Forensic Interviews in Georgia Child Cases

In a Georgia child molestation or aggravated child molestation prosecution, the forensic interview — usually conducted at a child advocacy center by a trained interviewer — is the central early-evidence document in the State's file. It is also a document governed by published protocols, peer-reviewed research, and decades of empirical work on suggestibility, contamination, and the limits of children's memory.

I · BackgroundWhy the protocols exist

The forensic interview was developed in response to the well-documented failures of the early 1980s — investigations in which adults asked children leading questions, rewarded particular answers, and produced disclosures that later evidence demonstrated to be unreliable. The published protocols that govern the modern interview — most prominently RATAC (Rapport, Anatomy identification, Touch inquiry, Abuse scenario, Closure) developed at CornerHouse, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol — are products of that history.

The shared premise is that children are competent reporters when interviewed within a structure that minimizes suggestion and that the structure itself, not the interviewer's intuition, produces reliable disclosures.

II · What the Protocols RequireStructure and discipline

• Open-ended questions before any specific questions, working from the most general ("tell me everything that happened") to the more focused, never the other direction.
• Avoidance of leading and suggestive prompts. The interviewer does not supply names of body parts, identify alleged perpetrators, or introduce specific acts the child has not described.
• A single interview where possible, full audiovisual recording for review, and limited introduction of facts the interviewer learned from third parties.
• A documented rapport phase and a documented practice interview on a neutral topic, used to establish the child's baseline narrative ability and to model open-ended responses.
• A closure phase that brings the child out of the substantive questions in a manner that is age-appropriate and non- coercive.

III · Where Interviews Go WrongThe contamination spectrum

Interviews that do not produce reliable disclosures rarely fail in dramatic ways. They fail incrementally, in patterns the literature has catalogued for thirty years:

• Leading questions that import facts the child has not mentioned.
• Repeated yes-or-no prompts where an initial denial is followed by repeated requests for confirmation.
• Selective praise — verbal affirmation when the child supplies a particular kind of answer, silence when the child supplies another.
• Reliance on prior conversations the child had with adults untrained in interview methodology: parents, teachers, extended family. The disclosures introduced into those prior conversations are imported into the forensic interview whether the protocol acknowledges them or not.
• Suggestive use of anatomical drawings or dolls, particularly where they are introduced before the child has independently identified body parts.

Each of these is documented in the academic literature (Ceci & Bruck, Poole & Lamb, La Rooy and others) and each is litigable.

IV · Defense WorkReviewing the recording, reconstructing the timeline

Substantive defense work in a child case typically includes:

• A detailed review of the audiovisual recording against the applicable protocol, often with the assistance of a defense expert qualified in forensic interview methodology.
• Reconstruction of the disclosure timeline — who the child first spoke to, what was said, what was repeated, what was shaped by the responses of the listening adult.
• Review of any prior interviews, school counselor notes, DFCS reports, and medical records for inconsistencies with the forensic interview account.
• Identification of third-party motivations — custody litigation, family conflict, and other contexts in which a disclosure was elicited.
• Preparation of cross-examination of the interviewer that isolates protocol deviations without confrontation of the child.

V · The Child Hearsay StatuteO.C.G.A. § 24-8-820

Georgia's child hearsay statute, O.C.G.A. § 24-8-820, permits the introduction of statements made by a child describing sexual contact under defined conditions, including a finding of sufficient indicia of reliability. The reliability inquiry maps directly onto the methodology of the interview that produced the statement. A motion in limine on reliability is often a threshold issue.

VI · Trial PostureRestraint with the child witness

Aggressive cross-examination of a child witness is almost always a strategic error. The work is done — and the doubt is created — at the interview level, with the interviewer, with the expert, and through the documented record of the disclosure timeline. The child's testimony at trial, when it comes, is approached carefully and with measured purpose.

The reliability of a child's account is not a question for argument. It is a question for the record. The record is built long before opening statement.

Related reading: Child Molestation Defense, Sex Crimes Defense, and Defending Rape Accusations in Georgia.

This article is general information and not legal advice. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.