children whose reports are the product of suggestive interviewing techniques from children whose reports are actually true (see e.g, Leichtman & Ceci, 1995; Ceci et al., 1994a, 1995b).
A review of the police investigative reports in the Malcom case reveals that the children were subjected to a number of different suggestive techniques and as will be argued below, perhaps the reports probably greatly underestimate the nature of the suggestive interrogations.
For example, in Mickey's February 4 interview the following suggestive influences could be discerned from the report:
--The child was asked suggestive leading questions before providing any information about abuse ("Mickey was asked if he could remember why he wasn't able to tell anyone about what had happened to him"; Mickey was asked if he could recall how old he was when this first happened to him; We need to know what Kirk did so the doctor would know if he could help him)
--There were two police officers present during the interview
--The child was shown a line drawing and asked to name the different body parts (including "butt" and "potty")
--The interviewer created an atmosphere of accusation ("We need to know what Kirk did so the doctor would know if he could help him")
--The interviewer asked the child to think real hard (Krause asked Mickey to close his eyes and to think)
--The child was shown pictures of two different screwdrivers and asked which one Kirk used (note the problems of using cues or pictures and also not telling the child that it might not be either one)
--Anatomically detailed dolls were used to demonstrate the abuse
“James”'s April 23 interview is another example of how interviewers used a combination of suggestive interviewing techniques which included:
--Krause created an atmosphere of accusation: "I indicated to “James” that part of my job was to help children and that sometimes I needed children to help me. I indicated to “James” that was why I wanted to talk to him because I needed him to help me by talking to me."
--Krause told “James” that she was a policeman
--Krause used line drawings to get “James” to name specific body parts (boobies, bottom, penis and wenis)
--Krause used anatomically detailed dolls
Other examples of the combination of suggestive interviewing techniques are provided later in the analysis of interviews with “Chuck” and Jennifer.
Suggestive Questioning vs. Forced Confessions
The interviewing methods described above do at times lead children to make false claims about a range of events. Children's inaccurate responses may reflect a social mechanism, they provide false answers to please their interviewers. Other times, however, the responses reflect more cognitive factors; children come to believe that their false responses are actually true. There are a number of studies that show that sometimes the types of suggestive techniques that were used in the interviews in the Malcom case result in children actually coming to falsely believe that they were participants in nonevents and to forgetting that these had ever been suggested to them (e.g, Ceci et al, 1994a, b ; Poole & Lindsay, 1995, 1997).
Although the interviewing procedures that have been described so far seem "mild" or "nonintrusive," at time these in fact can be viewed as very coercive, leading children to knowingly make false reports. In these more coercive situations, the children make false reports not to please their adult interviewers, but to escape an aversive situation. Sometimes, their reports can be viewed as "forced confessions." In these situations, children can sometimes remember these questioning procedures because they were so negative and thus so salient. Thus, as noted above, “Chuck” remembers
"Lori, she's the one that asked the most questions. Whenever I go over there she asks me to write something down that Lynn did, and I can't think of anything else so I to make up stuff. And people are making me make stuff up and it's making me really nervous." (p. 18)
In the same interview he has similar comments about Mr. “Logan” who asks questions too and he has to make things up because "I don't know anything else." (June 2 interview)
One technique that promotes false confessions is prolonging interviews until the desired information is obtained. It is not clear if the police did this deliberately in their interviews with the Malcom children, but it frequently noted at the end of most reports that the children were tired or restless.
"At the point child was getting tired of talking so the interview was terminated" (“James” 2-02-87)
Mickey was becoming restless at this time so the interview was terminated (2-04-87)
"Bertil" said he wanted his mom and he was getting tired of talking ((2-19-87)
“Chuck” then asked me when we were going to be through and was showing obvious signs of being tired so the interview was terminated. (Note this interview lasted 75 minutes) (4-13-87)
Mickey said he was getting tired, so the interview was terminated (It had lasted almost 90 minutes) (4-4-87).
""Bertil" began yawning and closing his eyes and laid his head down on the table." (April 30)
“Chuck”'s recantation interview on June 2 lasted for many hours, at the end it is noted
"It was obvious at that time that “Chuck” was getting tired and we were also, therefore I indicated to “Chuck” that I only wanted to ask him one more question. . . ." The interview continued and then later it was noted "Because of the lateness of the hour in the afternoon, and because the three of us were really becoming mentally tired, I indicated to “Chuck” that. . . ."
There are several concerns about these conditions. First, the children all seemed to want to end these interviews. Previous research indicates that when children want an interview to end, they often increase the quantity of false statements (Pettit, et. al.). It is possible therefore that the children in the Malcom case increased false allegations as the interview wore on because they wanted it to end. Second, because these interviews were very long and tiring for the children, this could have increased their cognitive fatigue. In other words, the children might have provided false answers because they were no longer paying attention.
When the police interviewed Jennifer, they seemed to use other strategies that are more akin to the strategies that police use to elicit false confessions from suspected criminals. For example, despite her mother's protests, Lynn was not allowed in the room, nor was she even allowed to view the interviews. In some of the interviews, the police had threatened to remove Jennifer from her mother's care, and in later interviews, she had already been removed from her mother's home. These are clearly distressful conditions for a young child. According to Jennifer's later memory of these interviews,[32] she was told that if she just told the truth, she could see her mother. In at least one of the interviews, it seemed that the questioning was so stressful that Jennifer cried.[33] Instead of stopping the interview (a recommended procedure), Krause continued questioning Jennifer. In addition, Jennifer was told that other children had told, increasing the pressure on her to provide false testimony. Finally, after several interviews, on April 20, during a three-hour interview, Jennifer finally assented to her mother abusing her.
Almost 10 years later, at the age of 18, Jennifer recanted her childhood allegations. She claimed that she remembered that her mother had never abused her and that she would have remembered if that had happened. According to her hazy recollections of the allegations, she claimed that Sharon Krause would sit and stare at her, tell her that she was lying, and tell her that she could see her mother if she told the truth. She remembered that when she denied any abuse, they kept challenging her and repeating questions. Jennifer stated that she was a shy child who liked to make other people happy. She thought that if she told them what they wanted, they would leave her alone. After the trial, Jennifer remembered telling her father that the abuse had never happened. Jim Malcom reacted negatively to this statement and thus she did not pursue it. Jennifer claimed that she was brainwashed to believe her mother had abused her but she always knew it was never true.
How reliable is Jennifer's recantation of this forced confession? Could Jennifer forget the abuse that actually happened and come to believe that she was brainwashed into making a false confession at that time? Or does she accurately remember that there was no abuse and that she was forced into making false allegations. It is unlikely that she would have forgotten the actual abuse given the fact that she remembered being raped by a baby-sitter when she was younger, and given the fact that the alleged abuse was discussed throughout her life.
The major evidence that we have to evaluate Jennifer's adult statements come from other cases where children the same age as Jennifer were interviewed in similar manners and came to make allegations of abuse against their parents. In all cases like Lynn Malcom's there were no eyewitnesses and the children had never made any allegations of abuse prior to very coercive suggestive questioning by the police. In all cases like Lynn Malcom's, these children later came to recant their allegations saying that their parents would never do those things, that they remember the coercive interviewing, and finally they just had to give up and falsely "say yes it happened." Based on the case data (see Nathan & Snedeker, 1996; Ceci & Bruck, 1995), it is highly possible that Jennifer's recantation is accurate.
The Quality of Written Reports
The failure to have audio- or video-taped records of any of the interviews with the Malcom witnesses (except the one between Ben and his mother) makes it impossible to determine the accuracy of the children's statements. Summaries of interviews (such as those provided by the Police Department) do not substitute for missing original interviews because written summaries are subject to a number of distortions that can include omission of important details, inclusion of inaccurate details, and most importantly the absence of a verbatim record of each utterance produced in the interview.
It is a well documented fact in the psycholinguistic literature that when asked to recall conversations, most adults may recall the gist (the major ideas, the content), but they cannot recall the exact words used, nor the sequences of interactions between speakers. This linguistic information rapidly fades from memory, minutes after the interactions have occurred (see Rayner & Pollatsek, 1990, for a review). In a recently completed experiment in our laboratory (Bruck, Ceci & Francoeur, 1997), we videotaped mothers interviews with their four-year-old children concerning a play activity that had just occurred. Three days later, we asked mothers for a report about this conversation. The mothers could not remember much of the actual content of the interview, omitting many details that had been discussed. Most importantly, the mothers were particularly inaccurate about several aspects of their conversation: they could not remember who said what (e.g, they could not remember if they suggested that an activity had occurred or if the child had spontaneously mentioned the activity). They could not remember the types of questions they had asked their children (e.g., they could not remember if they used an open-ended question or a series of leading questions to obtain a piece of information). In other words, although parents might remember that they learned that a strange man came into the room when the child was playing, they could not remember if the child spontaneously gave them this information, or if they obtained it through a sequence of repeated leading questions which the child assented to with monosyllabic utterances. To summarize, although they could accurately remember parts of the general content of the conversation, they could not remember how or whether they questioned their child.
We have also just completed a similar study with mental health trainees who were asked to interview four children about an event. Later the interviewers' memories for two of the conversations were tested. The mental health trainees showed the same pattern as the parents. They could not remember the structure of the conversations. In addition, these trainees mixed up which of the four children said what. That is they often attributed the actual report of Child A to Child B.
The ability to remember the structure of conversations is particularly important when interviewing young child witnesses because it is known that young children may not provide much information in response to open-ended questions (tell me what happened; what happened when you went to Lynn's house). Sometimes they do not provide the information because there is nothing to tell, other times it is because they need some guidance from adults. Thus, adults often revert to a number of suggestive techniques to elicit the information. For example, they may have to use specific and leading questions (Did Kirk use a screwdriver), stereotype induction (Kirk does bad things, did he do bad things with you?); guided imagery (well think real hard about whether Kirk used a screwdriver with you); positive and negative consequences (you would really help the police if you told us about how Kirk hurt the children); the use of peer pressure (Ben's Mom said that Ben said you were there) as well as other techniques mentioned above. Of course, as already reviewed, these techniques raise the risk of inaccurate reports. And for this reason, it is important that the exact words that were used to elicit children's reports be included in official documents.
It is also the case, that the gist of previous interviews may be inaccurately summarized in later reports due to certain biases or misperceptions of the interviewer. Usually notes only contain bits of information that the investigator thinks are important. If the investigator has a bias that the child was sexually abused, this could color his interpretations of what the child said or did; and it is this interpretation that appears in the summary rather than a factual account of what transpired.
These observations point out the importance of ensuring electronic copies of interviews with children. They also raise the issue of the accuracy and completeness of the police reports in the Malcom case.
A review of the Utility Reports leads to a first impression that the police officers were scrupulous in taking notes and recording the verbatim aspects of the interview. Sometimes, two investigators were present so that one could talk notes. Some of the reports are extremely lengthy; sometimes they include pages and pages of seemingly mundane conversations between the child and the investigator. Quotation marks are used which supposedly indicate the verbatim nature of the reports. However, a closer inspection raises serious concerns about the completeness of the reports (that is, was everything included), the accuracy (how accurately was the information reported), and the verbatim nature of the reports.
First, some of the reports are extremely detailed (for example the report of “Chuck”'s interview on June 2) and sometimes written in a "I said . . . He said" fashion. However, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to keep such detailed notes and at the same time to conduct a coherent interview. That is, if Krause had written down every single word (or even idea) that was in her reports, she would have quickly lost the child's attention and cooperation. She would have had to spend so much time writing down what she said and what the child said that she could not possibly have resources to think about sensible questions or even what the child had previously said. Therefore, one must conclude that much of what is in the report is her elaborate reconstruction of the interview. But as noted above, such reconstructions are difficult if not impossible for most adults. That is although Krause might remember much of the content (which could have been prompted by notes), she may not have recorded everything that was said (especially when the child was denying) and certainly not the conversational structure. For example the following is one paragraph from this 25-page interview:
"I indicated to “Chuck” that when things like this happened, like what he and the other children had told me about Lynn, really the only people who knew exactly what happened were Lynn and the children who were there when it happened. I told “Chuck” that was the reason that I was not able to tell the judge and the jury exactly what the children had told me happened because I wasn't there and I really didn't know. I told “Chuck” that it would be his job to tell the jury and the judge exactly what had happened but the most important thing about being in the court room and being in this trial was that we all had to tell the truth. I told “Chuck” that was one place where we could not tell things that were not true. I also talked to him about having to raise our hands and swear to tell the truth to the judge and nothing but the truth. I told “Chuck” that sometimes when grown-up lied in trial and the judge knew . . . etc."
This passage and many others raise the concern of the accuracy of this paragraph. There are a number of studies that indicate that adults cannot remember this number of details from conversations (e.g., Kintsch & Bates, 1977; Stafford, Burggraf & Sharkey, 1987). Unfortunately, Krause destroyed all interview notes after writing her reports. It is not known the amount of delay between the interviews and the reports, but as shown in our studies with the parents, even a three-day delay can have significant impacts on memory.
There are a number of other clues from the interviews that the reports are not accurate in many respects. First, there may be misreporting in terms of the actual words that the children used. It is my opinion that Krause sometimes put her own words into the mouths of the children. For example the following verbatim utterances are reported for each of the children in four different interviews:
“Chuck”: "It was too many times to remember " (February 4)
Jennifer: Kirk touches me "too many times to remember" (February 6)
Jennifer: "It's too many times to remember" (April 20)
“James”: "Lynn does it too many times for me to remember' (April 23)
This one small example is not trivial. It seems unusual that three different children would use the exact words to express the same idea. It suggests that either Krause was confused about which children were saying what, or else she was actually reconstructing the conversation using her own vocabulary. This would be permissible except for the fact that quotations are put around many of the children's responses giving the impression that these were their own words. In general, the use of quotations in these reports is very confusing and not at all clear whether these were meant to signify that the child actually said these things or if the interviewer said these things. For example, it is not clear what part of the following quoted statement is supposed to reflect the child's words or the interviewer's words.
"Bertil": He asked me if I would "not say anything because it was hard for him to think about what color he needed to use next." (April 30).
Mickey: He replied "She said we can't wear them if we're gonna do this. She said take them off unless you want to get stung with the paralyzer gun." (April 14)
(NB. Could Nelson accurately write down everything this child was saying? It is possible, but it would be difficult to run a competent interview and not let the child be distracted by the amount of writing)
“Chuck”: When “Chuck” is first asked about one of his fictitious pictures, he claims that he got mixed up and it was "my little sister's snot sucker" (June 2)
Later in the same interview:
"My little sister has one of those things and my mother sucks the bacteria out of her nose and that's what gave me the idea"
--(NB, the use of the word "bacteria" is unusual for a 7-year-old child and is inconsistent with the previous phrase of: snot sucker")
These examples raise concerns about the accuracy of utterances that are surrounded by quotation marks. They raise the concern that in many of the cases these were not really the child's or perhaps even the interviewers' words.
There is also a concern that the reports are not complete and that important details are omitted. For example, at the end of “Chuck”'s interview on June 2, Krause wrote that she told Mrs. “Morgan” "during my interview with Ben describing toys he had with him, Ben had indicated that he got the toys for telling so much." In the report of this interview that took place on May 20 with Ben, Krause provides a lengthy description of how Ben talked and played with the toys he had brought in with him, information that is essentially uninformative. But there is no mention of his comment that he got the toys for telling so much. There are several interpretations of this apparent omission. First, perhaps the original May 20 report was accurate and Ben never said that he got toys for telling so much but rather Krause's memory was erroneous when she told Gail “Morgan” about Ben's comments. A second explanation is that Krause did remember what Ben said but did not include it in the report because she did not think that it was important. Of course, this highlights the problem with such reports, they cannot include everything that occurred and often events or pieces of conversation that were not thought important at the time were omitted. Third, it is possible that Krause edited this comment from the report because she was afraid that it would begin to cast suspicion on the case, but when “Chuck” began to recant (see below), perhaps Krause could not longer contain the damage and she made it appear to Mrs. “Morgan” that she had suspicions all along.
Not only does it appear as though there may be parts of conversations that are missing from reports, but it also seems that there are some interviews that are never documented as Utility Reports. The following interviews were noted in the Interview and Contact Summary but were not found in the Utility Reports.
--April 21 interview with “Chuck Morgan”
--April 23 interview with “Mark Mason”
--April 25 interview with "Bertil Swanson"
--May 29 interview with Jennifer
It is unfortunate that these interviews are missing, they could contain important information that would help in evaluating the reliability of these children's statements
Finally, an examination of Nelson's April 16 search warrant raises further concerns about the police's accurate reconstruction of the interviews. Nelson included in the affidavit, details of the April 14 interview with “Mark Mason”. Based on the Utility Report[34], Krause was present during this interview.
According to the affidavit, during this interview Mickey claimed that:
--Lynn took picture of children in sexual acts
--The camera was black
--Mickey described the pictures as being "like sick pictures of us, what she makes us do."
--The pictures were kept in red boxes in Lynn's room
--Mickey also drew a picture . . . (that) "appears to be sexual toys and/or aids commonly referred to as "dildoes, simulated penises or vibrators"
--Lynn put a dirty spear down their throat
--Lynn spied on them with a small telescope.
None of these details are included in the April 14 Utility Report. The discrepancy between the details in the April 16 affidavit and the more detailed Utility report raises concerns about the accuracy of either or both documents.
As a result of these concerns, it is difficult to determine exactly how these children were questioned by the police. It is impossible to determine exactly what the children said in these interviews and what the police said to them. More specifically, the absence of such crucial evidence, along with the suspicion that there may be many inaccuracies in the reconstructions of these interviews, makes it impossible to determine if the children really did accuse Lynn of abuse and if they did make accusations it is impossible to determine to degree to which these were a product of various suggestive interviewing techniques. There is enough available evidence, however, to determine that the police did use a number of these techniques. As a result, the reports could reflect an underestimation of the suggestiveness of the interviews.
Detailed Analyses of Disclosures of Child Witnesses in the Malcom Case
In this last section, I review and provide additional details of the interviews with four children in the case: “Brian Logan”, “Chuck Morgan”, Jennifer Malcom, and Kirk Malcom. The testimony of Benjamin is important because he was the first child to make allegations; other children's subsequent allegations were quite similar to those made by Benjamin. The testimony of “Chuck Morgan” is important because “Chuck” eventually recanted most if not all of his allegations many of which were also made by other children. Because “Chuck” recanted these allegations, then one could conclude that the allegations of the other children were also false. Jennifer Malcom was a key witness because she made allegations against her own mother. Therefore it is important to examine how these evolved. Kirk Malcom was the oldest of the child witnesses. Although there is little research on the reliability of children's reports of this age level, nevertheless an analysis of his interviews raises further concerns about the interviewing methods and the biased nature of the interviews conducted in this case.
“Brian Logan”
There are four important characteristics that must be considered in evaluating this child's testimony.
First, it does not appear that Benjamin made any allegations in the first interviews with the police or with his therapist. The allegations seem to be reported though his mother Lori “Logan”.
--On January 30, in the first police interview, it was noted, "even though Lori was present during most of our interview, Ben was very reluctant to answer my questions and on some occasions did not answer me at all."[35] When Lori was present it was agreed that "Ben would whisper the answers to my questions to his mother and she would relate the answers to me . . . Lori began talking of the things Kirk has done to the kids." Based on this interview, it is impossible to determine if Ben said anything that was spontaneous or whether his allegations were responses to suggestive questions and whether they simply mirrored what his mother was saying about the "things Kirk had done to the kids." In the next interview on February 2, 1987,[36] Benjamin only giggled when Nelson asked questions. This interview was terminated after 15 minutes.
--It took Benjamin four sessions with Gladyschild before he talked about abuse.[37]
Second, the mother Lori “Logan” appears to be a biased interviewer. This is important because she elicited the first allegation from Benjamin because she had prior suspicions that maybe Kirk had abused children. Lori seemed ready to believe anything that the children said regardless of the credibility of their reports. According to “Chuck Morgan”, Lori repeatedly questioned the children until they just made things up.[38] When confronted with “Chuck Morgan”'s recantation, rather than consider the evidence, Lori's response was to call “Chuck” "the worst liar in the neighborhood."[39] Finally, Lori bought her child toys so that he would make allegations[40]
Third, it is possible that Benjamin's initial allegations were the result of his exposure to sexual materials that were present in the “Logan” household. Lynn claimed, later corroborated by Jennifer,[41] that the children watched a videotape of adults having sexual intercourse and of babies being born. When “Chuck” drew pictures of instruments of Lynn's torture, Mr. “Logan” had available an adult magazine with pictures of sexual aids.[42]
Fourth, many of Benjamin's claims were fantastic, uncorroborated, and sometimes recanted by “Chuck Morgan”. Benjamin told his therapist (who believed him) that Lynn and Kirk killed six people. He claimed that Lynn's roommate, Donna, was involved and assaulted and killed children.[43] When later interviewed by Krause (on May 20) he clung to these claims, despite Krause's warning to tell the truth, "I saw it, that's how I know."
None of this is to say that nothing may have happened to Ben, it is possible that he was indeed molested. But given the context in which the allegations emerged, the lack of physical evidence, and the later uncorroborated or recanted allegations, there is more than a reasonable suspicion that this child's testimony was the product of suggestive interviewing techniques. Because Benjamin's allegations were the basis for all future allegations of other child witnesses (he was the first to claim that Lynn was involved in the abuse), then the reliability of these other allegations must also be questioned.
“Chuck Morgan”
“Chuck”'s disclosures follow the pattern discussed at the beginning of this document: he initially denied that Kirk abused him and denied that Lynn abused him, but with repeated interviews, he disclosed, and finally recanted most of the previous allegations. His allegations about Lynn will be the focus of this section.
When first asked by his mother (approximately April 6), “Chuck” denied that Lynn was involved in the abuse. He continued to make these denials until April 12, when Mickey challenged him at the “Logan” house. “Chuck” then assented and drew pictures of the instruments used during the abuse. The next day, he was interviewed by the police about the allegations and pictures. These included the following claims: Lynn inserted various instruments into the children's rectums (including dildoes, bamboo tubes, and nozzles, but there is no mention of screwdrivers); Lynn drugged them; Lynn showed them pornographic material; Lynn engaged the children in multiple types of sexual acts.
There are indications from the "interview and contact summary" that by the end of April the police knew that there might be problems with “Chuck”'s testimony.
April 21: Krause interviewed “Chuck Morgan” for a short time only (there is no utility report for this interview)
April 22: Krause received a phone call from Gail “Morgan”. “Chuck” told his mother that he wanted to talk to Kirk and also to Krause privately. Krause talked to “Chuck” on the phone. He wants to know how Kirk was doing because he was worried about him.
May 19: Krause received a phone call from Gail “Morgan” "I want to schedule the appointment for these boys now so I don't have to change my schedule around". She sounded upset.
May 22: Krause made phone contact with Gail “Morgan”. "She and Lori had a long conversation." She was short in her conversation with Krause. "You don't believe her kids."
June 1: Krause called Gail about appointment with “Chuck” and “Niel”
She said the boys told her that Lynn told them "she was born with Satan in her heart." She said she had talked to a therapist who was experienced in this. She told her that kids don't lie about this.
On June 2, “Chuck” was interviewed by Krause and by Nelson. The interview began at 11:25 and ended after 4:00 PM (with a break for lunch). When I first read this interview, I was struck by how its format differed so radically from the previous interviews in this case. For an unexplained reason Krause's interviewing style had changed. She devoted pages of her 25-page report to descriptions of how she had explained to “Chuck” the importance of telling the truth, why it was important not to change stories, and not to add on to them. She encouraged “Chuck” to report only what really happened. At times throughout the interview, when “Chuck” made statements, Krause challenged him; she asked him if this really happened or if he might be mixed up. These are excellent interviewing techniques and should be applauded because they allow the interviewer to explore alternative hypotheses. The problem is that it seems that these were not used consistently throughout this interview with “Chuck”. As well these techniques were conspicuously absent in other interviews with “Chuck” and with the other children. This raises the possibility that the challenges were used selectively. Because of the selectivity of the challenges, it is not clear from the report the exact acts that “Chuck” continued to claim did happen.
It is clear that “Chuck” recanted all the claims about the instruments used in the drawings, children being murdered, other adults being involved (although it takes a few challenges to make him give up on this one), having to drink substances, and pornography. During the interview he reported that all the kids made things up. Furthermore, at times he was able to provide the sources of the suggestion for the false reports (e.g, his mother; magazine pictures of dildoes; Mickey's drawings; television programs)
But there seem to be some claims that “Chuck” did cling to. He said that Lynn did give the children shots. Later, he claimed that "she didn't use any of those things 'cept the screwdriver and knives." But when asked to tell about the knives, he said that he didn't know about knives. By the end of the interview, it seems that the only standing claims were that Lynn threatened them, that she used a screwdriver and that she touched his penis with her hand.
I have several grave concerns about the interview. First, this interview is too long, raising concerns about the child's claims as it progresses. Second, “Chuck” did not mention a screwdriver in his previous interview with the police on April 13, and yet it becomes a salient feature of the June 2 interview. Third, despite the claims of anal insertion, there was no medical evidence to support this claim.[44] Most importantly, the major claims that were not recanted were not challenged by Krause or by Nelson. Given the completeness of many aspects of this report, this raises the suspicion that these critical events were not dealt with in the same way as those that were recanted. That is there is no evidence in the report that “Chuck” was asked the following types of questions:
"OK let's just check some of the things that you have been saying happened and didn't happen. I just want to make sure that we got these right. Did Lynn ever give you shots? Are you sure about this. Did she really touch your penis or was it just Kirk? Are you really sure? Remember it is important not to get mixed up."
Even if “Chuck” had clung on to his statements, however, given the evidence of how the allegations emerged in this case, and given this child's own descriptions of how he had been handled by adults, there is a high a degree of doubt about the reliability of any of his statements. He may have been abused, but the questioning procedures have so tarnished the evidence that it is impossible to make a determination of abuse.
Jennifer Malcom
A review of the scientific literature indicates that there are clear differences in children's suggestibility, with preschool children being the most vulnerable to suggestion (see Ceci & Bruck, 1995 for a review). However, this does not imply that older children (e.g, Jennifer, who is nine years old) are therefore immune to suggestive and coercive forces. Exactly the opposite is the case. Children do not reach adult levels of resistance to erroneous suggestions prior to early adolescence. In some of these studies, the impact of suggestive interviewing techniques is frequently marked. For example, in some studies, eight-year-old, nine-year-old and even ten-year-old children are significantly more suggestible than adults (Ackil & Zaragoza,1995; Warren & Lane,1995). While it could be claimed that these studies have less relevance for the courtroom, because these studies assessed children's memories of neutral events that did not involve participation, similar findings have been reported when children were suggestively interviewed about events in which they themselves participated. For example, when asked to recall the details of an event that occurred four years previously, children between the ages of seven and ten were influenced by the atmosphere of accusation created by the experimenters, and they inaccurately reported events (Goodman, Wilson, & Hazan, 1989). In another study, a significant proportion of eight-year-olds reported that something "yuckie" was placed in their mouths when these nonevents were incorporated into stories that parents read to their children (Poole & Lindsay, 1996, in press). Even adults' recollections are impaired by suggestive interviewing techniques, albeit in reduced magnitude to that obtained for very young children (Hyman & Pentland, 1996; Hyman, Husband & Billings, 1995; Kassin & Kiechel, 1996; Loftus & Pickrell, 1995; Malinowski & Lynn, 1995, 1996).
In the next section, I provide a few details from the three interviews with Jennifer that raised concerns either about the accuracy of the reports themselves, or about the interviewing methods, or about the reliability of Jennifer's responses.
There are three reports of interviews with Jennifer. These contain much information and show in a number of ways how this child came into and left each interview probably very distressed. Before the first interview on February 6, Jennifer had to wait 45 minutes while her parents discussed their reticence to allow the police to interview Jennifer unaccompanied by her mother (this is not unreasonable as the Malcoms had already been present when Nelson interviewed Kirk for over two hours, during which time Nelson pounded on the table and accused Kirk of abusing the children). Finally, Krause was so insistent about interviewing Jennifer alone that she threatened taking Jennifer into protective custody. In this first interview, there is no indication that Krause used a standard interviewing technique of warming-up the child and making her feel relaxed, rather she immediately began a suggestive round of questioning procedures. At the end of the first interview, Krause did something quite unusual and unethical. Based on Jennifer's claims that she had told her parents about Kirk and the parents' denials that this had happened, Krause set up the following confrontation between Jennifer and her mother:
"At one point I indicated that Jennifer had told me she told her mother when Kirk was doing things, and Lynn Malcom asked Jennifer, "Did you tell me?" Jennifer immediately stated, "Yes." Lynn Malcom asked Jennifer, "What would I say?" Jennifer at that time made a gasping noise similar to the sound one would make as a response indicating they were aghast or appalled."
Krause's actions were incredibly dangerous and unethical. If Krause truly believed Jennifer's story, she should not have risked revealing it to the mother who might seek some retribution against her child. Furthermore, if the interaction did occur as she describes it, Jennifer's behavior could in fact be in reaction to having to truthfully deny the false assertion she made to Policewoman Krause, something that would make her aghast. In any case, this procedure reflects Krause's insensitivity or ignorance of the needs and behaviors of young children and how she used interviewed a child with the same coercive techniques that might be used with adults.
The second interview was clearly stressful for Jennifer. She cried during different parts. She sighed, and took a long time to answer questions. Krause is aware of these behaviors as she explicitly describes them in her report; however, she never stopped the interview. This is highly unusual. Jennifer was not a suspect but a potential victim. The police's behavior did not lessen her distress but only increased it. Skilled interviewers do not continue interviews when children are so visibly upset. The reasons for Jennifer's upset are not apparent. On the one hand, she could have been very concerned about possible separation from her mother (that did occur at the end of the interview) or it could be that the interviewing procedures themselves were so upsetting that it took all her strength to continue. Of course, there is the possibility that she was in a conflict about whether to tell of the abuse by her mother. But despite the suggestiveness and length of this interview, Jennifer did not accuse her mother.
By the third interview, which occurred four days later, Jennifer had been removed from the care of her mother. Other children had made allegations and the police continued to pressure Jennifer, at which point she did finally report that Lynn had abused her. But there are a number of features of all these reports that raise concerns about the reliability of Jennifer's final accusations and about the accuracy of the report itself.
First, Jennifer's reports (in her first interview) of when the abuse occurred is inconsistent with the other children's reports and it is changed so that it is more consistent by the last interview. In the first interview, she claimed that the last time she was abused was toward the end of her grade 2 year (spring of 1986). However, the other child witnesses were making claims that the abuse was in the fall of 1986 and the winter of 1987. By the third interview, Jennifer had remembered that it also happened in her grade 3 year.
Jennifer was inconsistent about the children that participated in the abuse. In the first interview, she named “Chuck”, “Niel”, Ben, and Mickey through most of the interview. "Bertil" and “James” were named only later in the interview. One wonders how to interpret this late inclusion. Did Krause fail to document their names earlier? Did Krause mistakenly include them later? Did Krause explicitly ask Jennifer about "Bertil" and “James” and forget to include these important questions in her report? These inconsistencies, small as they are, add to the mounting evidence of the inaccuracy of the written reports and of the child witness.
In the second interview, Jennifer seemed to recant claims about touching by the little boys:
"I indicated to Jennifer that when we had talked before, we talked about her private parts being touched by someone else and I asked her if she could tell me how many people had touched her private parts before. Jennifer stated, 'Kirk did it and ??? and “Chuck” but Mickey didn't and Benjamin didn't or the other little boys didn't; anyway, I can't remember.'"
Also during this same interview Jennifer said that the little boys lied a lot. By the third interview, all the boys were named as witnesses or participants.
There are other examples of how Jennifer's testimony changed over time. For example in the first interview, Jennifer did not know the name "vagina" but was prompted to use "private part." She used the word "wee-wee" for "penis." By the third interview she used the terms (at least according to Krause's reports) "vagina" and "penis." There are two interpretations of this change. First, Krause may have misreported the terms in the last report. Second, Jennifer may have learned much about sexual matters between the first and third interviews as a result of the suggestive interviewing techniques used primarily by the police.
In the first and second interviews, Jennifer made no allegations regarding anal insertions of "screwdrivers" which seemed to be a common allegation among the other children who all had contact with each other either through the neighborhood, their parents, or their therapists. However, by the third interview, and for the first time, Jennifer mentioned screwdrivers. Similarly, in the third interview only, Jennifer made allegations against Donna. The concern about these new allegations is based upon the literature reviewed earlier in this report. When new information comes out for the first time in later interviews, there is a high doubt as to its accuracy.
In the third interview, Jennifer made a rash of allegations, none of which appeared in previous interviews. But it is impossible to tell from the report whether these allegations were spontaneous or in response to questions posed by Krause and by Peters. There are some hints that indeed maybe many of the allegations were a result of suggestive questions. For example, the interviewers asked:
If anyone took any pictures she didn't like.
"Did anything happen with shots?" (Jennifer was asked about this three times. At first she provided details about her being a recipient, but at the end she recanted, saying she did not get a shot)
But the more concerning aspect of this interview is that Jennifer makes a number of claims that seem to have been based on “Chuck”'s and Mickey's reports of a few days earlier (e.g., pornography; shots; smothered in plastic bags; insertion of turkey-baster enema). Her reports seem to match “Chuck”'s almost to the detail (e.g., The little blue thing you squeeze and air comes out). The problem is that “Chuck” later told Krause that he had made all of this up and that none of it was true (e.g, the blue bulb you squeeze was never inserted into their rectums, but was something “Chuck”'s mother used on his little sister when she had a cold). So, if there was no such instrument used, then how did this get into Jennifer's report? It is impossible that Jennifer made these claims spontaneously, as they are represented in this report. The only sensible answer is that Krause suggested this to her and pursued her until she made these claims.
This one example raises suspicions about the whole report. It raises the suspicion that Jennifer's allegations were highly prompted if not coerced and were never spontaneous as implied in the report. This along with the other evidence about how her reports changed over the three interviews leads to the hypothesis that Jennifer was suggestively interviewed to the point that she provided false allegations. Jennifer's statements in her recantation at 18 years of age are consistent with this hypothesis. According to Jennifer's recantation, she was more than just pursued by suggestive interviewing techniques: she remembers that she was told that she was a liar, that she was denying, and that she could be with her mother if she told the truth. Of course it is possible that some of Jennifer's original childhood allegations were accurate. But given the conditions under which she was questioned, so much of the evidence was tarnished that it will be impossible to ever tell.
Finally, it is highly possible that if the same combination of factors that were used in Jennifer's interviews were used on non-abused children in a laboratory setting, that many of these children would also come to make false claims of abuse against loved ones. However, the interviewing procedures that Jennifer was subjected to were so "abusive" in themselves that they would never be examined in research studies, because researchers and their institutional review boards would deem the practices that occurred in the interviews with the Jennifer grossly unethical, whether they be used on naive research subjects, on children suspected of sexual abuse, or on children with confirmed diagnoses of sexual abuse.
Kirk Malcom
I have not focused on Kirk's statements in this report for several reasons. First, there is little information about how Kirk's case was handled. Second, Kirk was older than the other children, and there is little if any scientific literature on the reliability of 13-year-old children's statements. Finally, of all the children in the case, Kirk may have had the greatest motive to "lie" and thus his statements may reflect very different psychological processes than those of the other children. Nevertheless, as detailed below, there are a number of concerns and issues raised by the existing information about Kirk.
There are utility reports of four different interviews.
The first was conducted on January 30, and it lasted two hours and thirty minutes. According to the report, during this time, Kirk was read his Miranda rights, Kirk gave information about his guns, and then Kirk provided a detailed description of his one sexual encounter with “Chuck” that had occurred the previous summer. Kirk related that he had showed “Chuck” how to masturbate, by rubbing “Chuck”'s penis. This was the only incident of abuse that Kirk assented to in this interview. It is not clear from the report what else transpired during this lengthy interview. But at least according to Lynn Malcom, Nelson shouted at Kirk.
The next interview with Kirk occurred on April 20, 1987. At this point Kirk had pled guilty to charges of abuse with younger children and was in therapy. It is not clear whether Kirk was aware of the allegations made against his mother; however, his father had known of these allegations for at least one week (see police interview and contact summary).
In the first 45 minutes of this interview, Kirk denied that his mother was involved in any of the abusive incidents or that his mother had ever seen Kirk abuse the younger children. Kirk did talk freely about the abuse with the younger children, however. Krause then terminated the interview for a short while.
From the short description in the utility report, it seems that Kirk made more elaborate claims about abuse with younger children than he did in the first interview with Krause. But there is no information about what these charges were, nor how the confession was extracted. However, it is clear that in this interview, Krause told Kirk that his sister as well as the younger children had implicated Lynn Malcom and Kirk was challenged as to why his sister would say such things. Nevertheless, Kirk continued to deny that Lynn had abused any of the children.
Next, Krause talked to Kirk's father, who then spent some time with Kirk. Jim Malcom then told Krause that Kirk was ready to talk about things he was afraid to say before. At this point, Kirk assented to abuse by his mother. He thought that the first incident happened in the summer of 1985 (when he was 11 years old). His claims are vague and seem to emerge as a result of much prompting. These claims include:
--Lynn touched Kirk's penis with her fingers
--Kirk had to pull his pants down and so did Lynn
--Kirk touched Lynn's vagina with his finger
--Nobody saw this happen
--Lynn made the boys touch her and Jennifer
--There was licking but no kissing
--Lynn never put her mouth on Kirk's penis
--There was no touching of the breasts
--Kirk thought that Lynn put the screwdriver in Mickey and Ben's bottom (but he said it was hard to remember)
--Kirk didn't remember Lynn taking any pictures
--Kirk didn't remember Lynn's threatening not to tell
--Kirk stated that he stuck his own finger up his bottom a couple of times
--Kirk talked about abuse by another neighborhood boy. (NB. There did not seem to be any questions about this sexual encounter in this interview)
--Kirk didn't see the children with plastic bags over their heads.
Finally, in Krause's words, "Because of the lateness of the hour and because it was obvious that Kirk was tired and that it was difficult for him to discuss specifics," the interview was terminated.
It is difficult to evaluate the accuracy of Kirk's statements for a number of reasons. First, as has been mentioned throughout my report, without the actual transcript of the interview, it is impossible to tell how much Kirk was coerced into making the statements. It is clear that Krause asked him about a number of details or situations that were just mentioned by Jennifer. In many instances, Kirk's account was inconsistent with that of Jennifer's (he denied that there were threats, that there were pictures taken, that the children were given shots, that they were wrapped up in plastic bags). Kirk wasn't even sure if he could remember one of the key allegations: anal penetration by a screwdriver. In Krause's own words, Kirk had difficulty discussing specifics. A second issue about which there is no data concerns the contents of the conversation between Kirk and his father. Did Jim Malcom tell Kirk that he should assent to questions about abuse by Lynn because this would make life easier for him in the long run? Did Kirk in fact assent to so many of the questions because he was frightened about his own upcoming sentence and thought that this might be one way to escape punishment? Or did Lynn actually abuse Kirk and the other children and Kirk's silence was a way of protecting his mother? Any of these hypotheses are reasonable. However, only the latter seems to have been explored by Krause. This gives further evidence about the biased nature of this whole investigation.
It is during the third interview on May 15,[45] that Krause finally asked for details about Kirk's earlier history of sexual contact with older neighborhood children, a history that seems to be quite extensive. It is therefore surprising that with the amount of detail provided in this interview that there was no evidence that the police investigated these claims, since it seems that it was possible that Kirk's male sexual partners might still be molesting neighborhood children. Furthermore, according to Kirk, one of these boys raped Jennifer. Given the fact that Jennifer's medical examination revealed some positive signs of sexual abuse, one wonders why the police did not rule out this earlier abuse as a possible explanation of the medical findings. Kirk's descriptions of three different male partners were more detailed than the descriptions of his abuse by Lynn he had provided Krause in an earlier interview. He remembered his age, the frequency of contact and the places of contact. It seems that sexual contact went on for almost three years with one partner.
In this same interview, Krause brought the topic back to the current charges against Lynn. Kirk claimed that the abuse first started when they lived in the trailer. Krause repeated questions from a previous interview about syringes but Kirk denied seeing these used with the children and he denied that the children were given drugs of any type. He continued to deny knowledge of pornographic pictures. Krause also questioned Kirk about other potential male perpetrators (based on information provided by other children in the case, one assumes). During this interview, Kirk was asked about the sleeping arrangements and he stated that Donna and Lynn had separate rooms. Kirk also stated that his mother had not told him what to say or what not to say to the police officers during the investigation.
Kirk, however, now claimed that Lynn performed oral copulation whereas this was denied in the first interview. He now claimed that Lynn did put a screwdriver in his butt and he remembered this happened to the other children as well. Lynn also inserted pieces of kindling in the kids' bottoms.
In the next and fourth reported interview on July 7, 1987, Kirk's expanded his prior claims and now assented to many allegations that he had previously denied. Kirk told Krause, he remembered a lot more because he had more time to think about things. He now remembered that Lynn began molesting him when she was still married to his father. He now remembered that his mother instructed him how to put his penis into Jennifer's vagina; he now remembered Lynn's threats and bribes to keep him quiet about the abuse; Kirk now retracted a previous denial about intercourse with his mother and claimed that it did happen; he now claimed that Donna and Lynn slept in the same bed; and after two interviews where he denied that Lynn took pictures of the children, Kirk now remembered that pornographic photographs were taken; he now remembered that he and the other children would rub, squeeze and suck Lynn's breasts, although he denied this in an earlier interview.
There are two interpretations of this interview. The first is that up to this point Kirk had been scared and embarrassed to talk about the horrendous acts of abuse perpetrated by his mother, but after several months of questioning and some therapy, he was ready and willing to disclose as much as possible. In a similar vein, Kirk may have been unable to remember many details in earlier interviews, but by "thinking" more about past events, his memories returned. Although it is possible that Kirk may have recovered some lost memories, there are some studies that suggest that if adults repeatedly think about false events, then will, like younger children, come to think that these events actually happened (e.g, Hyman, Husband & Billings, 1995). A second interpretation of the evolution of allegation in this fourth interview is that Kirk was scared. According to Krause's report, he was in Juvenile Hall, he was not receiving any treatment, and he was frightened by the other boys in the facility. Krause wrote, "During my contacts with Kirk during the past several weeks, he is very much aware of the system and what happens or is about to happened in reference his case (sic)." It is possible that Kirk's allegations were thus false and were the result of the coercive interviewing procedures but also reflected a motivation to "lie." Possibly Kirk thought (or was told) that by helping the police his sentence could be reduced or his status in the current facility could be changed. Certainly, some of his allegations are suspect due to a lack of evidence (e.g, Donna and Lynn's relationship; pornographic pictures) and these very allegations were recanted a month previously by “Chuck Morgan”.
Regardless of the interpretation of Kirk's testimony, there is no doubt that he is an unreliable witness.
Summary
At the beginning of this report, I discussed the reliability of young children's reports by focusing on some problems in accurately assessing child sexual abuse. Of particular concern is the pattern of disclosure in which the child initially denies but then later reports abuse. Although some professionals state that this is a common pattern among sexually abused child victims, the research reviewed in this report provides an alternative hypothesis that is consistent with many of the facts in the Malcom case. Specifically, suggestive interviewing techniques and other social contaminating factors resulted in the children providing unreliable reports.
I have discussed a number of these factors that, when present in interviews or interactions with young children, may greatly compromise the accuracy of their reports. These factors include: biased beliefs of the interviewer, the use of repeated questions, the repetition of misleading information, and the use of rewards, bribes, and threats. Children's reports are at risk for being tainted if they are interviewed by an intimidating adult, such as a police officer. Other important factors that contribute to children's unreliable reports include the use of peer pressure, the use of anatomically detailed dolls, and stereotype induction. Other evidence indicates that merely asking children to repeatedly think about whether an event occurred may have a profound negative effect on their subsequent memories. These factors have their greatest impact when used in combination, as they were with the Malcom witnesses.
The research also shows that under certain conditions, a substantial percentage of children can be led to make false reports of events that never occurred, including events that involve their own bodies and that would have been quite traumatic had they occurred. Based on this literature, and based on the analyses of the Malcom interviews, it is my opinion that the constellation of factors operating in the Malcom case would constitute an extraordinarily powerful suggestive atmosphere, one that is far stronger than those that have given rise to false reports in the research studies that we have described in this brief.
There are immense obstacles that face those who investigate reports of suspected child maltreatments. The intention of this document is not to diminish the seriousness of the problem of child sexual abuse in today's society, rather it is to emphasize that unless one is very careful in the interviewing procedures that one uses with children suspected of abuse, one may never make an accurate determination of whether or not abuse occurred. This is because there are a number of interviewing procedures that have the potential to make non-abused children look like abused children. These are the same procedures that were used in the interviews with the Malcom children. Using these procedures, children may not only come to falsely report acts of sexual abuse, but they may come to believe that they experienced the events they reported. At times, these children's memories may be permanently tainted by the sexualized suggestions of their interviewers. In some cases, these children appear highly credible both to subsequent interviewers, to family, and to jurors.
The fact that these child witnesses in Malcom underwent extremely suggestive interviews makes the determination of accuracy impossible. In other words, if there were incidents of sexual abuse, the faulty interviewing procedures make it impossible to ever know who the perpetrators were and how the abuse occurred. Because the statements gleaned from the children in this case were the product of techniques so overbearing as to have a high likelihood of generating allegations of sex abuse from children regardless of their actual experience, these allegations are unreliable.
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.
Executed on _____________, 1998 at Montreal, Quebec
_____________________________
Maggie Bruck, Ph.D
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[1] See Index Section A: Phone interview with Lori “Logan”, 01-29-87; Section B: Interview with Benjamin and Lori “Logan”, 01-30-87
[2] See Index Section A: Initial report by Gail “Morgan”, 01-29-87; Section C: Interview with “Chuck Morgan” by Nelson, 01-30-87
[3] See Index Section A: Initial report by Gail “Morgan”, 01-29-87
[4] See Index Section A: Initial report by Gail “Morgan”, 01-29-87
[5] See Index Section G: Interview with “Mark Mason”, 02-03-87
[6] See Index Section G: Interview with “Mark Mason”, 02-03-87
[7] See Index Section G: Interview with Mrs. “Mason”, 02-04-87
[8] See Index Section J
[9] See Index Section J: Interviews with "Bertil" and Mrs. "Swanson," 02-18-87; 02-19-87
[10] See Index Section H
[11] See Index Sections E-J
[12] See Index Section L: Interview with Ben “Logan” 04-06-87
[13] See Index Section M
[14] See police interview and contact summary
[15] See Index Section L in report of interview on 04-06-87
[16] See police interview and contact summary
[17] See police interview and contact summary
[18] See interview with Jennifer 04-20-87
[19] See police report interview and contact summary.
[20] See Index Section U
[21] See Index Section V
[22] See interview with Lori “Logan”, 01-30-87
[23] See Index Section U
[24] See Index Section W
[25] See “Chuck Morgan” interview, 06-02-87
[26] See Jennifer interview of that date
[27] See interview with Mickey 04-14-87
[28] See interview 04-30-87
[29] See interview 04-20-87
[30] See “Chuck Morgan” interview 06-02-87
[31] See “Chuck Morgan” and mother interview 04-13-87
[32] See videotape of Jennifer's recantation
[33] 04-16-87
[34] See Index Section N
[35] See Index Section B
[36] See Index Section B, notes about Feb 2 interview are contained in 01-30-87 report
[37] See Index Section B, reports from Dr. Gladyschild on contacts with Benjamin dated 02-27-87
[38] See “Chuck Morgan” interview June 2
[39] See Index Section W, phone interview with Lori “Logan” 06-03-87
[40] See “Chuck Morgan” interview June 2
[41] Jennifer April 16 and April 20 interview
[42] See “Chuck Morgan” interviews April 13, June 2
[43] Index Section U
[44] See Index Section C, medical reports. Section R, medical reports
[45] There is some confusion in the record. According to the police log Kirk was interviewed again on April 22. Although there is a utility report dated April 22, it contains no details about that interview but rather about an interview that seemed to have occurred on May 15, 1987. (Note there is a entry in the police log of one interview on May 20, 1987, but there does not seem to be a utility report of this interview).