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Spotting Unreliable Child Interviews

By Jeffrey P. Wittmann

It is not uncommon for forensic child custody evaluations (CCEs) to include detailed interviews with children that focus, to some extent, on alleged events in a family that may be relevant to a best interests determination. Evaluators may explore with the subject children allegations related to such difficult issues as family violence, alcohol abuse, alienation, neglect etc. The reasons are straightforward: Children are often witnesses to toxic family events that one or both parent-litigants refuse to admit happened ' or they can help disconfirm an allegation. Given the goal of assisting the court, evaluators also seek to gather information on such issues as the child's adjustment to the divorce, perceptions of each parent's emotional responsiveness, disciplinary style, etc.

Unfortunately, not all child interviews are created equal, and a biased or unskilled evaluator can shape or distort a child's recollection of family history by violating basic principles for maximizing reliability in child reports (Principles meant to help navigate the challenges of suggestibility, the vagaries of child memory, developmental limitations in language, etc.). If an attorney for a child or for a litigant can gain access to the underlying forensic file for inspection, an analysis of the session notes can offer reassurance that distorting dynamics were not present or suggest that the narrative offered by the child should be viewed as unreliable for court purposes.

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