In cases where there are serious violations alleged against a child, there is almost always a forensic interview conducted of a child. These interviews are not lie-detection tools, however, and it is vitally important to make sure they are conducted appropriately.
Let's talk about the use of expert witnesses in child molestation cases and other sexual cases involving children. Particularly, we want to talk about expert witnesses that review forensic interviews. There is another video that describes what a forensic interview is. Briefly, forensic interview is an interview of a child who is alleged to have been the victim of some sort of abuse, usually sexually in the context of this.
There are different trainings, procedures, and manuals that these interviewers are supposed to use, for instance, like finding words or something like that. These interviewers are not lie detector tests. They are just trained in how to question children. Sometimes, they don't follow those protocols. Sometimes, there are issues with how they interview the children. For that reason, we always recommend, in child sexual abuse cases, that we hire expert witnesses to review those interviews and ensure that they were done properly and see how we can attack those before a trial for their veracity.
When someone is facing decades in prison for child molestation, we can't have it be based on some sort of shoddy work or interviews, that's just not right. We need to make sure we have people trained in talking to children and interviewing children, reviewing these to make sure that they were done properly and according to protocol. Anytime that we are hired, we have a list of experts that we recommend that we get in touch with and that we like to consult with anytime we're dealing with a child sexual abuse case.
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