Detecting Deception Among Child Molesters
Darrel Turner
Darrel B. Turner, PhD, Clinical and Forensic Psychology and Consultation
Dr. Turner is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the area of child sexual abuse. He has worked as an expert in child sexual abuse and child pornography cases (among other sex offense cases) with the FBI, NCIS, Department of Homeland Security, the United States Military, and numerous state and local law enforcement and attorney agencies. He began his career in the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons and is currently in private practice. He has numerous publications related to the risk assessment of sexual offenders, juror perceptions of evidence in sex offense cases, and ethical considerations in sex offender psychological risk assessments. He has worked undercover in sex crimes sting operations with law enforcement.Dr. Turner is frequently invited to speak and present data findings from his research. He also conducts trainings for MDT providers in such areas as interviewing sex offenders, recognizing and designing an interview with sex offenders based on the presence of psychopathy and other personality disorders, grooming techniques of child molesters, and detecting deception among child molesters. He has travelled nationally and internationally as an invited presenter, consultant, expert witness, and instructor.
Abstract
For the first time, response patterns of guilty individuals who continue to deny their guilt related to child molestation are being scientifically compared to persons who are accused, questioned, and not charged (innocent). ... [ view full abstract ]
For the first time, response patterns of guilty individuals who continue to deny their guilt related to child molestation are being scientifically compared to persons who are accused, questioned, and not charged (innocent). The results show a clear distinction between response patterns of the two groups. This has been made possible by the cooperation of various law enforcement agencies in the United States that have provided redacted interviews with suspects who were accused, questioned, but not charged due to a variety of reasons (alibi, passing a polygraph, recantation, etc.).
In this presentation, video examples demonstrate 8 deception "techniques" used by these guilty offenders, and demonstrate a scoring instrument that has been designed to identify these techniques. The implications of the research findings have been called "groundbreaking" and "game changing." Dr. Turner has designed an easy-to-use scoring instrument that can be completed by interviewers in the course of their interview with a suspected child molester. Data analysis has shown a clear distinction between "innocent" deniers and "guilty" deniers, and ongoing data collection continues to support these exciting results. Such an instrument, with enough of a sample size, will allow, for the first time, an empirically supported method for interviewers to determine whether the suspect is engaging in deception or responding in the manner that truly innocent suspects respond.
The workshop introduces the instrument, and shows, via video examples, how to recognize the 8 most common techniques of deception used by guilty child molesters who deny their offenses. These techniques have been shown to be commonly used by guilty deniers, and they simply are not present in innocent deniers. At the end of the workshop, a sample case is given and scoring is performed as a group by the attendees with Dr. Turner.
Authors
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Darrel Turner
(Darrel B. Turner, PhD, Clinical and Forensic Psychology and Consultation)
Topic Area
Sexual Abuse
Session
Workshop 4 » Session 2- Child Sexual Abuse (14:15 - Monday, 2nd October, King Willem Alexander Compact)
