Multiple Forensic Interviews During Investigations of Child Sexual Abuse: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Abstract

In suspected child sexual abuse some professionals recommend multiple child interviews to increase the likelihood of disclosure or more details to improve decision-making and increase convictions. We modeled the yield of a policy of routinely conducting multiple child interviews and increased convictions. Our decision tree reflected the path of a case through the health care, welfare, and legal systems and estimated the increased probability of conviction with additional interviews. We populated our decision analysis model using literature-based estimates. We simulated the experiences of 1,000 cases at 250 sets of plausible parameter values representing different hypothetical communities. Multiple interviews increase by 6.1% the likelihood that an offender will be convicted in the average community. We estimate that one additional conviction will follow if 17 additional children are multiple interviewed. Implications for the children, costs of care, protection of other children, and the risk of false prosecution are discussed.

Acknowledgments

Dr. E. Michael Foster is deceased but led the statistical modeling process for this article and we are grateful for his assistance with this project.

The first author was supported in the preparation of this article by a NIH Ruth Kirschstein T-32 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant (5-T32-HD007376: Human Development: Interdisciplinary Research Training) to the Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We would like to thank Dr. David La Rooy and several anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

¹Please note the authors use the term disclosure to describe children's statements about abuse. Initial disclosures are considered allegations of abuse, as it is possible that such statements can be false.