FREE ESSAY ON CHILD EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

CHILD EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY

In the last forty years, there has been a shift in courtroom proceedings. Lawyers are not
only focusing their evidence on the scientific aspects of an event, but also on those who
may have witnessed the actual event as well. Recently, the number of eyewitness
appearances in the courtroom has increased, making statements about either a crime or an
event that occurred in their presence. But how does the courtroom decide who is a
legitimate witness to an event? Too often, age, race, education, and socio-economics play
a major role in this decision. Here, we will discuss the age aspect of this problem in
terms of child eyewitness testimony and it's implications in the courtroom.
More than 200,000 children may be involved in the legal system in any given year, and
13,000 of these children are preschool age. Often with these cases involving young
children, issues arise concerning credibility, vulnerability, and memory retrieval.
Studies have shown that preschool age children are quite capable of providing accurate
testimony, but they are also more vulnerable to distorting this memory and testimony.
Public and professional opinion about the credibility of children as witnesses in court
cases has been sharply divided. On one side, it is contended that when children disclose
details of a circumstance, they must be believed, no matter what techniques were used to
obtain this disclosure. For example, if a child is asked whether or not he/she was
abused, and to describe this incident, we must believe that child because children cannot
possibly generate a false report of their own sexual victimization. The other side
depicts children as being helpless sponges who soak up the interviewer's suggestions and
regurgitate these propositions in court. These two extreme positions have led to a
controversy over victim's rights, legal issues, and psychological intentions.
A child is capable of being influenced by numerous factors that adults may not be.
Factors such as: emotional dilemmas, physical circumstances, authoritative input,
underdeveloped encoding strategies that have not matured yet, childlike familiarity with
situations (what situation may be normal for a child, may not be normal for a teenager),
and the reporting strategies that children use are no doubtedly different that adults.
Thus, suggestion plays a key role when determining what a child is saying, especially
during interviewing techniques. This power of suggestion has been used as an anti-child
eyewitness testimony force, which has prompted many officials and psychologists to
further study this predicament. This suggestibility issue has thrown a wrench in the
credibility aspects of children on the stand, leading to the depiction of children as
liars and misleading witnesses. 
The bottom line that needs to be addressed with this controversy is that ANYONE, not just
children, can be suggested and misled. The importance of retrieval and memory coding
strategies can affect all people on the witness stand, leading to the misinterpretaion of
a statement that has been made by a witness. Studies have concluded through suggestive
interviewing techniques and repeated questioning, people can be led to make untrue
statements about central and peripheral details of an event. This often happens with
children due to the fact that from a child's point of view, if he/she keeps getting asked
certain questions over and over again, they seem to think that they are answering in a
wrong way. Interviewer bias (this can be parent, therapist, or investigator) can also
effect eyewitness statements as well. When an interviewer believes that they know what
really happened during an event, it can be likely that the interviewer will attempt to
get the child to confirm this event, ignoring anything that the child says that does not
conform with this bias, while encouraging anything that does. Stereotype induction can
also occur with children's eyewitness accounts due to the fact that an interview can
depict the accused perpetrator as a bad man. It has been shown that children can come to
assume and report negative things about someone that they had previously heard described
in negative terms. Encouraging a child to visualize or imagine has also been proven to be
detrimental to the providing of accurate information about an event. Authority figures
and peer pressure are also factors that can mislead a child's memory strategies as well.

When all of these circumstances are taken into account, it is easy to see how influenced
children can be when it comes to relaying information. But this should not be a final
factor when deciding children's influence in the courtroom. As stated before, anyone can
be suggested, misled, and pressured, including adults, and studies have shown this. This
data shows a need for the standardization of interviewing techniques when deciding
eyewitness accounts. It is well known that children encode, store, retrieve, and retain
memories differently than adults. But it is up to a qualified interview to release these
memories in a positive way. The knowledge base that children use to understand their
surroundings and situations can be investigated through proper interviewing and
strategies that children are familiar with, such as drawing or play therapy. In many
cases of falsified accounts that children have stated, it is often the case that the
interviewer used misleading techniques, and unstandardized means of approaching this
information. Studies have shown that when children are asked questions in neutral ways,
with open ended questions, and unbiased interpreters, their statements were not only more
detailed, but also remarkably accurate. Children who were left to answer in any fashion,
with no time frame, answered questions in a precise and errorless manner. 
So the question remains, Can we rely on children? Under unbiased, highly trained,
standardized ways of interviewing.....the answer is yes. Clinicians who have had the
training necessary to evaluate and judge are completely capable of interviewing these
children because children are indeed competent and qualified to testify on the witness
stand. Open ended questioning, yes-no questioning, selective questioning (man or woman)
and identification questioning (what time was it?) are key ways of interviewing to
provide for accurate recollection. And when a child is asked these questions in a neutral
way, you can believe that they are telling the truth.