Swiss Journal of Psychology 59 (3), 2000, 196–206

Interviewing techniques in
sexual abuse cases –
a comparison of a day-care
abuse case with normal
abuse cases1
Nadja Schreiber
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

In sexual abuse cases children’s testimony plays an important role. To evaluate the quality of a witness’ state-
ment, the interviewing techniques and the context of the investigative interview have to be considered. The in-
terviewing techniques from the highly publicized day care abuse cases during the 1980s have been repeatedly
found to be directive and suggestive. Many of these interviewing techniques, such as positive and negative re-
inforcement, inducing stereotypes and repeated questioning within and between interviews, have been shown
empirically to elicit false statements from young children. Many different interview guidelines point to this prob-
lem and suggest alternative interviewing techniques.
Overall, there are few quantitative studies of interviewer behavior in sexual abuse cases. None of these has
compared the interviewer behavior in a day care abuse case with interviewer behavior in “normal” sexual abuse
cases by the Child Protective Service (CPS) in the USA. A first study compared behavior in these two contexts
and confirmed the notion that the amount of suggestive interviewing techniques is significantly higher in a sample
of day care abuse interviews than in a sample of CPS interviews. These results support the former statements of
Ceci & Bruck (1995) that interviews with child witnesses in sexual abuse cases, especially in day care ritual
abuse cases, include suggestive interviewing techniques. These have to be discussed considering their impact on
statements of child witnesses.

Key words: Sexual abuse, child witnesses, interviewing techniques

The “Kelly Michaels-Case”
Since 1980s, there have been several cases of sexual abuse
allegations in many US-day care centers showing a num-
1 I thank Jim Wood at the University of Texas, El Paso, USA
for letting me participate in his project, for his support, com-
ments and suggestions.
ber of parallels. In these cases a large number of children
accused their teachers of having sexually abused them.
The majority of these accusations contained satanic-ritu-
al elements as well as statements that varied over time.
Apart from repeated questioning by various persons and
a lack of additional evidence, there was intensive and of-
ten biased media coverage. The first and probably largest
trial concerning this topic was the McMartin Preschool

Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern

 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
Trial in Manhattan Beach, CA, which resulted in the de-
fendants’ acquittal (Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Nathan, 1988;
Nathan & Snedecker, 1995). Within the last 10 years, re-
markably similar cases have occurred in the Netherlands,
Great Britain, and Germany.
One of the U.S.-cases, the Kelly Michaels case, took
place at the Wee Care Nursery School in Maplewood, NJ.
From September 1994 to April 1995, Kelly Michaels, a
23 year-old student, worked as a teacher’s assistant at the
Wee Care-Nursery School. She left this nursery school for
a better-paying job at another day care center. Four days
after she left, one of the children had his temperature rec-
tally taken when he said “That’s what my teacher does to
me at school”. When the pediatrician inquired, the child
replied, “Her takes my temperature.” On that afternoon, the
mother informed state officials.
Two days later, the child was interviewed at the prose-
cuter’s office and named two other boys whose tempera-
ture had also been taken. One of these boys stated that
Kelly Michaels had touched his genitals. The day care cen-
ter and the parents were then informed and asked to pay
specific attention to signals of abuse. In the next two and
a half years until the trial began, all the children at Wee
Care Nursery School were questioned by various police
interviewers, interviewers from the Division of Youth and
Family Services and the prosecuting attorney’s office.
When the trial began, Kelly Michaels was accused of
having sexually abused 19 children in 163 cases. The ev-
idence used by the prosecution was mainly the children’s
testimonies. The accusations included rape and sexual co-
ercion with knives, forks, wooden spoons, and Lego
bricks, licking peanut butter and jam off the children’s gen-
itals, and playing the piano naked. Furthermore, the de-
fendant was accused of having forced the children to lie
down on the floor naked, and eat a “cake” made of their
excrement. The accused pleaded not guilty in all cases.
After thirteen days of deliberation, a jury convicted Kel-
ly Michaels of 115 cases of sexual abuse and sentenced
her to 47 years of prison. After five years in prison,
Michaels was released on bail when the Appeals Court of
New Jersey reversed her conviction. The prosecution’s
contradiction was dismissed by the Supreme Court of New
Jersey. After the prosecution’s appeal to retry the case was
denied, the court ruled that the prosecution must show that,
despite suggestive interviewing techniques, the children’s
testimonies were still sufficiently reliable. In December,
1994, the prosecution dropped all charges against
Michaels (Ceci & Bruck 1995; Nathan 1988; Nathan &
Snedecker 1995; Rabinowitz 1990).
The description of this day care abuse case is meant to
give an insight into a typical day care abuse case and
specifically serves as a basis of a quantitative evaluation
of interviewer behavior that will be described later in this
197
article. In the following section, a summary of the back-
ground of day care abuse cases, problems of gathering
evidence in sexual abuse cases, aspects of credibility as-
sessment of children’s statements, and interview guide-
lines in sexual abuse will be presented. After this, evalu-
ations of interviewer behavior in “normal” abuse and day
care cases will be summarized concisely, and the author’s
own empirical evaluative study will be presented.
Abuse in day care settings
Abuse in day care settings can be described as a particular
type of sexual abuse which has increasingly attracted the
public’s as well as researchers’ attention within the last
15 years. Ceci and Bruck (1995) describe this type of sex-
ual abuse, which often includes satanic ritual elements such
as wearing masks and robes, the actual or simulated killing
of animals or infants, and/or consumption of excrements
(APSAC, 1995), referring to the fact that during the 15 years,
a variety of sexual abuse allegations emerged in the context
of nursery- and pre-schools and correspondingly specify
sexual abuse in day care settings. Characteristic of these
abuse cases is a multitude of mainly young children, usually
between 3 and 8 years of age, accusing their teachers of
abuse that only happened recently, which includes the ritual
elements mentioned above. In many cases it is said to have
lasted for months, sometimes years. These testimonies al-
most exclusively develop after months or years of ques-
tioning. Over time, several of these day care abuse cases
emerged in the US, such as the McMartin preschool case,
the Little Rascals case, and later on in Europe, for example
the Nottingham case in Great Britain, the Oude Pekela case
in the Netherlands, or the Montessori case in Germany.
Strikingly, there were quite a few parallels between those
cases concerning the type of allegations and the develop-
ment of the allegations and proceedings. In all cases, there
were several preschoolers involved, and an initial ambigu-
ous statement or behavior led to a line of investigative in-
terviews. Many of the children only successively disclosed
after months or years of intensive, often biased interview-
ing or coercion by therapists, state official interviewers,
courts, and parents. Denial of abuse is often considered re-
pression or induced by the perpetrator with the threat of
violence. In all cases, there was a cross-germination of in-
formation between all parties involved and a lack of objec-
tive evidence, such as for example videotapes or photos. In
all cases, the accused was finally acquitted, or their convic-
tion was reversed by an appeals court, sometimes after
having spent several years in prison (Ceci & Bruck, 1995;
Köhnken, 1997; Nathan & Snedecker, 1995; van der Haart,
Boon & Heijtmajer Jansen, 1997; Volbert, 1999).
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
198 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
With regard to the specific subgroup of satanic-ritual
abuse cases between 1983 and 1988 investigations of sa-
tanic-ritual abuse cases, sometimes in day care settings,
were performed in more than 100 counties in the US. These
often resulted in draconian sentences followed by rever-
sals of these sentences (deYoung, 1994). Local police and
FBI investigation units came to the conclusion that there
had not been a single documented case of satanic killing,
human sacrifice, or cannibalism (Lanning, 1991). Good-
man and colleagues (1994) found evidence of few perpe-
trators and very small groups abusing children or using
single satanic-ritual elements. The majority of these sus-
picions, however, were not substantiated.
Taken together, these facts hint at alternative explana-
tions for the existence and the origin of day care abuse cas-
es and some allegations of satanic ritual abuse therein. For
the allegation of satanic ritual abuse, and generally for all
the allegations in day care abuse cases, there is a lack of
corroborative evidence and a history of multiple sugges-
tive interviews and coercion of the children involved. In
the end, the courts were not able to rule out the possibili-
ty that the children’s statements were the result of the in-
terviewing techniques used by different adults to elicit so-
called evidence.
Psychological aspects of children’s
evidence
The lack of objective evidence appears to be a pervasive
problem in the trial described. In most sexual abuse and
day care abuse cases, objective evidence is lacking, and
witness testimonies appear to be the prosecution’s only
evidence (Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Dezwirek-Sas, 1992; Gers-
tendörfer, 1994; Nathan & Snedecker, 1995; Wakefield &
Underwager, 1989). That is why the origin and the de-
velopment and changes of minors’ testimonies are partic-
ularly relevant.
Because the majority of testimonies about sexual abuse
are made by children from various age-groups, special
characteristics of this witness group have to be considered
with regard to origin of evidence and assessment. In this
context Ceci & Bruck (1993) modified Arntzen &
Michaelis’ (1970) earlier assumption that a child serves as
a capable witness if (s)he has reached the age of 5 and the
appropriate intellectual stage of development by consid-
ering recent empirical literature and stating that even very
young children have been shown to be capable of not only
giving but also changing and rearranging true statements.
This fact heavily depends on the interview: if children are
interviewed properly, even infants are generally able to
give accurate and relevant evidence while including few
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
details. However, a qualitative and quantitative increase in
false statements and false denials as a function of age has
to be expected. Keeping this developmental aspect in
mind, the following description of various suggestive in-
terviewing techniques and a short description of the so-
called “Criteria-Based Content Analysis”, an approach to
evaluate a statement’s credibility, broaden the view on im-
portant issues of children’s evidence.
Suggestive interviewing techniques
With regard to interviews with children in cases of sus-
pected sexual abuse, the question of suggestive interview-
ing techniques is of particular interest because the chil-
dren’s statements are often the only evidence that abuse
might have taken place. In court the prosecution must rule
out the hypothesis that a child’s testimony might originate
in suggestive interviewing.
Many suggestive interviewing techniques and refer-
ences to potential consequences as described in empirical
literature will be described below. Five techniques that
Ceci & Bruck (1995) emphazised will be expanded on in
particular: selective reinforcement, stereotype induction,
peer pressure, repeated questioning, and “pretend-level”.
The term suggestive questioning refers to interviewing
methods that change the interviewee’s potential testimo-
ny in an undesired, uncontrollable, and unpredictable way.
Selective reinforcement
This technique describes the fact that interviewers tend to
intensely praise those statements made by a child that cor-
respond to their hypothesis and debase those statements
that are not in accordance with the hypothesis. Interview-
ers are able to use different emotional tones in different
interviews and within the same interview by employing
explicit and implicit threats, bribes, and rewards. Thus,
certain statements made by a child may be reinforced
specifically, even without the interviewer’s intention.
The following excerpt of an interview of the Kelly
Michaels case is meant to clarify this technique (Example
1) (Q = Interviewer; A = Witness)
Q1: Did she ever make you do bad things?
A: Um, I don’t remember.
Q1: Sure you do, why don’t you just tell me?
Q2: It’d be so easy, so simple, just to tell us. And then you
wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
Q1: You can go home and eat supper.
Q2: Because we told you she can’t do anything to you
anymore.
A: I know.
Q2: Show me on the doll, what she did to you.
A: (inaudible)
 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
Q1: Point to the doll. Point to the doll. Now what was the
bad thing?
A: I don’t know but she would make them do things and
she told them that...
Q1: Who were the other children?
A: Um, like some were boys, some were girls.
(Kelly Michaels Case, Child 46C, p. 9)
A highly supportive atmosphere during an interview
should not be regarded as exclusively negative, however.
In such an atmosphere children tend to tell many incor-
rect details, but many true details as well (Ceci & Bruck,
1995).
Stereotype induction
Using this questioning technique, the child is given a neg-
ative characterization of the suspect independent of his/her
former statement. The following example is meant to clar-
ify this (Example 2):
Q: This is my friend Rich. Rich is a police officer. He’s
not going to hurt you. He’s the guy that arrested Kelly.
A: Oh.
Q: Pretty neat huh?
A: Yeah.
Q: How do you feel about that? Good?
Q: How do you feel about that, you like the fact that she’s
in jail?
A: Yeah.
Q: How come, you didn’t like her too much?
(Kelly Michaels Case, child 37C, p. 1)
The results of empirical studies about this subject consis-
tently show this technique’s negative effect on the accu-
racy of children’s statements (Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Nathan
& Snedecker, 1995).
Peer pressure
In this third technique the interviewer’s statements imply
that he or she has already talked about this incident or these
incidents to other witnesses and that other witnesses al-
ready provided the expected evidence. The interviewer’s
positive description of other witnesses’testimonies can re-
sult in a competition situation in which the interviewed
child wants to increase his or her witness value by mak-
ing interesting statements.
By telling their children about other children’s testi-
monies and thus prompting them to give evidence, parents
create peer pressure that is hardly controllable and ana-
lyzable. Children also talk among themselves about their
experiences with interviews. The following example pro-
vides an illustration of this technique (Example 3):
199
Q1: Very good. Do you remember the name of your
teacher when you went to school, 15C?
A: No.
Q1: No? Did you have one teacher or two teachers?
Q2: Stop acting silly now.
A: I can’t talk with my mouth full.
Q1: All right, you finish that and then maybe you can talk.
You know, 15C, I visited all your friends already in
school.
A: Already?
Q1: You know 14C? 16C, 7C. We visited with 11C, 28C,
ah, 13C. Huh?
(Kelly Michaels Case, child 15C, p. 3)
Since Binet’s studies at the beginning of this century, lit-
erature has pointed out that this method might lead chil-
dren to make false statements (Ceci & Bruck; 1995).
Moston & Engelberg (1992), however, came to the con-
clusion that the presence of a friend results in more pre-
cise and less suggestible testimonies in an interview about
an actual incident. However, one must keep in mind that
children were actually reporting a true incident that had
been experimentally induced in this study.
Repeated questioning
Because repeated questionings by various persons happen
frequently in sexual abuse cases, it is useful to distinguish
between repeated questioning within one and across sev-
eral interviews. The extent of repeated questions across
interviews (i.e., one question is constantly repeated in var-
ious interviews with the same witness) can only be esti-
mated. Usually the amount of repeated questions cannot
be verifiably investigated because, in the majority of cas-
es, interviews typically have not been recorded.
Repeatedly asking questions of the same content with-
in the same interview is a pattern that can also be found
in many mass charge proceedings. The interviewer asks
the same question repeatedly although the child has al-
ready answered, as shown in the following excerpt (Ex-
ample 4):
Q: You know what I want to ask you, if someone
touched, if somebody in school touched one of your
classmates, do you think they would like it?
A: No.
Q: No? Why wouldn’t they like it?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Hmm?
A: I don’t know.
Q: You don’t know? If someone touched anybody over
here, look 15C, on the rear end, or the posterior, is
that what you call it? How do you think that would
feel if someone did something to somebody there?
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
200 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
Hmm?
A: I don’t know.
Q: You don’t know? Do you think it would feel good or
you think it would hurt?
(Kelly Michaels Case, child 15C-1, p. 11)
Several studies have shown that young children tend to
change their answers if they are asked the same question
more than once within one interview (Ceci & Bruck, 1995;
Poole & Lamb, 1998). This technique might result in chil-
dren integrating false information in their statements and
possibly their memories.
Pretend-level
This suggestive questioning technique, also cited by Ceci
and Bruck (1995), is a specific type of question: Using
conditional tenses for example, the interviewer moves to
another conversation level (i.e., “What might have hap-
pened” level). The statement “Let’s pretend” may lead to
a similar effect (pretend level). This technique is exem-
plified in the following (Example 6):
Q: Have you ever seen anybody hurting the little girls
anywhere on their body with any of this stuff?
A: No.
Q: Did you hear of anybody getting hurt with any of this
stuff?
A: No.
Q: How do think one of the little girls or any of the lit-
tle girls could have gotten hurt by any of this stuff,
would you show me how you think they could get
hurt with any of this.
A: If you take this and go like that, that really hurts.
Q: Yeah? Well, let’s take this a second, hold on it. Why
don’t you show me how you think someone can get
hurt with that.
(Kelly Michaels Case, child 22C, p. 14)
Referring to this technique, Ceci and Bruck (1995) stated
that children with uncertain fantasy-reality boundaries
may be confused by this method. Children may not be able
to distinguish between true details and details that are on-
ly pretended, particularly if the interviewer does not ex-
plicitly bring the child back to the reality level. Schreiber,
Wentura and Bilsky (in press) were able to demonstrate
empirically the detrimental effects of using conditional
tenses (e.g., “What could he have done?”) in witness in-
terviews on the ensuing witness’ testimony.
Only recently have there been studies conducted con-
cerning the impact of a combination of these techniques.
More specifically, Garven, Wood, Malpass & Shaw (1998)
compared the impact of a combination of interviewing
techniques from the McMartin preschool case to the im-
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
pact of normal suggestive interviewing (i.e. suggestive
questions alone). They found McMartin interviewing
techniques to be blatantly more dangerous at eliciting false
allegations than simple suggestive questions. These inter-
viewing techniques clearly and consistently show that in-
terviewers have a number of possible ways in which they
can exert an influence on child witnesses. These possibil-
ities are frequently found in interviews in day care abuse
cases. Several experimental studies of the individual tech-
niques and their combined impact have clearly shown that
these techniques may distort and falsify children’s testi-
monies and should therefore be avoided to the greatest
possible extent. There may be arguments on the part of
therapists, social workers, police officers, and prosecution
that support such questioning methods, but these still lack
the scientific proof of their usefulness.
Investigative interview guidelines
The preceding sections pointed out that potential mistakes
may result in unwelcome consequences. To a decisive de-
gree, credibility assessment is dependent on how an in-
vestigative interview has been conducted because the less
evidence that exists, the more difficult the analysis of tes-
timonies is within the framework of credibility assess-
ment. However, for the most part, the extensiveness of tes-
timonies depends on the interviewing style. With regard
to credibility assessment, suggestive interviewing tech-
niques might generate insufficient material for analysis of
a statement (Steller & Köhnken, 1989).
Because the implications of suggestive interviewing
techniques for both evidence and credibility assessment
are well-known, the demand for interview guidelines that
translate this knowledge into action and enable inter-
viewers to question less suggestively follows. Before pre-
senting a quantitative evaluation of interviewer behavior,
this section will briefly hint at typical interviewing pro-
cedures and varieties of empirically-based guidelines and
approaches to which interviewers can refer when actual-
ly conducting investigative interviews.
Various institutions may perform first interviews in cas-
es of suspected sexual abuse. In the US these are typical-
ly the Child Protective Services (CPS), where better- or
less well-trained social workers interview children. In
Germany, the responsibility for these interviews rests with
the youth welfare department or else institutions that have
dedicated themselves to helping victims of violence, par-
ticularly women and children.
In the preliminary stages of a legal proceeding, chil-
dren are frequently questioned by police officers. By the
time the first interview takes place, intial suspicions have
already been developed because of earlier statements
made by the specific child, his or her conspicuous behav-
 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
ior, and physical changes. These are to be examined fur-
ther in a first diagnostic interview.
Schade, Erben and Schade (1995) generally criticized
the amount of frequently used, but empirically unjustifi-
able conduct and named the psychological exploration of
a child with the intention to gain (as complete as possible)
testimonies to perhaps be the only valid and reliable
method of sexual abuse diagnosis. Certain behaviors, such
as eroticized behavior towards grown-ups, bed-wetting, or
nightmares, may be indicators of existing abuse but do not
unequivocably provide evidence of abuse. This conclusion
is not allowed and is a mistake that may be rare nowadays,
but it can still be found in diagnostic contexts (Nathan &
Snedecker, 1995).
In their interview guidelines for eliciting child testi-
mony, Arntzen and Michaelis (1970) have already ex-
plicitly pointed to adequate questioning methods that are
easy on the child. Important parts of this interview guide-
line are: creating a pleasant interview atmosphere, elimi-
nating specific inhibitions on the child’s part, avoiding
suggestive questions and being aware of the implications
of suggestive interviewing techniques (e.g., praise), phras-
ing comprehensible questions, and completeness of ques-
tioning. They indicate that the duration of the interview
should be adjusted to the child’s age and intellectual con-
dition, that children should be questioned seperately from
each other, and that information about other witnesses’
testimonies should not be rehearsed.
Jones and McQuiston (1988) present a very detailed
interview guideline that has been developed especially to
investigate sexual abuse. One of the central issues of in-
terviews in these cases is the rapport building phase in
which interviewers try to establish a relationship with the
child and create a pleasant atmosphere on the basis of non-
sexual topics to enable the child to talk about possibly em-
barrassing and private matters. Furthermore, the authors
point out that a leading question may be necessary but
should be as unsuggestive as possible. Once the child has
answered this question, the interviewer should immedi-
ately continue with an open-ended question.
The step-wise interview, modified after Steller and Boy-
chuk’s (1992) funnel-like interviewing concept, contains
some of the aspects integrated by Jones and McQuiston
(1988) and adds some others (Yuille, Hunter, Joffe &
Zarpanuik, 1993). The individual interview steps are or-
ganized according to maximization of memory perfor-
mance and minimization of contamination. The basic prin-
ciple is the transition from open-ended questions at the be-
ginning of the interview to more specific types of ques-
tions towards the end of the interview. In this context, the
open-ended question should be the method of choice.
Gathering specific information about the detailed course
of abuse that was not given by the child as an answer to
201
an open-ended question (e.g., penetration, pornographic
photographing or filming) may be important, but only for
legal or examining reasons.
The British government published a “Memorandum of
Good Practice” (Home Office, 1992) summarizing the em-
pirical results of children’s testimony in a general inter-
view guideline that intended to be information for all prac-
titioners involved. In this guideline, a step-wise approach
can also be found: The interviewer is advised to follow a
hierarchy from open-ended to closed questions. In this
guideline the technical and formal aspects of interview-
ing are of special interest: If possible, a first interview
should be videotaped in order to spare the child further in-
terviews and to be able to produce more transparent evi-
dence in case of a legal proceeding. However, because
videotaped suggestive interview techniques are likely to
be judged controversial in court and have in many cases
contributed to the defendant’s acquittal or the abandoning
of the proceedings, various instititutions nowadays tend
(on the prosecution’s advice) not to record interviews
(Nathan & Snedecker, 1995).
One of the most recent comprehensive interview guide-
lines has been published by Poole and Lamb (1998). This
explicitly research-based guide for helping professionals
integrates central aspects of former approaches to inves-
tigative interviews, such as the step-wise interview and the
Memorandum of Good Practice, and focuses on the trans-
fer of this knowledge to practitioners. It addresses many
relevant questions interviewers have to deal with and gives
detailed advice on customizing interviews.
Another interview guideline, one that has not been de-
veloped for child witnesses, is the cognitive interview (e.g.
Fisher & Geiselman, 1992; Geiselman, Fisher, MacKin-
non & Holland, 1985). Here, the witness is required to
give a comprehensive and correct report of his or her ex-
periences and observations by means of various tech-
niques that originate in cognitive or social psychology.
Some studies have shown the cognitive interview to be
beneficial with children (e.g. Hayes & Delamothe, 1997;
Memon, Holley, Wark, Bull & Köhnken, 1996).
Finally, some interview guidelines are used that are not
based on scientific knowledge about child witnesses. They
include disputable interviewing practices, such as the us-
age of anatomically correct dolls or naming dolls after al-
leged perpetrators (McFarlane & Krebs, 1986).
Altogether, it becomes apparent that a valid and reli-
able diagnosis of sexual abuse can (almost exclusively) be
made with the help of psychological explorations that are
particularly geared to the case. From the empirical point
of view, a one-sided interpretation of suspicious behavior
and projective testing procedures are not to be recom-
mended. The interview guidelines described above disap-
prove of suggestive and directive questioning techniques.
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
202 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
In 1970, Arntzen and Michaelis already pointed to poten-
tial implications of these. If every first interview was gen-
erally held according to one of the empirically covered in-
terview guidelines mentioned above, there should be no
or only a few questions with regard to influencing the wit-
ness in case of legal proceedings.
Qualitative and quantitative evaluations
of interviewer behavior
Qualitative evaluation
The description of the interview guidelines is followed by
the question, to what extent is the knowledge from em-
pirical literature, which has been translated into the guide-
lines, in practice? It has already become obvious that cer-
tain suggestive interviewing techniques can be found in a
number of interviews despite the fact that the interviewer
has the opportunity to follow empirically-based interview
guidelines. To what extent this is actually translated into
practice will be examined below.
Altogether there are few evaluations of interviewer be-
havior in sexual abuse cases. In a qualitative summary of
interviewer behavior in some cases, Ceci and Bruck
(1995) and Nathan and Snedecker (1995) stressed that
many of the interviewing techniques mentioned above can
be found in a variety of interviews, particularly in day care
abuse cases. In these cases they think it is possible that a
large part of the accusations made by child witnesses is
the result of employing these techniques and combina-
tions thereof.
Quantitative evaluations
One of the first quantitative investigations into interview-
er behavior included 42 transcripts of a Child Protection
Agency in the US (Warren et al., 1995). One issue ad-
dressed was the time spent on the various interview stages.
The majority of time had been spent on direct questioning
(44.2%); the least time was spent on eliciting free narra-
tives from the child (0.8%). The rest of the time was di-
vided between official information (5%), rapport building
(15.5%), evaluation of the child’s narrative abilities
(6.2%), and closing (3.1%).
Examination of the different types of questions made
it clear that, on average, only 10% of all questions asked
during interviews allowed a narrative answer. With regard
to the types of questions used in the interviews, no age-
differences were found. Another study by this research
group analyzed transcripts of sexual abuse interviews
made by a Child Protection Agency in the US to find out
if those were conducted in accordance with recommen-
dations in common interview guidelines (Warren,
Woodall, Hunt & Perry, 1996). The results showed that
many interviewers tried to work in a rapport-building
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
phase but did not present answers such as e.g. “I don’t
know”, “I can’t remember”, or “I don’t understand you”
as an acceptable option in the beginning of the interview.
Furthermore, the authors stressed that interviewers fre-
quently presented new content not mentioned by the child
before and that they did not succeed in clearly emphasiz-
ing the origin of these contents within the interview.
In another study about interviewer behavior in sexual
abuse cases, 150 videotapes containing sexual abuse in-
terviews conducted by a Child Protection Agency were
examined (Wood, McClure-Martinez & Birch, 1995).
Typical interviewer mistakes such as “mechanical rapport-
building”, “reliance on closed questions early in the in-
terview”, “pressing an incommunicative child to talk about
abuse”, “under-use of open-ended questions” and “inter-
ruptions” were detected. Although these mistakes were
found in most of the interviews, the authors pointed out
that mistakes leading to false accusations and attracting
most of the attention at court, such as direct questions or
rewards, were rarities. The main problems with these in-
terviews were that interviewers had difficulties encourag-
ing children to give complete statements and that they used
methods that resulted in incomplete statements.
Although empirical literature that speaks to this issue
is quite rare, it is thought that interviewers in sexual abuse
cases seem to actually use a number of questionable in-
terviewing techniques. In particular, interviews in day care
abuse cases appear (judged qualitatively) to be poorly con-
ducted – in the sense of subjective and biased questioning
(Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Nathan & Snedecker, 1995). Even
first quantitative evaluations of interviews in normal sex-
ual abuse cases (apart from day care centers and without
satanic-ritual elements) indicate that there is room for im-
provement.
In the following section, a first empirical evaluation of
interviewer behavior in a day care abuse case, (the above-
mentioned Kelly Michaels case), which was conducted by
the present author, will be presented.
The quantitative evaluation of
the Kelly Michaels interviews
This study is a first attempt empirically to compare inter-
viewer behavior in a day care abuse case with interview-
er behavior in normal abuse cases (i.e. diagnostic inter-
views in single cases with only one person involved).
These CPS (Child Protective Services) interviews con-
sisted of cases that were not confirmed. We anticipated
that interviews in a day care abuse case contain more sug-
gestive interviewing techniques than interviews in normal
abuse cases.
 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases 203

Materials cludes dimensions intended to record four types of ques-

tions: Yes/No (Y/N)-questions, to which one can only an-
Twenty transcribed interviews from the Kelly Michaels
swer yes or no; Choice (CH)-questions, which allow one
case served as a sample for the group of day care abuse
to choose from two or more proposed answers; Open: fo-
interviews because this case shows characteristics (e.g. sa-
cused (OF)-questions, which can be easily answered us-
tanic ritual elements) that are typical of day care abuse
ing one single noun, a number of nouns, or one simple ad-
cases. The interviews were almost exclusively conducted
jective, and Open: narrative (ON)-questions, which can-
by social workers and police officers. Twenty transcribed
not be answered without using a verb and which are like-
interviews from a CPS in New Mexico were used as a com-
ly to elicit a narrative statement.
parison group of normal investigative interviews in sexual
The scoring system also contains five other dimensions
abuse cases. The interviews were conducted by employees
for recording specific interviewing techniques: Already
of this service, mainly social workers, to elucidate an ini-
Answered (AA) refers to interviewer questions the child
tial suspicion, namely sexual abuse. These were individual
has already answered. On the dimension Other People
interviews in cases of sexual abuse without satanic-ritual
(OP), the interviewer tells the child what other persons
abuse elements, repeated interviews, intense media inter-
have already told about the facts of the case. The dimen-
est, or comprehensive cross-germination of information by
sion Reinforcement (RE) is used if the interviewer criti-
institutions, parents, or other persons affected.
cizes, encourages, or praises the child for a statement. In
the dimension Inviting Speculation (IS), the interviewer
Procedure uses techniques such as speculation, conditional tenses,
and moving to a fictitious level, to try to persuade the child
The 20 interview transcripts of each group were scored in-
to give a statement.
dependently by two persons on the dimensions of a scoring
In addition to the dimensions described above, the Mul-
system (see below). A mean Kappa of .94 for all question
tiple Interviewers (MI) technique is used if more than one
type dimensions and a mean Kappa of .86 for the inter-
person (apart from the child) is talking within one turn
viewing techniques was calculated as measures of inter-
(i.e., exchange between interviewer and interviewee).
rater reliability.

Scoring system
All 40 interviews were evaluated using a scoring system
that sums the number of suggestive interviewing tech-
niques used by the interviewer. The scoring system in-
Results
Table 1 describes the mean relative frequencies for each
dimension. Contrary to our expectations, the two groups

Table 1: Mean Percentage of Frequencies of the Types of Questions and the Interviewing Techniques
Dimension Kelly Michaels Child Protective Service One-tailed significance
Types of questions
Yes/No .817 .732 .146
Choice .036 .073 .0005*
Open:Focused .208 .239 .12
Open:narrative .143 .139 .419
Interviewing techniques
Multiple Interviewers .042 .000 .0001*
Already Answered .119 .086 .032
Other People .021 .001 .0000*
Reinforcement .172 .096 .0045*
Inviting Speculation .014 .001 .0019*
Note 1: The mean percentage of frequencies was calculated as a mean proportion of types of question or interviewing techniques di-
vided by the number of turns, i.e. of interviewer/interviewee interactions, per interview. Due to the fact that it was possible for more
than one question of the same type or interviewing technique of the same type to occur within one turn, the mean percentage of fre-
quencies does not necessarily add up to 1.00.
Note 2: Data for the dimensions Multiple Interviewers, Other People and Inviting Speculation were not normally distributed. There-
fore we used the non-parametric Mann-Whitney to test for differences between the two groups on those dimensions; differences be-
tween the groups concerning the dimensions Already Answered and Reinforcement were tested using a t-test. Additionally, these
tests involve different sample sizes.

Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern

204 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
significantly differed only in terms of choice-questions
(i.e., with regard to question types). The mean relative fre-
quencies were in an unexpected direction, however.
As to the interviewing techniques, the Kelly Michaels
interviews contained significantly more multiple inter-
viewers, other people, reinforcement, and inviting specu-
lation than the interviews conducted by CPS. Thus, in this
group, children are interviewed by various persons sig-
nificantly more often, the interviewers use significantly
more verbal reinforcement of any kind, and they repeat
another person’s statement significantly more often (e.g.,
point out that they have additional information). Further-
more, they ask children to speculate on facts that might
have happened and move from reality- to pretend-level
significantly more often.
In addition, the proportion of yes/no questions used in
both groups is higher than the proportion of the other three
question types taken together. The following hierarchy
(frequency of question types) emerges in both groups:
Yes/No > Open: Focused > Open: Narrative > Choice
However, the proportion of yes/no-questions in the Kelly
Michaels group is even higher than in the CPS group.
Discussion
One main finding is that the question type, which litera-
ture uniformly classifies as being controversial, was by far
the preferred question type used by both interview groups.
That is, both groups heavily relied on closed and direct
questions. In the Kelly Michaels interviews, however, this
question type appeared to be even more frequent.
Both interviewer groups obviously do not orientate to
interview guidelines with empirical backgrounds. In ad-
dition, the group of day care abuse interviews contains sig-
nificantly more interviewing techniques that, according to
literature, should be regarded as more controversial, than
the group of “normal” abuse interviews. The evidential
value of these interviews is thus clearly diminished. These
results corroborate previous conclusions and descriptions
(Ceci & Bruck, 1995; Nathan & Snedecker, 1995; Warren
et al., 1995).
Outlook
How should these empirical results, particularly those of
the author’s study, be judged against the theoretical back-
ground? Even if one refers to conservative assessment and
evaluation methods, sexual abuse appears to be a serious
Swiss J Psychol 59 (3), 2000, © Verlag Hans Huber, Bern
social problem. The existence of one type of sexual abuse,
which often include satanic-ritual elements, is controver-
sial because, on the one hand, there is a multitude of reports
and testimonies concerning this phenomenon. On the other
hand there is a lack of objectifiable evidence. Although
there is a possibility of assessing the credibility of a child’s
statement, the quality of this assessment is dependent on
the quality of the statement and therefore the investigative
interview. The quality of the statement increases accord-
ing to the quality of the investigative interview, for which
various guidelines and manuals exist. In addition, the con-
sideration of the age and the developmental status of a
specific witness as well as knowledge of the risks of sug-
gestive interviewing are of fundamental importance. A few
quantitative and qualitative evaluations of actual inter-
viewer behavior already point to the lack of attention paid
to the essential principles mentioned above (e.g. Ceci &
Bruck, 1995; Warren et al., 1995). The author’s quantita-
tive comparison of interviewing techniques in a day care
abuse case with a sample of normal abuse cases shows that
controversial interviewing methods are used in both sam-
ples, although significantly more often in the day care
abuse interviews.
Considering the evaluations above, one potential hy-
pothesis for the origin of day care abuse cases is the mas-
sive suggestive interviewing of child witnesses. This does
not necessarily mean that all the accusations in day care
abuse cases result from suggestive interviewing. In many
cases these have either not been considered or been con-
sidered the logical alternative explanation too late. The
actual problem with suggestive interviewing techniques,
however, is the fact that afterwards it is impossible to re-
liably trace a testimony back to an incident that might ac-
tually have happened. Inadequate interviewing techniques
disguise the real facts. In such cases, a child who has ac-
tually been abused cannot be protected to a satisfactory
degree nor can an innocent defendant be definitely iden-
tified as innocent.
The empirical results concerning interviewer behavior
in sexual and day care abuse cases in particular will now
have to be replicated and refined by other samples and
comparison groups.
Furthermore, the following questions may be potential
starting points for future investigations:
– How homogeneous are interviews in the groups of day
care and normal abuse cases?
– Which techniques in particular are found in which in-
terview phases, and how do these have to be judged in
the phases concerned?
– How does a combination of these techniques have to
be judged?
With regard to the variety of interviewing mistakes, in-
 N. Schreiber: Interviewing techniques in sexual abuse cases
tensive training appears to be important for all persons in-
volved in interviews with child witnesses. According to
these results, video- and/or audiotaping interviews is rec-
ommended in order to discover and elucidate the mistakes
mentioned above. Interviewing witnesses repeatedly has
to be avoided as much as possible because every additional
interview endangers a testimony’s credibility (particular-
ly in that controversial way). With regard to the potential
consequences of an interview in sexual abuse cases, in-
tensive interviewer training, including supervision and
feedback, in order to transfer quality interviewing method-
ology to practice, will have to keep a central position in
the education of witness’ interviewers in the future.
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