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Interviewing Adult Complainants in Sexual Assault Cases

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Criminal Investigations of Sexual Offenses

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Abstract

This chapter reviews current research and internationally published guidance for conducting interviews with adult sexual assault victims and identifies key best practices to improve the interview process. Among the issues identified by practitioners, researchers, and victims, two of the overriding themes are victim empowerment and a climate of belief. Although police services internationally have special units, enhanced training for sexual assault investigations, and established multi-disciplinary efforts to make victims more comfortable with the process, attrition figures for sexual assault crimes remain high. This chapter will address the following questions: (1) What do victims need? (2) What challenges do investigators face? Answers include the need for a victim-centred and trauma-informed process, good interviewing practices, and having the appropriate mindset. To this end, training should address both attitudes and behavior, with incremental skill development. Recording interviews for evidentiary purposes is discussed as an alternative to written statements. The chapter concludes with suggestions for further research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    1 In some jurisdictions, before questioning in a recorded interview commences, police officers may use a standard script informing the victim that what they say may be used as evidence and requiring an oath or affirmation from the victim that their words are the truth. This can be the KGB script in Canada, and similar procedures are used in other countries, including New Zealand and Australia.

  2. 2.

    The Cognitive Interview, an alternative to standard police question-and-answer interviews, developed by Fisher and Geiselman (1992), is a theory and evidence-based interviewing protocol which aims to improve the recall of accurate and reliable information from an interviewee. The CI approach addresses three primary psychological processes that underlie interviews with cooperative interviewees: (i) the social dynamics between the interviewee and interviewer, (ii) the interviewee’s and interviewer’s cognitive processes, and (iii) communication between the interviewee and interviewer.

  3. 3.

    In the UK PEACE protocol, the stages of an interview are: Planning and preparation, Engaging with the interviewee and explaining the process, getting the interviewee’s Account, Closure, and Evaluation (Clarke et al. 2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

    Kate Chenier & Rebecca Milne

  2. National Crime Agency, London, UK

    Kevin Smith

  3. Memorial University of Newfoundland, Newfoundland and Labrador, St. John’s, NL, Canada

    Brent Snook

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  1. Kate Chenier
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Correspondence to Kate Chenier .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work and Criminology, Université Laval, Quebec, QC, Canada

    Nadine Deslauriers-Varin

  2. Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Craig Bennell

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Chenier, K., Milne, R., Smith, K., Snook, B. (2021). Interviewing Adult Complainants in Sexual Assault Cases. In: Deslauriers-Varin, N., Bennell, C. (eds) Criminal Investigations of Sexual Offenses. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79968-7_6

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