Why Children Recant Abuse

Teresa: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, Why Children Recant Abuse, I speak with Dr. Zsófia Szojka, senior lecturer at the University of Greenwich. Few things are more understandable, or more frustrating, to multidisciplinary team members than moving forward with a case only to have the child recant.

And while prior research has looked at some factors around recantation, few studies have examined what children and youth themselves say about why they recanted. And as it turns out, they had a lot to say about the influences and pressures around recantation, about how they experience the stress of the period after disclosure, and about how perceptive they are when it comes to their entire family system.

How do we anticipate some [00:01:00] of the factors that can lead to recantation? How do we help caregivers process their own experience? And most of all, how do we support children in ways that alleviate their all-too-real worries and concerns? I know you’ll find this conversation as thought-provoking as I did.

Please take a listen.

Good morning, and welcome to One in Ten.

Zsofia: Good morning. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about this paper. I’m very excited to discuss it with you.

Teresa: So tell me how you came to study recantation in child sexual abuse cases.

Zsofia: So I was a postdoctoral researcher at the USC Child Interviewing Lab with Professor Lyon, and the USC Child Interviewing Lab has access to an extraordinary amount of data from real-life forensic interviews.

So we have over 1,400 transcripts from forensic interviews with children, which I think is a unique dataset. And on top of that, it [00:02:00] also operates as a CAC, so we actually have our own amazing forensic interviewing team who conduct interviews with children.

Our interest in recantation comes from the work of our interviewers. So they were seeing many children who were recanting their allegations, and there wasn’t much guidance available in terms of how to interview these children. So they were finding it quite challenging to come up with the right kinds of questions to ask, and they were exploring which questions might work better than others.

That is how we became interested in interviewing children who recant their allegations.

Teresa: We’re just as interested because I think it’s one of those things where if you’re in this field, you have experienced a child who made a very clear disclosure initially and then later recanted, and wondered what to do next.

So I think that our audience is going to be intrigued by this conversation today. So one of the things, just for those who may not know a lot about [00:03:00] recantation, what are some general reasons identified in the literature that a child might recant?

Zsofia: Let’s start by thinking about why recantation is important.

When a child recants, it complicates the legal response and the child protection response. And the reason for that is people often consider two possibilities, right? So either the original allegation was false and the recantation is true, in which case, you know, maybe the child has been pressured or influenced by parents or other people in the child’s life to make a false allegation.

The other possibility is the original allegation was true, and it’s the recantation that’s false. Again, maybe there was some pressure or influence that made the child take back what they previously said about having been abused. So why might a child take back what they said before?

You are right that there is some literature, although not much, [00:04:00] examining the different factors. For example, Lindsay Malloy’s research looking at case characteristics. So are there certain features of a case that make it more likely for a child to take back their allegations?

And they did find some general characteristics that they would include, for example, the perpetrator being a parent figure or, more generally, someone in the child’s family. It could also be the caregiver being unsupportive of the allegations. So for example, if the child’s mother or another caregiver doesn’t believe what the child has said or doesn’t want to support the child pursuing legal action, that can also be a factor that makes recantation more likely.

And then also potentially the child being of younger age, so more dependent, easier to influence by their family, that can also make recantation more likely. But all of the studies have looked at these more general characteristics of a case, and we were more interested in looking at what children themselves have said.

So trying to understand a little bit more specifically from the child’s [00:05:00] own perspective, what are these factors that would make them recant their allegations, and that was our focus.

Teresa: I think the most interesting thing about this study is that you wanted to know whether or not children would tell you why they recanted if they did, and then what they said about the reasons for that.

And I thought that that was really great and a little bit surprising that question hadn’t been studied to this point, when you think about how long people have been forensically interviewing children, but really, really interesting. So let’s talk about that for a second in terms of when you started looking, and we’re going to dive into the pressures and influences in a minute.

But just overall, what did you find in terms of children’s willingness to tell you the reasons that they recanted?

Zsofia: That is a great question, because what we have seen looking at these interviews is it seems like some interviewers prefer to keep these interviews very short once the child has recanted, and this might reflect the belief that [00:06:00] children don’t talk about these potential pressures and influences and aren’t willing to further discuss what might have motivated them to take back their allegations.

But that is not what we found. Almost 90% of the children in our sample discussed some pressures or influences that motivated them or potentially motivated them to recant their allegations. So they were forthcoming and willing to talk about these potential pressures and influences.

Teresa: I thought that was so interesting, and I would point out that sometimes you simply have to ask, and you will get an answer. So let’s talk then, and your paper sort of broke down in a very helpful way, I thought, influences versus pressures. So we’re going to start with the influences, and you really looked at two different types: suspect related and family related influences.

Let’s start with suspect related influences. First of all, when we’re talking about that, what are we talking about? And secondly, how common were they? What types of influences did you see? [00:07:00]

Zsofia: First, as you mentioned, it’s important to define this difference between influences and pressures so that we can then move on to the different types of influences, and this is something that we did early on in the coding process.

We distinguished what we called external influences, which refer to potential reasons for recantation that were emanating from the child’s feelings or relationships with others, which may be more indirect, from more direct pressures.

So these were statements or pressures demonstrating others’ disapproval of the allegations or others’ desire that the child recants these allegations. In other words, pressures are more direct, while influences can be indirect. So these are more from the child’s relationship towards others.

So suspect related influences are really important, because these are reasons why the child might recant that relate to their relationship with the suspect. It’s important to [00:08:00] note that the large majority of children in our sample were alleging to have been abused by somebody in their family, so these were intrafamilial cases.

In most cases, the suspect was a paternal figure, so either the stepfather or the child’s father. I just think that’s important to note, because when we talk about this relationship between the child and the perpetrator, this is someone that the child knows well and is part of the child’s family in most of these cases. We found that many children discussed influences related to the suspect, about 68%.

And the most common subthemes included the child’s positive feelings towards the perpetrator. So the child was saying that they miss the perpetrator, and they love the perpetrator. I brought some quotes because I think it is important to hear the children’s own words.

For example, Sydney, a 12-year-old whose name is a pseudonym, was asked about how they feel about their father, and Sydney said, “I just want to talk to my dad or send him cards or anything or things I draw, [00:09:00] send photos, and I love my dad, and I want my dad to know that I still care for him and that I still want him to live with us.”

And I think this is a really, really important quote because it shows that this relationship, this love doesn’t stop when the child has made the allegations or earlier when the child was abused by this person. We often think of these people as monsters, right? So it’s hard for us to think about, okay, the child loves this person, and their love remains, and that might make it very ambivalent how they feel about the allegation that they have made.

And to take it even further, a lot of these kids were worried about what is going to happen to the perpetrator now. So they were worried that having made the allegations, there might be some negative consequences for the perpetrator. So for example, they were worried that they might be taken to jail, and that bad things might happen to them in jail, or potentially it could impact their immigration status or lots of other things.

Again, this illustrates the role of love in the child’s feelings towards the allegations, the potential negative feelings they have.

Teresa: And this [00:10:00] was very common, which I think not just because of the population. I mean, the population you studied really lines up to the types of cases that exist, right?

I mean, there are some third-party cases, there are some stranger cases, but that’s very rare. It is usually a family member or someone known to the child very closely that they have a relationship with. So I think it’s both unsurprising, you know, this particular aspect of it and something that many of us who’ve worked with families have experienced a child saying, like being worried about the perpetrator, missing the perpetrator.

But I think also what it points to is the sense of responsibility children are carrying that is driving the recantation as well.

Zsofia: That’s right. And we did also talk about what we called internal influences, so the child’s own feelings about the allegations that they have made.

And we did see that a lot of children discussed the different negative feelings that they experienced, and one of those feelings was this feeling of [00:11:00] responsibility that you’re talking about here. And I think this can be really heartbreaking to note, that the child feels like the family separation that occurred, for example, that they were placed in foster care, or maybe their sibling lost their biological father or something like this, rather than feeling like this is the fault of the person who abused them, they might feel like this is their fault for having made the allegations.

This is a consequence of what they have done. And we have also seen in the transcripts that a lot of the children were not anticipating these consequences, so when they made the allegation, they weren’t necessarily thinking about what’s going to happen further down the line, that maybe the police are going to get involved, maybe someone’s going to go to jail, maybe their family is going to be broken up.

So all of this was potentially a surprise to them, a very unpleasant surprise. And again, it’s easy to understand how this could motivate some children to recant their allegations.

Teresa: This type of a child sexual abuse case is a bomb going off in the family. I mean, it literally changes overnight every single thing, right?

You may have somebody [00:12:00] removed from the home, whether that… I mean, hopefully it’s the alleged perpetrator and not the child, but all of that can happen, right? Maybe it changes the economic circumstances of the family. Maybe suddenly there are other people in the family who are mad at the child. I mean, it’s such a painfully disruptive event that I think that unfortunately, as you’re discussing, kids wind up sometimes feeling this tremendous sense of responsibility and regret about disclosing because of all the after effects of that.

And I think that’s something that, as professionals, we really have to take seriously and think about in terms of the support that families need from the earliest point so the children aren’t left with these feelings of, “I’m responsible for all that has happened

Zsofia: That’s right. And you mentioned these consequences for the family as well, right?

So we’ve talked about some of the pressures involved, suspect pressures, and some of the pressures involved the child’s own negative feelings. But they also did experience a lot of pressure [00:13:00] that was because of these negative consequences for other family members. So maybe the most obvious here are the negative consequences for the mother.

So a lot of the children were talking about their mother feeling sad or being sick or missing the perpetrator, and maybe we don’t even know how much children notice this. Maybe we don’t give them enough credit for how sensitive they are to other people in their family, and what you are saying in terms of how they take that responsibility upon themselves in terms of why that has happened.

And yes, that can be their mother, also their siblings sometimes. You were saying sometimes family members might be angry with them for what they have said. One specific case that we found in several transcripts that we think is really interesting is when the perpetrator is the child’s stepfather, but the biological father of the child’s siblings.

Teresa: Yes.

Zsofia: Um, and sometimes, and this is very sad, the child feels responsibility for separating their siblings from their biological father, and that’s something that they’ve talked about, their siblings missing their father, and them not being able to say [00:14:00] anything comforting to them about it and feeling responsible in that sense.

So there’s a great deal of pressure that can come from family members, especially in these intrafamilial cases.

Teresa: We’ll talk in a few minutes about the implications for child abuse professionals, but I think one of the things that strikes me as you’re talking about this is just how early on we need to think about how we talk to children about these things in a way that makes it clear that the responsibility for all that has ensued is not theirs.

You know, because I think that you can see that they’re worried about their siblings, worried about their mom, worried about the suspect. I mean, who *aren’t* they worried about? And I think that is a lot for a six-year-old or an eight-year-old or a nine-year-old to carry, given the fact that they did not ask to be abused, and this is entirely not their fault.

And I think just recognizing that these are ways that they think about that, and even things that people may be saying to them or that they’re noticing, [00:15:00] and how we intervene in shaping their thinking about that is going to be critically important for not just recantation, but just their ability to heal from what’s happened, too.

Zsofia: Yeah, this is an excellent point, and it does show that this goes much further than just how we interview them, and also in terms of what potential support available to them after what has happened. I think you made this really interesting point about what people have said about them versus how they interpret things around them- Yeah

for example. And again, I think when we interview them, we do think a lot about the potential for coaching, even coaching in terms of taking back the allegations. So when children recant, we do think, you know, did someone tell you to take it back? Did your mom tell you that they don’t believe you, or something like that.

But these are only the most explicit kinds of- That’s right … pressures or influences that we can imagine in this case, right? I think one really interesting thing that we can see from this study is that it can be a lot subtler than that.

Teresa: That’s right.

Zsofia: And yet, it can be a really big influence on children.

Yeah.

Teresa: I was thinking back to when I was a [00:16:00] CAC director at my second CAC, and I mean, that’s been a long time, so my memory is not perfect of 23 years ago or whatever. But one of the interesting things I do remember out of… We saw about 900 kids a year, okay? And I remember one case in which a child said, “My mom told me to say this.”

Okay, one out of so many, right? In your paper, and maybe this is a good pivot point to that, as you say, we think coaching is, “My mom told me to say this, so I said it.” But actually, in your findings, that seems quite rare. Can you talk about that?

Zsofia: Yes. Thank you for asking that because I did really want to talk about that element.

I think it’s really interesting. So we often think about coaching, right? And that’s really what comes to mind when we think about both false allegations and then also false recantations. But in this case, we’ve seen very little explicit coaching. So I think we had one child who talked about coaching by the perpetrator, and about 10% of the children [00:17:00] mentioned some kind of coaching by the mother, but that was really rare compared to those really common pressures that we’ve talked about.

And even when we talk about these more explicit pressures, it seems like it’s more a lack of support rather than direct coaching. So it’s not the mom saying, “Take that back,” you know, “You have to tell the people that it didn’t really happen,” or something like that. It seems to take the shape of more the mother repeatedly asking the child, “Is that true?

Is it true? Did it really happen?” We’ve seen several cases where mothers or other family members really kept on asking the child if that’s true or not. And I think I have this really great quote again from Nevaeh, who’s 12 years old, and she said, her mom said, “Kept on asking if I was lying, and I knew that she didn’t believe me.”

So the mom didn’t say she didn’t believe her, but she knew, and she was like, “Please tell me the truth.” I was like, “Mom, I’m telling you the truth.” And then later the same child says, “And that’s when I felt sorry, so I just said I’m sorry, like it was a lie.” Um, so what this says is there is potentially a strategy, we don’t know [00:18:00] how intentional this is on the mother’s side, right?

But where rather than saying, “I don’t believe you,” they make the child feel that they don’t believe the child by asking all the time, “Do you believe it or do you not believe it?” But essentially by asking the child again and again, “Is this true? Did it really happen?”

Teresa: The quotes in this, I’m so glad you included them, not just in our conversation today, but in the paper, and I would just encourage our listeners to go and read the paper, which we’ll link in the show notes, because some of these quotes are just heartbreaking.

They’re instructive, but they’re also heartbreaking about kids really trying to make choices That they’re trying to help their family in some way. You know, you can see that that’s the intent, right, in these recantations. They can see pain being experienced by their family, and they’re trying to intervene to head that off in some way.

And I think it just gives us real insight, not just to what kids are carrying, as we talked about before, but also to [00:19:00] the level of support that we need to be providing to caregivers and siblings in the family so that children can see that they’re not solely responsible for what happens to the family either.

Zsofia: Yes, I completely agree. And I agree as well that these are really upsetting quotes. And I think something that was especially interesting to me, or was really interesting for me when I was working on this, is when we think about child abuse, right, we think about the abuse being horrible, you know, what the child has experienced.

It’s an incredibly traumatic experience. But we don’t often think about, for some children, what happens afterwards can be even worse, and this can happen even if the investigators are being supportive. I think something that’s quite interesting here is very few of the children talked about pressures or influences that came from practitioners or professionals in the field, right?

So it’s not that the people who were interviewing them were unsupportive or insensitive or something like this. They really were trying the best in most of these cases. And even in these cases, the children are facing huge amounts of pressure, this really [00:20:00] heartbreaking situation that is happening to them.

So I think that was really interesting to see how much more upsetting this part of the process is than we often realize.

Teresa: Well, you’ve given us a lot to think about with that because I think that we sometimes forget the interview is a signal moment in a case, right? But it may not be the pivotal moment that children themselves are experiencing.

And so I think what you’re pointing out is the adult perspective and the professional perspective of what’s happening and what they’re thinking about is very different because the interview’s an hour, right? Maybe not even that. But then these children are going home to the other 23 hours in that day of whatever’s going to happen with how the family’s reacting, how their lives have been turned upside down, and all of those things, and then the day after that and the day after that.

And then therapy is an hour, and then 23 other hours in the day after that, after that, after that. And so just keeping in mind the relative balance between What we are doing to intervene and help [00:21:00] and all that children are experiencing in the context of their family environment, I think is just a central theme throughout your paper, and just was very thought-provoking for me as well.

Zsofia: Yeah. That, it raises some really interesting questions, as you were saying, in terms of how can we help these children feel supported and see the rest of their lives as something that can happen, regardless of what has happened here. And I think that’s a really, really, really difficult question because of so many consequences that are coming as they feel like as a result of the allegations.

Of course, I would say as a result of the abuse that they experienced. Yes. But that’s not always how they see them, and I think that’s really interesting. Yeah.

Teresa: I wanna talk about the suspect pressures for a moment, because I have to say that it was a little surprising to me that the percentage was so low.

Of course, some of that is that the child may be removed from any contact with the suspect, so the suspect’s not gonna have any opportunity immediately after disclosure to talk to them anyway. Mm-hmm. So maybe that’s, you know, [00:22:00] I’m just speculating here. It’s not a question that your paper answered, but it was one of the things that I was like, “Well, that’s just interesting.”

But I was also thinking, because we’ve had different people on the podcast talking about the sort of post-maintenance aspect of grooming, it may be that, and I wonder if it is that any pressure the suspect is applying is happening before the disclosure, right? “Don’t tell or you’ll be in trouble. Don’t tell because no one will believe you.”

That’s pre-disclosure, essentially, not necessarily if you’re looking at this post-disclosure. How do you think about that?

Zsofia: That’s right. This is a really interesting thing for us to look at in terms of when this pressure happens, right? So I think we conceptualize it a little bit more as pressure that occurs after the allegation.

But you’re right that some of this is already happening before the child has made the allegation. I also think this does relate to this wider distinction between influences and pressures, and why we found that influences were so much more [00:23:00] common than pressures. Mm. So children talked about these reasons that related to these relationships from their own perspective, but they talked a lot less about this direct kind of coaching, both by the perpetrator, as you were saying, but they’re also by the family members.

So we have a few different ways of interpreting why that might be the case, and one is, of course, that maybe the family members know that they shouldn’t be pressuring the child directly, because then if the child talks about that in the interview, then the recantation is not going to be believed, right?

And they do want the child to recant in this case, or the perpetrator potentially wants the child to recant in this case. So maybe they avoid these really explicit statements and instead use these kinds of doubts or potentially talk a lot about the negative consequences for themselves and make the child feel, um, this kind of responsibility for what occurred.

Another possibility is that when a child recants, they want the recantation to be believed. They want the investigation to be stopped. So some of these children might themselves realize that there are certain things they shouldn’t be saying, [00:24:00] so they can’t just go to the interview and say, “My dad told me to take it back.”

No one’s going to believe the recantation, right? So some of these children might actually be influencing what they themselves are going to say in order to be believed, right? So maybe they are willing to talk about these negative consequences or their difficult feelings about what happened, but maybe not necessarily those very explicit pressures or potential coaching that was going on.

So in some ways, they may be unreliable narrators, and we might not necessarily be seeing all of the different pressures that they are facing, only what they are willing to tell us about.

Teresa: It’s interesting because when forensic interviewers talk about recantation interviews, you know, where they’re going back in after there’s a recantation to talk to a child, they often do describe this as being some of the most difficult conversations they have, that they’re really challenged in formulating the questions and these kinds of things.

And I think the complexity that you’re describing, all of that, the dynamics of the family, the [00:25:00] dynamics of what the child is or isn’t saying, the dynamics with the suspect, all of that is getting wrapped up into the forensic interviewer trying to think about how to talk about this with a child. And you can just see why that is so challenging, just in looking at your findings here.

It’s a spiderweb, things that people need to be aware of and trying to respond to.

Zsofia: Yeah, I think part of the reason why it is so challenging is because it’s so subtle, right? Yes. So it’s not just necessarily asking. In fact, if you begin by directly asking- Yeah … did your mom tell you to take it back?

That’s unlikely to reveal these kinds of pressures that are- That’s right … going on here. So you need to think about what are some more general questions possibly that you can ask that can help reveal some contextual information about what’s going on here.

Teresa: Yeah, you know, how the family’s coping essentially may tell you more than asking the direct question about, “Did mom tell you to say blah, blah, blah?”

It’s interesting. I was interested in this family component because we do know how [00:26:00] important it is just overall to children’s healing for a nonoffending caregiver to believe them, and to have family, extended family, that are supportive as well. And it’s hard to know exactly what you’re seeing, because someone could be supportive but legitimately sad.

You know, sad that this terrible thing has happened, right? Or confused about what’s happened, or feel a sense of their own guilt. Like, “Why didn’t I know? How didn’t I know that this was happening to my child?” But the child’s lens on that could be, “They’re not supportive,” or, “They don’t believe me,” when maybe it isn’t actually as ambivalent.

And again, I’m curious about how you think about that, because on the one hand, we have the lens of the child, but it’s also an interpretive lens, and we don’t know whether they’re even correctly interpreting what they’re hearing and seeing from mom, extended family, whatever. Because I can imagine that in the aftermath of a disclosure, there would be many family members who love and support the child, but also are just like, [00:27:00] “What has happened?”

You know?

Zsofia: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And in fact, I think there’s research showing this, that mothers’ or caregivers’ interpretation of whether they were supportive or not doesn’t always align with the child’s- That’s right … experience of whether they were supported or not. And I think this is another reason why it’s so important to look at what the child says, so what they have experienced in this case.

It’s not enough to try to figure out by asking the caregiver whether they are supportive or not, because that might not be what the child’s experience is. Um, so I agree that’s, that’s a really interesting point as well.

Teresa: So was there anything in this paper that really surprised you in terms of the finding?

I told you what surprised me, but was there anything that, where you were like, “Wow, we were not expecting to find that”?

Zsofia: I think in some ways it did align with what we were looking at, but even for us, the stark difference between influences and pressures was surprising. Mm. Um, so we ourselves maybe have expected children to talk a little bit more about potential coaching or a little bit- I see

more explicit kind of, uh, pressuring that is going [00:28:00] on within their families. So we did find it really interesting that it was these more subtle influences that were coming in more and more. And actually, I would agree with you that the role of the suspect, and as I think I mentioned earlier, the fact that the child can love the suspect.

Of course they do. Yes. But for us, it can be difficult to see it that way, especially if we have seen the earlier interview and the child describes the allegations.

Teresa: That’s right.

Zsofia: Really horrific things have happened, and it’s difficult for us to see someone who did all of that to you, and now you’re saying, “I love them,” you know, “I want them to come home, I want to be with them, I want to send them drawings.”

And I think it’s just, that’s just something that we need to remind ourselves all the time. You know, this love, this family relationship doesn’t just stop You know, from the child’s- That’s right … perspective, they may feel very close to this person. For me, I think this was the most surprising and the most interesting element.

Yeah.

Teresa: Well, and I think there’s also, we should never forget the connection to the grooming that’s occurred too. There’s the legitimate closeness that family members feel, and then there are all the [00:29:00] manipulations that offenders do specifically to gain compliance on the part of the child that to children do feel like love because they’re gifts, special attention, special treatment, you know, all of these things.

And so I’m not diminishing the fact that kids love their parents or the parents love their kids and may have abused them in addition to anything else. But I also think we can’t forget this aspect of the deep manipulation that is a part of abuse, and that children can mistake some of that manipulation for love and get confused about that.

And that kind of gaslighting and other things are, I think, part of why treatment is so important. Because otherwise, they remain, I think, unsafe and unable to identify that if somebody’s giving you lots of gifts and lots of special attention and saying how wonderful you are every single minute and saying, “This is just something that only special people do with each other,” they can perceive that as love, when in fact, that is just the grooming.[00:30:00]

Zsofia: Yeah, this is an excellent point, and it makes me think of a conversation I had with Professor Lyon just the other day about this paper. So I was asking, how would this be different if this wasn’t an intrafamilial sample? Hmm. So in this sample, of course, all of the children were abused by someone that they knew, and most of the time it was someone in their family.

And I was wondering, you know, would we see different kinds of pressures and influences if it was extrafamilial abuse? Mm-hmm. Of course, it’s not as common as we think it is, but it does happen. And we were saying, yes, potentially there would be more support from the caregiver in some cases, because when the perpetrator is from the child’s family, the caregivers, you were saying as well, it’s an incredibly difficult situation.

This is their life partner, you know, someone that provides economic support, someone that they have a partnership with. So of course, it’s a very difficult situation, whereas if it’s someone who is external to the family, it might be different in that case. But what Professor Lyon was saying is that in terms of these influences from the perpetrator, it might be very similar because of grooming.

Exactly like you were saying, even though the [00:31:00] perpetrator in those cases is not a member of the child’s family, they make the child feel like they are a close person, someone that there exists this trust, this relationship between them. So in that case, maybe there’s more similarity between these intrafamilial and extrafamilial cases in terms of suspect influences than I thought before.

So I think that’s a really interesting angle maybe for future research.

Teresa: But, no, I do think this, because if you think about institutional abuse cases that have involved clergy or Boy Scout leaders or, I mean, I could go down a long list, coaches, for example, that’s another. Teachers, counselors. You get the same dynamic, right?

Yeah. Where they feel this intense closeness, and they are spending constant time together and these kinds of things. So yes, I hope that you all will take a look at that at some point, ’cause I think that it would be interesting to see if you turn up something very similar to the kind of results that you’re seeing here.

I also wanted to ask you about remembering that the [00:32:00] total subject pool you were looking at were kids who had recanted, okay? So they had all 100% recanted. I was a little surprised by the fact that you had 13% that said they didn’t disclose any influence or pressure. Mm. Is that because you think they just didn’t experience any, or do you think that they experienced it, but they weren’t willing to talk about it, or something else?

Like, how do you think about that 13%?

Zsofia: Yeah, that’s an excellent question, and I think it does relate back to this point about how subtle this might be and how aware children are that they are potentially being influenced or pressured to make these statements, for example. You know, the sample was too small to really see any age effects.

You had only 53 children altogether. But as an example, let’s think of a very young child, for example. Maybe they have been pressured, but they don’t recognize that they have been pressured- Yes … and so that’s why they don’t talk about it. And now let’s think of a teenager, right? Someone who’s quite aware of what’s going on.

Maybe they have been pressured, but they’re not willing to talk about it because they came in here [00:33:00] saying, “I want this legal case to end.” So they are not going to be talking about those pressures because they would be worried how that would influence the case. It would be less likely that all this legal stuff ends if they say, “Well, someone is pressuring me.”

So those are all possibilities, and of course, it’s also possible that there were no pressures in this case. So we really don’t know because when children don’t disclose it, we don’t know what is happening in that case. So that-

Teresa: So interesting …

Zsofia: lots of different options there. Yeah.

Teresa: So when you think about this paper and any other research that you’ve done similarly, or reading these tremendous transcripts and the quotes from the kids, what do you think the chief implications are for child abuse professionals who are working with kids who have recanted

Zsofia: Yeah, this is, I think, really important to think about.

So generally, when there’s a recantation, it raises questions about the original allegation, right? So it becomes really, really important to find out more contextual information, both about how the recantation happened and how the original allegation happened. [00:34:00] So essentially, what our findings show is that it’s worth asking children about this.

It’s worth talking to children about the original allegation and about the recantation, even if they have since recanted their allegations. Because again, what we’re seeing in these transcripts is maybe some interviewers don’t feel comfortable discussing this with the children because they feel like the child won’t be forthcoming.

But what we can see is that the child can be a really valuable source of information. They are able and often willing to describe a lot of different information about the family context, about what happened since the allegation, about their feelings for the perpetrator, about how they feel about what happened to their family, and so on.

So essentially, it’s worth talking to children who recant, and it’s worth trying to find out what happened. So it gives interviewers some insight into how to question a child who is recanting. So maybe it’s less useful to just keep asking, “Was that true? Why did you say that?” And instead, as you were saying as well, maybe it’s more useful to ask about what had happened in the child’s life since the [00:35:00] original allegation, or maybe how the child feels about different members of family or the perpetrator.

I think it’s really important to note that just because there are pressures and influences in this interview, that doesn’t prove that the recantation is false, right? If the child has made a false allegation, they would still be facing lots of pressures and influences. So this is not proof of anything, but it can help explain why children may recant a true allegation as well.

So it can be really important to gather that kind of information, because if a child who recanted describes substantial pressures to recant, then the investigators can look more closely at that context and also at the original allegation to try to understand what happened in that case.

Teresa: It seemed to me that one of the things that people sometimes are reluctant to ask kids about, but will be central based on this research, is about their feelings, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, just the family context itself is very important, but if you’re not asking kids about how they [00:36:00] feel about the suspect, about their family, about their siblings, about their mom, you’re never gonna get to some of these influences, which basically boil down to, “I feel guilty because my father had to be removed from the house,” or, “I feel bad for my siblings because they’re missing him, and that’s why I said that this isn’t true.”

It’s like we’re sometimes just a little bit uncomfortable ’cause I think that we see that as, like, clinical work, right? The therapist asks those questions, not the forensic interviewers. And it’s, so it’s a reminder that in a recantation interview, you’re gonna have to just deviate a little from maybe the standard operating procedure to thinking about how you get into both the contextual questions around what’s going on in the family right now and any pressures or influences kids are experiencing, but also how they’re feeling about what they’re experiencing as well.

Zsofia: That’s right. I would say the child’s feelings are important in all cases, but as you were saying, in these recantation interviews especially. And in [00:37:00] these cases, we have seen that sometimes it was when the child was talking about their feelings that has shown best how immense these pressures are.

As you mentioned, the children were talking about guilt, but they were also talking a lot about how sad they feel. Right. They were talking about specific mental health problems like depression and anxiety. Several children were discussing self-harm or suicidal thoughts that they have experienced since they made the allegation.

All of this is really important to show the context and how they have felt since and the potential pressures that they are facing to recant.

Teresa: You know, as you were talking just there, I was thinking also, I would love to see the correlation between all these cases in which kids are recanting and how many of those are actually receiving mental health treatment.

Mm-hmm. And how many of them are sitting on a waiting list someplace, or maybe they received a referral but didn’t go, because it just feels like they’re so unsupported. At the point that you’re feeling all this anxiety, depression, [00:38:00] suicidal ideation, you know, all the things that you’re describing, you know, in my mind, I’m just going, “Where’s the support?”

Zsofia: Yeah, and I think you’re right that there’s several reasons why we want to find out about this, right? So because my research focuses more on this element. Mm-hmm. I talk more about the case, right, the child protection response, and then the potential legal response. But you’re right as well. We need to know about this so that we can provide the support that the child needs, and we will only understand what their support needs are if we ask them about their feelings and what they have experienced since the allegation.

So this is also really important, as you were saying, maybe a more clinical angle.

Teresa: So I’m just wondering, where is your research on this taking you next? It sounds like you’ve had access to a wonderful repository of information. Are you following this up in any way?

Zsofia: Yeah, this is a great question. So in this first one, we were more interested in more generally, do children describe these influences and pressures?

Because a lot of this was quite new as well, right? Yeah. We didn’t know how forthcoming they would be, and we saw that they are describing these [00:39:00] pressures and influences. So the next thing we want to find out is, well, what can we ask then that makes it more likely that they talk about these pressures and influences?

What are the kinds of questions that most likely reveal this kind of important contextual information? So I kind of started out by saying there’s not a lot of guidance out there in terms of how to interview children who recant, and you were saying as well a lot of people find it quite challenging. So we want to be able to think about these first steps in terms of advice that we can give people.

You know, these are the kinds of questions that you can ask that potentially will lead children to discuss the context of the allegation and the potential reasons why they recanted, for example. So for instance, one kind of obvious hypothesis might be is that questions about the child’s caregiver might lead the child to talk about potential pressures and influences by the caregiver, and we’re talking about really open questions here, right?

So just more generally asking the child about how their mom has been since the allegations or something like that, rather than something very specific necessarily. And then [00:40:00] similarly about the perpetrator and the child’s feelings towards the perpetrator. Again, maybe those reveal these kinds of pressures that can be involved in the child’s decision to recant.

And then more broadly, asking the child about what happened in their life and in their family since the allegations, and how they feel about the allegations, as we’ve mentioned already, that might be a really useful way to try to find out more about the potential motivations behind these recantations.

So these are the kinds of questions that we’re hoping to address in our follow-up study. So we’re trying to look at the kinds of questions these children were asked, and which questions were more likely to reveal this kind of important information. So we are now in the process of doing some preliminary research on this with two fantastic USC honors students, and then we’re going to try to look at the data that they collected and try to see if we see some clear patterns about the kinds of questions that are most useful.

Teresa: Well, I love to hear that you’re following this up, and do come back when that paper is published and clue us [00:41:00] all in, because I know that this audience will be excited to hear more about that. I’m wondering, you know, as you can tell, this conversation animates me, and that I really think this was an important study, and I appreciate that, your work on this.

Is there anything else that I should have asked you and didn’t, or anything else that you wanted to make sure that we talked about today?

Zsofia: I think we did cover a lot of the points that I wanted to make, so thank you so much for the opportunity. If there’s anything I can say, it’s just that there’s still a lot of open questions in this area.

So if you or anyone who’s listening have experiences of some successful or maybe not so successful ways of interviewing children who have recanted their allegations, I would love to hear about that, because it is through experiences of practitioners and through these interviews that we learn more about what works and what doesn’t work.

So hopefully we can share my email address, and please feel free to contact me about anything interesting that you’ve experienced in relation to this.

Teresa: Well, be careful, ’cause our listeners actually do follow up, so you’re probably gonna get, [00:42:00] you’re probably gonna get a lot of forensic interviewers reaching out, so that’s wonderful.

Thank you. Yes, we’d be happy to share your email address in our show notes as well so that folks can reach out to you about that. I think this is just really critical work, not only so that those who are involved in cases can do their jobs as well as humanly possible, but most importantly, so that we can support kids and make sure that they’re getting what they need throughout the process and feeling as supported as they possibly can throughout what is arduous, both as a part of an investigative process, but more importantly, in terms of their normal daily lives.

So thank you for doing this work, and come back any time.

Zsofia: Thank you.

Teresa: Thanks for joining us on One in Ten. Today, we hope you’ll help us spread the word about the podcast. If you’re a fan of the show, please rate us in the app wherever you listen or like the episode on YouTube, and please share the episode with a friend or on social. For more information on this or any of our other podcast episodes, [00:43:00] please visit our podcast website at oneinentenpodcast.org.