It’s been a long road to the forensic standardised child interview, explains Corine de Ruiter, professor of Forensic Psychology and the driving force behind the project. In the early 2000s, she first learnt that the organisation for handling child abuse reports in the Netherlands – then Advies Meldpunt Kindermishandeling (AMK), now Veilig Thuis – didn’t use a standard interview method. In fact, AMK employees barely spoke to the children involved at all.
“I was asked to develop guidelines for assessing the risk of recurrent child abuse”, recalls De Ruiter. Through literature research, she identified seventeen contributing factors. “For example, a parent might have a poor understanding of what a child of a certain age is capable of, and become enraged by their 4-year-old not coming home on time. But a 4-year-old isn’t even able to tell the time yet! Other factors include addiction, mental health problems and financial stress.”
Rarely speaking to children
To the researchers’ surprise, AMK case files contained virtually no information on these factors. “AMK was very focused on ‘child signals’, behaviours that were thought to indicate a child is being abused, such as throwing temper tantrums, hitting other children, being very withdrawn or having nightmares. But if there’s one thing psychologists know, it’s that behavioural issues don’t necessarily indicate abuse at all. They can have many different causes.”
De Ruiter also noticed that AMK rarely spoke to the children involved. All information about a child’s behaviour and family situation came from teachers, doctors and police officers. “A strange approach, as these professionals usually don’t see what happens in the home. I found it quite shocking, to be honest.”
De Ruiter’s guidelines for assessing the risk of recurrent child abuse led to a change in AMK’s approach. They began to pay more attention to the reasons why parents abuse their children. “But back then, training courses on interviewing children were still a step too far.”
Pilot
The idea was shelved until 2016, when it resurfaced during a project on high-conflict divorce at AMK (by then part of Veilig Thuis). “High-conflict divorce cases almost always involve children, otherwise there’s nothing to fight over. Yes, money, but financial disputes are usually resolved much more quickly”, says De Ruiter. Her team assisted professionals in conducting structured interviews with fighting parents, which again raised the question: why don’t we speak structurally to the children involved? And not just children involved in high-conflict divorce cases, but also in reports of child abuse.
Veilig Thuis Zuid-Limburg was willing to start a pilot study. “We randomly assigned reports of child abuse to a group of employees we had trained in an evidence-based interview protocol and a group of employees who continued to use their own methods, as they were used to. They conducted interviews with children, which we recorded and assessed for interview quality.”
Open questions
In De Ruiter and her colleagues’ method, it’s out of the question to use dolls or pictures and ask children to point to where they were hurt or touched. “These are highly suggestive and stimulate children’s imagination, with all sorts of negative consequences.” Another crucial part of the method is asking open, inviting questions. “Previously, employees would ask questions like, ‘Was daddy wearing a red or a blue jumper when he got so mad at you?’ This could make a child feel pressured to say either red or blue, even if the jumper was actually black.”
Trained Veilig Thuis employees soon noticed that children began to open up much more. “All kinds of important details would come out. They also learnt to listen very carefully and use the same terms as the child. If a child says ‘odd’ and you change it to ‘strange’, you can’t be sure you’re talking about the same thing. Repeat the word the child used and ask what they mean by it.”
The pilot study also led to better initial screening calls, which are used to decide whether a report is followed up. “It turned out that reports that may previously have seemed harmless, and were therefore not followed up, sometimes revealed severe abuse. These cases are now being detected.”
First step
De Ruiter has seen a shift in employees’ attitudes. “There was resistance at first. ‘We’ve always done it this way, who are you to tell us we’re doing it wrong?’ But when they saw the results, they were convinced.” Veilig Thuis is enthusiastic about the method as well. The UM team is currently training people to teach it to Veilig Thuis employees across the Netherlands.
“Now, the standard first step in any child abuse investigation is to speak in a research-based manner to the child”, says De Ruiter. “This means that more cases of child abuse will be identified. As a researcher, you can sometimes make a real difference and have a real-world impact, which is a thing to be happy about.”