Interviewing alleged victims of child sexual abuse
Keywords:
Child abuse, Sexual abuse, InterviewAbstract
The aim of this study was to conduct a literature review to describe the best practice guidelines to evaluate sexual abuse interviews. A narrative literature review was carried out to establish the children’s memory and communicative skills during an investigative interview, as well as the interview techniques that improve the quality of children’s reports and maximize the amount of information elicited. We used the following electronic on-line databases: MedLine, PsychInfo and SciELO, referring to the period 1995-2012. The keywords searched for in the databases were “sexual abuse”, “children”, “interview”, “investigative”, “forensic”. A total of 196 references were identified and 34 were selected for this paper. We found a large amount of evidence that recommends careful procedures when evaluating child sexual abuse. We describe the specific techniques and discuss the most common difficulties interviewers face during interviews.
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