Abstract:
The growth of the profession of forensic interviewing in the past
fifty years, the development of standards governing this work, and the
significant research influencing this work are all factors courts must consider
when prosecutors seek to utilize a forensic interviewer as an expert witness
or when defense attorneys call experts completely outside of this field to
critique the work of an interviewer or the credibility of a child’s statements.
This Article explores this issue and offers forensic interviewers—
and the attorneys who call them to the witness stand—concrete suggestions
for offering expert testimony and in otherwise defending these interviews in
court.18 The Article also offers guidelines for challenging the testimony of
those called as experts to critique a forensic interview.