Abstract:
When interviewing children about suspected abuse it is important to gather as many details as
possible. Unfortunately, many victims of child maltreatment experience abuse on numerous
occasions, and as similar events may be repeatedly experienced, it becomes increasingly difficult
for children to discriminate between individual episodes. In jurisdictions across the United States,
successful prosecution of an alleged offender often depends on a child’s ability to recount specific,
individual incidences of abuse with regard to location, time, and type of abuse. Even when details
specific to an occurrence of abuse are not required, children’s credibility is enhanced by providing
organized episodic narratives (Brubacher, Powell, & Roberts, 2014). This paper examines the
challenges faced by children attempting to recall specific details from a set of repeated events, the
benefits of providing children with an opportunity to describe in detail a non-abusive event before
transitioning to the substantive phase of a forensic interview, and children’s ability to retrieve
temporal (time-related) information from memory. Finally, the author will review evidence-based
strategies that forensic interviewers can employ to enhance children’s recall of information in cases
of repeated events.