Policy brief 1/2024 Based on thew white paper on forensic child interviewing: Research-Based Recommendations by the European Association of Psychology and Law, published in Psychology, Crime & Law, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2024.2324098
Child Forensic Interviews: Recommendations by the European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL) The European Association of Psychology and Law (EAPL) is a scientific association of researchers and professionals in the field of legal and forensic psychology, from various countries. We strive to do research of relevance for developing the justice system in Europe and worldwide. https://eapl.eu/ HEUNI, the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI) is the European regional institute in the United Nations Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention programme network. We are an independent research and policy-making institute striving to make scientific research in the sphere of criminal policy better known and more accessible for professionals and policy makers. https://heuni.fi
INTRODUCTION When children are victims of crimes, violence or abuse, their accounts of the events are often the primary evidence in criminal investigations. However, internationally - both within and outside of Europe - there is a considerable variability in how children are interviewed in investigative and legal contexts. Worryingly, some of the interview practices in use are not evidence-based and may even be harmful both to the children and to the outcomes of the criminal or civil justice processes. Within the relevant scientific research, on the other hand, there are quite clearly established golden standards - best practices - identified for how child forensic interviews should be conducted. The purpose of this paper is to communicate the current state-of-the-art with regards to child forensic interviewing to relevant professionals by providing them with an easily accessible overview of the science to important networks for practitioners, such as the Promise Barnahus network. In the White Paper on Forensic Child Interviewing, we present central findings about interviewing children in investigative and legal contexts and highlight evidence-based practices of interviewing children in a manner that is valid, reliable, and child-friendly. Our goal is to provide best practice guidelines for child forensic interviewing that should be followed in all European countries. A related aim is to aid professionals in reducing unnecessary and unwanted variation in interviewing practices and warn against possible harmful practices. These collective recommendations have been drafted by a large pool of scholars connected to the EAPL, some of who are holding recent PhDs in the field of child victims and witnesses, some who are currently doing practical work within the field and many of whom are established researchers within the field of investigative interviewing. The recommendations echo the core of the Barnahus standard nr 6 and provide further information on how to ensure these are followed in practice and are in line with the so-called Mendez Principles; principles on Effective Interviewing for Investigations and Information Gathering. While protocols developed for the context of child abuse investigations may need to be modified to be used in other types of cases, the core principles for interviewing children apply for all instances where children are heard in legal or other types of investigative processes. These include cases where children are suspects, in the context of child protective services or other criminal investigations such as human trafficking (in which children can be perceived as both a victim and a perpetrator).
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