RETROSPEKTIV OPKLARING AF OVERGREB – KAN VI STOLE PÅ BØRNS ERINDRINGER?

Abstract

This article summarises and discusses research on the reliability of the testimony of young children across three different conditions: 1) in free recall, 2) in research interviews involving leading and misleading questions and 3) in studies designed to imitate the amount and types of questioning that is likely meet a child who is a suspected
victim of child sexual abuse. Studies of children's free recall have shown that young children generally need much adult support and adult cues in retrieving and recounting specific episodes in the past. In cases where the adult does not know what has happened to the child but expects sexual abuse to have taken place, this suspicion is highly likely to generate specific questions that alludes sexual abuse and thus - in cases where no abuse has happened - come to function as misleading questions for the child. Many studies have demonstrated that young children can be influenced
by such misleading questions to such as extent that they may confirm and even elaborate episodes that have never taken place. Studies also show that small children are more suggestible than older children and adults, and that a child's suggestibility in relation to misleading questions increases with repeated questioning. These insights appear highly relevant in relation to recent cases of alleged sexual abuse in Danish day-care centres.