CAC interview process aims to keep victim health, case integrity intact

Maintaining objectivity when asking a child about the simplest detail in an investigation about a crime they witnessed or if they were victimized can become contaminated by one question if not done right. Often, it can make or break a case, and it confuses the child.

“If you tell a child, ‘Hey, tell me about the red truck that you saw at the park,’ well, that is a very problematic question because if the child never said ‘red truck,’ the child will now regard the truck as being red,” Carson City Sheriff’s Office Capt. Craig Lowe said.

Open-ended questions from interviewers less informed on a case involving a child provide better results instead, he said.

The Carson City Rural Child Advocacy Center (CCRCAC), now emerging as a facility for child victims of sexual assault, neglect or abuse, has been envisioned by Lowe and local philanthropists Dave and Jan Marson for Northern Nevada’s rural counties.

The center, located at 412 N. Division St. in Carson City, will be using the child forensic interview (CFI) method to conduct investigations and retrieve information from a child witness about an alleged suspect, Lowe said. While different agencies subscribe to various methods interviewing a child in a case, the CFI allows for objectivity and prevents contamination from asking preemptive or loaded questions without the presence of a detective in the interview process.

“I respect it especially because of the follow-up in the back end with the multidisciplinary team, and all the experts are right there,” Lowe said. “It’s just a forensically sound approach.”

The CCRCAC’s CFI method will incorporate a multidisciplinary team (MDT) of professionals to help any process with a child. The MDT represents officials from law enforcement agencies, the District Attorney’s Office, Child Protective Services, mental health experts, medical providers, victim’s advocates, forensic interviewers and CAC staff members. Each member will be involved in various stages of interviewing the child, medical evaluation, advocacy, case review and tracking, providing mental health services and determining best practices in each specific case.

But to tailor the case, retrieving information from a child through the CFI must be accurate, Lowe said.

“If your DA subscribes to the child forensic interview method, that means he or she is searching for that separation between the case investigator and that case disclosure moment,” he said.

In the child’s initial disclosure of an incident, which might take place with a family member, a school counselor, a representative from Child Protective Services (CPS) or another trusted adult, that person in most cases typically notifies a law enforcement agency or member, Lowe said.

“The detective will get involved at that point and one of the first steps the detective does after making sure that the child is in a safe environment to make sure the child doesn’t get into the house where the alleged suspect lives,” he said. “If that’s the case, we get CPS involved and we come up with a safety plan for the child.”

If the law enforcement agency determines there is no probable cause to arrest the suspect, the detective books a time with the local Child Advocacy Center (CAC) to conduct a CFI with the child. Currently, scheduling with the Washoe County CAC can take up to three or four weeks, and rural counties’ availability is limited to one day per week.

Once a child is seen, the non-offending parent attends the appointment with the child to meet with the detective, an introduction takes place with the child forensic interviewer and a physical examination occurs, Lowe said. Signs of physical, sexual and mental bruising are most common.

“Normally, it’s an exterior examination, and I don’t want to marginalize that because the child is still exposed, but typically we’re looking for signs of trauma,” he said.

Maintaining chain of custody and collection of evidence from a child are essential, but integrity of interview techniques remains top of mind, Lowe said. Keeping the victim’s emotional state in mind is priority, too.

“If you have a detective that does leading questions, they can undermine the entire investigation, and how horrible would it be for a child go in and reveal their soul and to tell their story and then, because the process was tainted with poor questioning technique, to have all of that disregarded?” he said.

Law enforcement isn’t the only side to be interested in credibility of these CFIs. The prosecution of these child sexual abuse or neglect cases that the CCRCAC will receive also must be meaningful, according to Carson City District Attorney Jason Woodbury, and their very nature can be difficult on all parties involved, including the district attorneys assigned to them.

Woodbury said both law enforcement and the DA’s Office began realizing how unique such cases are since he began as a deputy DA in 1999.

“The trauma that is involved these kinds of incidents, frankly, is like no other trauma in any other kind of case,” he said. “It has the potential to and usually results in a lifetime of consequences for victims. You have a unique kind of trauma in these kinds of cases. … A child is much more susceptible to having information suggested to them.”

Lowe said great care has to be taken with these CFIs since a legal defense can question any aspect about how they’re done.

The CFIs, for a police officer, are “the easy job” when it comes to investigation, prosecution and treatment to start the entire process for a child and family, Lowe said.

“We come in, we do the interview, we get the evidence from the physical exam and we go put our case together and we’re done,” Lowe said. “But what Jan (Marson) and her people and her teams do after the fact, that’s what’s going to help that child be productive, be able to have meaningful relationships in their future and not look at a community as a, ‘where that bad thing happened to me.’ ”

Marson’s team afterward begins the real work afterward of helping a child victim start the mental and emotional healing process after the trauma, Lowe said. For him, the CAC comes down to one simple purpose.

“My goal is when they’re done with this place, 20, 30 years from now when they drive by, they look at it and go, ‘That’s where I was made well, not where I got hurt,’ ” he said.