Allegations of sexual abuse in pre-schoolers in Ireland: Pre-screening the communication skills of very young children

The sexual abuse of children demands attention at the familial, community, societal and global levels. A multi-disciplinary response from a plethora of professionals is required when children make sexual allegations. While... [ view full abstract ]

The sexual abuse of children demands attention at the familial, community, societal and global levels. A multi-disciplinary response from a plethora of professionals is required when children make sexual allegations. While responses should be effective and efficient, this needs to be balanced with a child-centred and child-friendly approach. McCabe & Gilmartin (2011) contend that working with very young children can pose difficult multi-level dilemmas for professionals – emotional, clinical and systemic/environmental. Talking with pre-schoolers (children under five years of age) about sexual allegations is particularly demanding because they are a vulnerable population, who possess less general and sex-specific knowledge than older age-cohorts (Eisen & Goodman, 1998) and have less developed communicative language (Goodman & Aman, 1990). They can require direct questions during interviews but their responses to such questions are less likely to be accurate than those of older children (Faller & Hewitt, 2007). In addition, their ability to recall from memory is under-developed (Hewitt, 1999) and they can be more suggestible than older children (Ceci & Bruck, 1993, 1995).

This paper critically discusses the use of a pre-screening procedure in establishing a pre-schooler’s capacity to engage in a forensic assessment of sexual abuse allegations. The objectives of the paper are to explore the results of a practice-based research study, which examined assessment outcomes in cases involving pre-school aged children over a six-year period (2011-2016) in a region of Ireland. The method used was systematic case audit. The results reinforce the challenging nature of forensic interviews with pre-schoolers. The results also indicate that:

• while the pre-screening process may help an investigative interviewer to understand a young child’s communicative skills, it is not a good indicator in terms of assessment outcome and;
• the likelihood of clear assessment outcomes increases with a child’s age.