Citation

Sumampouw NEJ, De Ruiter C, Otgaar H. Police Pract. Res. 2022; 23(3): 370-387.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/15614263.2021.1952872

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This preregistered experiment aimed to investigate the impact of background information regarding an alleged victim of child sexual abuse on police investigators' perception of the credibility of the victim's statement, expected case outcome, and the type of questions police investigators plan to ask the victim in an investigative interview. We expected that the age and the description of the alleged victim's character would affect perceived credibility, prediction of case prosecution and the use of biased questions in the interview plan. Indonesian police investigators (N = 369) read a case vignette of either a 5- or a 15-year-old female victim of child sexual abuse, including either a good character, bad character, or no character information. Participants receiving the story of the 15-year-old alleged victim perceived the victim as having contributed more to the crime, predicted the case as more likely to be withdrawn and included more biased questions in their interview plans than those who received the story of a 5-year-old alleged victim. Moreover, participants being told that the alleged victim had a bad character perceived her statement as less reliable, having contributed more to the crime, predicted the case as more likely to be withdrawn or dropped-out than those who received information about the alleged victim with a good character. We did not find any effect of our background information manipulation on the perception of suspect guilt, and on the estimated likelihood of the allegation being confirmed by corroborative evidence or being prosecuted. The current findings suggest that background information can negatively affect police investigators' judgment and decision-making when working on a child sexual abuse case.

Language: en

Keywords

child sexual abuse; Confirmation bias; investigative interviewing; perceived credibility; police investigators