Forensic Interview with Child Victims of Sexual Abuse in Turkey: The Interviewer’s Subjective Experience

Abstract

Child abuse and neglect is an important social problem affecting millions of children and their families around the world. Regardless of the physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, in the judicial process regarding child abuse, it is very important to collect and evaluate the physical, biological, and psychological findings correctly, as well as forensic interviews with the victim child. Forensic interview is an interview in which information about the incident is collected, whether the crime has been revealed, and the obtained information is analyzed in a psychological and legal framework, with an impartial approach to the victim or suspect in judicial incidents. In the forensic interview process, the issues related to the evaluation of the reliability of the child’s statement, the knowledge, skills, experiences, and needs of the forensic interviewers, the interview environment and conditions are important issues. In this direction, the aim of our research was trying to create a descriptive framework for the competence and effectiveness of forensic interviewing through qualitative analysis. Forensic interviewers from 3 different cities with forensic interview experience were selected in the study. Six forensic interviewers were employed in the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the interviewees by using the interview form prepared in accordance with the working areas and interview processes of the forensic interviewers, and the interview records were evaluated using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). As a result of the examination of the interviews, eight repetitive themes were determined and concrete quotations from the discourses of the participants were given for each top theme. The results obtained are discussed in the literature. © 2023 Association of Clinical Psychology Research. All rights reserved.