Lamb Michael E, Sternberg Kathleen J, Orbach Yael, Hershkowitz Irit, Horowitz Dvora
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 2003 Sep;27(9):1019-31. doi: 10.1016/s0145-2134(03)00167-4.
To determine whether child witnesses of sexual abuse were more or less informative about the alleged incidents than alleged victims when interviewed similarly.
Twenty-six alleged victims of child sexual abuse (aged 5 to 14 years; M=9.8 years) and 26 children who had witnessed but not experienced similar events were interviewed by experienced youth investigators about the alleged abuse. Children in the two groups were matched with respect to their age, relationships with the alleged perpetrator, and seriousness of the alleged offenses. All children were interviewed using the NICHD investigative interview protocol.
Witnesses and victims provided similar amounts of information about the incidents of abuse. Interviewers used more open-ended invitations and elicited more information using open-ended prompts from witnesses than from victims, whereas they used more risky (including suggestive) prompts when interviewing victims.
These results confirm that young children can be informative witnesses about events that they have either experienced or witnessed.
确定在接受类似询问时，性虐待儿童证人对于所指控事件的信息提供比被指控受害者是更多还是更少。
26名被指控遭受儿童性虐待的受害者（年龄5至14岁；平均年龄9.8岁）以及26名目睹但未经历类似事件的儿童，由经验丰富的青少年调查员就所指控的虐待行为进行询问。两组儿童在年龄、与被指控犯罪者的关系以及所指控罪行的严重程度方面进行了匹配。所有儿童均采用美国国立儿童健康与人类发展研究所（NICHD）的调查询问方案进行询问。
证人和受害者就虐待事件提供了相似数量的信息。与受害者相比，调查员对证人使用了更多开放式询问，并通过开放式提示从证人那里获取了更多信息，而在询问受害者时则使用了更多有风险的（包括暗示性的）提示。
这些结果证实，幼儿对于他们经历或目睹的事件可以成为提供信息的证人。
