The Quality of Forensic Child Interviewing in Child Sexual Abuse Cases in Indonesia
Date
2019
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Journal of police and criminal psychology
Abstract
Most of the foregoing research on child investigative interviewing has focused on interview practices in Western countries, thus
potentially limiting the generalizability and application of the findings to improve interview practices in non-Western countries.
The current studies are the first to examine police interviewing practices involving alleged child sexual abuse (CSA) victims in
Indonesia which has marked cultural differences compared with Western countries. In Study 1, we presented Indonesian police
child interviewers (N = 26) with a sexual abuse case vignette concerning a 7-year-old girl. Police interviewers were asked to write
down the questions they would pose to the child. We categorized questions into four types: open-prompts, directives, option posing, and suggestive. In Study 2, we examined Indonesian police files (N = 24) containing child sexual abuse interviews and
also scored the type of questions used as per the first study. We compared our data with those obtained in Western countries. The
consistent finding in both studies is that Indonesian police interviewers rarely used open-prompts, asked more directive and
option-posing questions. Consistent with findings from Western countries, our studies provide indirect evidence that open prompts may be infrequently used by forensic child interviewers in Indonesia.
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Keywords
child abuse, forensic interview, prompts, research, memory, Indonesia, International Resources, culture
Citation
Sumampouw, N. E., Otgaar, H., La Rooy, D., & De Ruiter, C. (2019). The quality of forensic child interviewing in child sexual abuse cases in Indonesia. Journal of police and criminal psychology, 1-12.