What Is Forensic Interviewing in Child Sex Cases? Combs Waterkotte attorneys Christopher Combs and Joshua Boardman discuss everything you need to know about Illinois sex crime charges, including sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape, and more.
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Interview Transcript
Scott Michael Dunn: What is forensic interviewing in child sex cases?
Joshua Boardman: Forensic interviews are going to be conducted largely through interviews with social workers, things like that, crime victim specialists, I would call them child or minor crime victim advocate type of personnel. They’re going to go in often in an isolated setting and ask those questions outside of the presence of attorneys or parents or judges or anyone like that.
Christopher Combs: Go ahead and start to ask leading questions. They’re there to try to get the objective truth. So, Josh can of course explain how it works in Illinois, but again, you get to challenge the child advocate who did the interview regarding some of the types of questions that they asked and things of that nature to elicit certain responses.
Boardman: And some of that’s going to be subjective based on the age of who potentially could be a victim or witness in it. So, if you’re dealing with younger elementary age, the questions are going to be… often times you’ll hear, “What scares you? Does dad get mad? Does mom get mad? Do you know? But then if you’re reviewing the transcripts of a forensic interview with a 15- or 16-year-old, it’s obviously way more different.
