Reliability and Credibility of Young Children's Testimony

Bruck, M., Ceci, S.J., and Hembrooke, H. (1998). Reliability and credibility of young children's reports: From research to policy and practice. American Psychologist, 53, 136-151.

Overview:

Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse: Fact or Fiction?

In 1984, Virginia McMartin and Peggy Buckley, owners of McMartin preschool, Ray Buckley, son of Peggy Buckley and a part-time aide, and four teachers were accused of 208 counts of sexual abuse involving 40 children. After a number of years of investigation and two court cases, all charges were dropped.

Between 1989-1990, Bob Kelly and six other adults associated with the Little Rascals Day Care Center were arrested on 429 counts of sexual abuse against 29 children. Kelly was found guilty and sentenced to 12 life sentences in prison. Another defendant was sentenced to a lesser term. Both convictions were eventually over-turned.

What's going on? Did young children lie about the abuses? Or did guilty people get set free? Bruck, Ceci, and Hembrooke (1998) argued that neither occurred. Rather, the young, susceptible children reported abuse after being questioned using misleading questioning techniques. These methods contaminated the young children's ability to provide reliable, credible testimony. Bruck et al. used the terms reliability to refer to accuracy of children's reports and credibility to refer to their believability.

Article Summary

Suppose you are being interviewed by large, authoritative person in a small, bare room. The person asks you, "Is there a cabinet in the room?" You look around and don"t see anything resembling a cabinet so you reply, "No." Suppose, however, the person asked, "Is the door to the cabinet in the room open?" How would you answer then?

The second question is a misleading question. Regardless of whether you answered "Yes" or "No," your response could be used to infer that there was a cabinet in the room. Bruck, Ceci, and Hembrooke (1998) reviewed research on interviewing children. They concluded that interviewing techniques strongly influence how reliably and credibly young children can report various incidents, including sexual and ritual abuse.

In one study that Bruck et al. reviewed, three- and four-year-old children were questioned about events that occurred during a medical exam in which some of the children received a genital examination and some did not. When given an anatomically correct doll and asked to indicate how the child had been touched by the doctor (e.g., 'show me on the doll how the doctor touched your penis."), even children who had not received a genital examination demonstrated touching on the doll. Thus, misleading questions may result in inaccurate reporting of events, calling into question the reliability of young children's testimony.

Bruck et al. also reported research in which the least reliable reports were judged to be most credible by professionals. In one study, some young children are provided on a number of occasions with misleading information about a person named Sam Stone. All children then met Sam. Later, Sam is accused of having damaged a teddy bear and a book. Children who had been fed the misleading information about Sam were more likely to make false claims about having observed him damaging the objects. More important, however, professionals (including judges, social workers, and prosecutors) who viewed videotapes of the children's testimony judged children who made the least accurate reports to be the most highly credible!

Bruck et al. concluded from their review that law enforcement officials, child protective service workers, therapists, and other professionals need "training, training, and more training." Young children may be able to accurately report events - but only when questioned under the appropriate circumstances. Interviewers must be neutral, unbiased, and not ask misleading or suggestive questions if they are to obtain reliable, credible testimony from young children.

For Instructors

Links to the Lecture

The case of Bob Kelly and the Little Rascals Day Care has been documented by the PBS show, Frontline. The most recent show was aired in May, 1997. The accompanying web site is also excellent.

Innocence Lost: The Plea (PBS, Frontline, 1997, 60 min)

For Students

About the Authors

Maggie Bruck is in the Department of Psychology at McGill University. Here is a somewhat dated course page for her psychology course on The Child Witness.
Stephen Ceci and Helene Hembrooke are in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University.

About the Journal

This article appeared in a special issue of the American Psychologist on Developmental Science. Check out the summary of another article from this same issue by Scarr (1998) on issues in developmental science and child care.

Links to Life

Allegations of child sexual abuse are very serious; false allegations can be extremely damaging. You should most definitely check out this very detailed Web site accompanying the PBS Frontline show, Innocence Lost: The Plea, that aired May 27, 1997. This show and Web site document the 8-year trial of Bob Kelly, operator of the Little Rascal's Day Care Center in North Carolina who, along with six others, was arrested for child sexual abuse alleged to occur in the late 1980s. There is a lot of interesting information presented at this site, including court transcripts, discussions with experts (including Dr. Ceci), profiles of the defendants, and references. Here is a press release dealing with the dropping of charges against Margaret Kelly Michaels who was alleged to have sexually abused children at a day care center in New Jersey in 1985. Drs. Bruck and Ceci prepared a brief for the defense in the Michaels case. It is long and comes in three sections (part1, part2, part3), but the transcripts of very leading interviews of the children that formed testimony presented in court are quite interesting.

This site contains a list of articles with abstracts on child suggestibility research. There are also links to many other cases of alleged abuse that may not have occurred.

Finally, here is a thoughtful summary of research on children's testimony from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.