Videotaping Child Disclosure Interviews: Exploratory Study of Children's Experiences and Perceptions

• NCJ Number: 183349
• Journal: Journal of Child Sexual Abuse Volume: 8 Issue: 4 Dated: 1999 Pages: 35-49
• Author(s): James Henry
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 15 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This exploratory study compared the investigatory and legal outcomes for 29 sexually abused children whose disclosure interviews were videotaped with a group of 61 non-videotaped sexually abused children.

Abstract

Sexually abused children in three counties in Michigan participated in this study. These counties were chosen because they had contrasting community protocols for child sexual abuse investigation and were located in an area accessible to the researcher. The 90 sexually abused children, 30 from each county, who participated in this study had been either petitioned before the juvenile court or named as victims in criminal court cases. Three testing instruments were administered during a partially structured interview to measure the victim's perceived level of trauma and stress produced by system interventions. These entailed actions by child protective services, law enforcement, and juvenile and circuit courts. The author designed an instrument that was an open-ended, self-report that consists of 71 questions regarding the system interventions and their impact on the victim. The Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (Briere, 1991) was read by the children and administered to establish a trauma score for each child. It consists of 54 items designed to measure six subscales characteristic of traumas in sexual abuse victims. The Intervention Stress Inventory was used to measure the probable level of stress produced by investigatory, legal, and social service interventions. The results show that videotaped children were more likely to have fewer interviews and testify less frequently than the non-videotaped group. Offenders of videotaped sexually abused children were more likely to plead to criminal charges than offenders of the non-videotaped children. The overwhelming majority of videotaped sexually abused children (86 percent) indicated that videotaping was either helpful or had no effect on them. 2 tables and 16 references