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The NZ Herald
May 29 1996
Research on Children’s Sexual Abuse Fibs Goes to NATO Forum;
Children often fabricate stories of sexual abuse.
by Alan Samson
Wellington
- Ground-breaking
New Zealand research
indicating that many children fabricate stories of sexual abuse when
questioned by adults is before an international forum in Paris.
The research by the main-stream Hamilton psychologist Dr Jane Rawls and
financed by the Law Foundation, received publicity when she presented her
findings to the Law Society’s conference in Dunedin this year.
Dr Rawls told how a team of lawyers, police and psychologists got an
unpleasant surprise when it assessed a study group of 30 five-year-olds -
seven reported they had been sexually abused.
All 30 had been in the care of one man.
The seven told of genital touching, the man putting his hands under
their upper clothing, of his touching their bottoms and making them touch
his.
The revelations were an unpleasant surprise because the assessment team knew
there had been no abuse. The children
had invented the incidents. Their
every moment with the man had been videoed.
The youngsters had been taking part in what was intended as a routine study
into children’s disclosures under questioning.
Dr Rawls has a private practice as a child and clinical psychologist in Hamilton, and as a
specialist report writer for the Family Court and a consulting expert witness
in the High Court.
She says she was amazed at what the study showed. Depending on the way questions were asked,
the children’s accuracy of recall about a range of situations at their first
set of interviews ranged from 13 per cent to nil.
For some of the children, these errors seemed harmless, including “climbing
ladders, going to other rooms, having other children present, wearing
elaborate costumes and tickling with feathers.”
What was frightening was that errors appeared to evolve with repeated
interviews and, for many, were first reported when diagrams of body parts
were used.
The belief that children do not lie - or get it wrong - when alleging sexual
abuse has been shaken internationally by much-publicised examples of
wrongful arrest and imprisonment.
But a near-absolute trust in the child persists among many abuse workers. The
trust-the-child theory holds that children do not lie to get someone into
trouble, only to get out of trouble.
The research by Dr Rawls, finding that responses to questions are often wrong
and that many children invent stories of inappropriate touching, throws more
doubt on the wisdom of acting on child claims without corroborative evidence.
The research has been criticised by the Children and Young Persons Service
for its methodology and lack of “rigour.”
But Dr Rawls, in Europe to present her research to a NATO conference in Paris, says she is
willing to have her work critically evaluated “by those with a thorough
understanding and experience in research methodologies.”
Dr Rawls says she was not trying to replicate or assess service procedures.
“My intention is not to work against the efforts of [service] interviewers
because I, like them, am concerned about child welfare. I fear that message is getting lost.”
Interview questions were either closed (“Did he touch you on the …?”), open
(“What happened?”) or a mixture of the two.
Those who got it most wrong were children who were asked closed
questions.
The children took part in a series of four videotaped and observed sessions
in which a male adult, a research assistant called Trevor, played a
dressing-up game with each child.
There was “appropriate” touching when items such as hats and jewellery were
worn, and sometimes the child was asked to keep a minor secret. A body-parts diagram, similar to those used
in evidential interviews, was used in the second interview to make the
child’s reporting easier for him or her.
When the children were interviewed for the first time about the initial
dress-up session, open questions resulted in an average accuracy of 32 per
cent correct, the mixed questions 20 per cent, and closed questions 9 per
cent.
Questions about the last dress-up produced accuracy levels for open questions
of 13 per cent, mixed 4 per cent and closed 0.
Nearly one-quarter of the total sample (24 per cent) reported inappropriate
adult-child touching, although there had been none. Three reported genital touching, two also
referring to touching under their upper clothes. Two more children reported that the adult
touched their bottoms or they touched the adult’s bottom. Two others reported mutual touching under
clothing.
Children’s diagram markings to illustrate touching was found to be
substantially inaccurate.
No child volunteered his or her “secrets.”
But when asked to disclose them, 23 per cent always declined, 27 per
cent sometimes described them accurately and sometimes did not “disclose”, 20
per cent consistently provided accurate accounts, 10 per cent gave some true
and some false accounts, and 3 per cent no accounts or a false one.
Seventeen per cent described fictional events that included inappropriate
touching and said they were the “secrets.”
Dr Rawls also found that only 40 per cent of the five-year-olds could, after
varying degrees of exposure to examples, provide an acceptable definition of
truth, lies and promises.
Dr Mary Dawson, a managing psychologist at the South Auckland Children and
Young Persons Service’s specialist services, has responded to Dr Rawls’
research by saying that artificial interviewing departs from accepted
interviewing procedures.
Questioning children about a non-threatening series of “games”, she says, is
very different from interviewing for clarification of statements already made
and assessed as strongly indicating the possibility of abuse.
The evidential interview, Dr Dawson says, is intended to clarify abuse
details; generalisation from
experimental findings involving recall of non-threatening events “cannot be
safely applied to children’s recall of traumatic events.”
The responses Dr Rawls gleaned from the use of body diagrams illustrate “the
danger of a non-trained interviewer failing to follow proper guidelines.”
From Athens,
Dr Rawls said every effort had been made to meet obvious ethical
requirements.
“This research did not aim to assess evidential interviewing procedures. If,
however, my research is of some use to them [the children’s service] then
that would be a welcome and positive outcome.” NZPA
……………………………………………………………
The Dominion piece below might be a short version as it was taken from a web
site.
Alan Samson, "Five-year-olds and the Truth", The Dominion,
Wellington, New Zealand, 1996-MAY-28, P. 9.
New Zealand Research
Dr. Jane Rawls, a child psychologist from
Hamilton New Zealand, conducted a study of
30 five-year-old children. (7) The goal of the study was to determine how
accurately children describe events that they had experienced. Trevor, an
adult male research assistant, played "dress-up" with each child
separately. The adult and child put on or took off items such as hats or
jewelry. The sessions were observed and videotaped. Sometimes, the child
would be asked to keep a secret of an innocent event. No inappropriate
touching was involved at any time. This was repeated for 4 sessions per child.
Each child was then interviewed on multiple occasions.
Dr. Rawls was amazed and "unhappily surprised" at the results: 7 of the 30 children (23%) said that they
had been inappropriately touched: 3
disclosed genital touching
2 reported touching under their upper
clothes
2 said that he had touched "their
bottoms" or vice versa
2 reported mutual touching under their
clothing
children's "errors appeared to
evolve" during subsequent interviews the children created many new
errors when a diagram of body parts was introduced during the second
interview
closed, suggestive questions (e.g.
"Did he touch you on the...") generated the most errors open
questions (e.g. "What happened then?") produced an accuracy of 32%
during the first interview; closed questions were 9% accurate; mixed
questions were 20% accurate. None of the children told the "secret"
without prompting; 23% did not disclose the secret when prompted; 20%
consistently provided accurate description of the secret when prompted.
The scary part of this study is that under different circumstances, Trevor
could easily have been prosecuted on the basis of 7 children's stories and
given many lengthy sentences. This study is believed to be the first one of
its type involving many dozens of children who were interviewed over long
periods of time. It seems to show the dangers of repeated and suggestive
questioning of children. It demonstrates how easy it is to obtain disclosures
from children of sexual abuse events that never happened. It sheds doubt on
the use of body diagrams and anatomically correct dolls. It seems to indicate
the extreme unreliability of suggestive, closed, and persistent questioning.
To our knowledge, this study has yet to be published. It is of extreme
importance that the study be replicated by others so that an accurate
appreciation of the accuracy of children's testimony can be understood.
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