The disclose of a sexual assault is a heavy process in the first place for the child, but also for the parent or adult to whom the child confesses. Discussion about such a situation is never desirable, but if such an event has occurred, it is important to know as parents how you should relate to both the child and the child’s reports. If the disclosure will be followed by criminal investigation, it is important to be aware that the child’s statements about the assault situation may in some cases be the only way to prove it.

Therefore, the way you relate to the statements your child makes can influence the subsequent reports he or she will make to the authorities (police, prosecutor, judge).

Find above some recommendations regarding this:

• Once the child has given an initial account of the assault, you will certainly want to find out more information to understand the event more clearly. For a clearer understanding of the situation and its seriousness, it is understandable that you will ask the child for more information. In the case of children, there is always a risk that the questions put to them will overload them. And once the child erroneously picks up information and integrates it into his or her account of the event, there is a contamination of the initial account that can impact the credibility of the child’s account and the course of the investigation. Therefore, to find out more information it’s a good idea to ask your child open-ended questions such as “Tell me more”. For example: “You told me that he or she put his/her hand on your ass. Tell me more about that” or “You told me that he/she asked you to get undressed. Tell me more about the fact that he/she asked you to take your clothes off”. It is best to avoid the suggestive questions such as: “He/she pus his/her hand on your ass too, didn’t he/she?” when the child has not related any such details.
• The younger your child is, the greater the risk of influencing them. As a result of undeveloped cognitive processes of attention, memory, language and thinking, younger children have difficulty in organizing memories of events coherently in their mind. This difficulty, due to intellectual immaturity, can also be compounded by the questions you as parents ask to find out more details about the abuse event. The younger the children are, the greater the risk of being suggestible and unwittingly picking up false information and later reporting it as true. Let’s take for example the question: “He/she kissed on the mouth, didn’t he/she?” asked to a three years old child; although the child may initially deny this detail, later, through repetition, by asking the same question, the child may became confused about how things really happened, with the risk of taking the information and, in a later account, presenting it as true.
• If you feel that you are unable to listen to the child and obtaining information in a way that gives you a clearer picture of the event disclosed by the, without influencing the child and giving him/her the necessary emotional support, it is recommended to either call another person close to the child to sit with you and talk to the child, or to go directly to the investigating authorities.
• It is advisable to control your emotional reactions when disclosing of sexual assault, since your reactions may cause the child to either shut down, deny what he/she has just told you or voluntary or involuntary, relate things that didn’t actually happen. Therefore, avoid overtly expressing anger, outrage, distrust, doubt, shock or other emotions to your child that may be influencing them.

Bibliography

Mireille Cyr, Conducting interviews with child victims of abuse and witnesses of crime – A practical guide, Ed. Routledge, 2022

Michael E. Lamb, Mărturia copilul Cercetare psihologică și practică judiciară, Ed. ASCR, Cluj Napoca, 2018

Article written by: Patricia Aramă, clinical psychologist.