Characteristics of statements of children who do not tell secrets: Focusing on Criteria Based Contents Analysis(CBCA)

Abstract

Reportedly, child victims of abuse often do not disclose some or any parts of the criminal behaviors they experience. The purpose of this study was to confirm the characteries of children’s statements when they attempt to keep secretes by re-analyzing data from an earlier experimental study(Yi, 2014). In that study, 71 children aged 3- to 6-year-olds were invited a photography event where a photographer took photos of the children while having a range of interactions with them, including putting on and removing costumes, asking them to assume certain poses, and forth. The photographer allowed each child to take a photo of the photographer, then asked the child to keep this a secret with promise of gifts if the child did not tell anyone. The results showed that, of 71 children, 35(49.3%) disclosed the secrets while 36(50.7%) keep the photographer’s confidence. Children who did not disclose the secrets provided significant smaller amounts of information about the incident. They were also more likely to give no response than children did disclose the secrets but the details provided by the secrets keepers were not necessarily inaccurate. CBCA was able to distinguish the statements of children who did disclose the secretes from those who did not. Children who disclosed the secretes had higher total mean CBCA scores. Moreover, the statements of disclosers more frequently included the features of criterion2, 3, 6 and 9. Finally, the implications of these finding for the investigative interviewing of children who did not disclose alleged incidents in forensic contexts are discussed.