During the past several decades, a highly influential body of research has emerged concerning children’s memory, suggestibility, and disclosures of abuse. Results have led to best-practice protocols now used by by trained forensic interviewers across the globe in order to elicit the most complete and accurate accounts possible from child victims. In contrast, surprisingly little research has focused on best practice approaches to questioning adolescent victims, even though these older youth represent a large proportion of victims who have suffered a range of abuse experiences and been questioned by law enforcement and legal authorities. The lack of research is especially striking considering that characteristics of trafficking victims, combined with their encounters with the authorities as suspects of crime, can make them especially difficult to interview and uniquely resistant to disclosing their victimization. We carried out this multi-study project to comprehensively document for the first time the precise ways that adolescent victims of trafficking are questioned by law enforcement and legal professionals. We evaluated whether law enforcement and legal professionals use strategies considered best practices with child victims, such as rapport building and support, and what types of responses trafficked adolescents provided in response to best-practice but also other questioning approaches. We also examined how criminal cases unfold when they involve charges of trafficking of a minor, and compared this to how criminal cases unfold when they involve charges of sexual abuse with victims of similar ages. The comparisons enabled us to identify unique but also overlapping features of both types of cases involving adolescents. Our results are incredibly important in laying the foundation for developing recommendations regarding how best to question adolescent victims, collect evidence for criminal cases, and how to modify both of these to accommodate the needs of adolescent victims of trafficking.  

Our findings reveal numerous important trends regarding how criminal cases unfold, how victims are questioned, and how victims respond. First, trafficked adolescents are described in far more negative ways in criminal trials than are sexually abused adolescents, with the former being referred to as delinquent or troubled youth, prostitutes, or problematic teens. Trafficked adolescents’ negative history is mentioned more frequently, even when cases result in guilty verdicts, as is their potential uncooperativeness with authorities. What is not mentioned, though, are reasons why trafficked adolescents might behave in these ways, which include their history of maltreatment and other adversities, repeated negative encounters with social services and law enforcement that has led to high levels of mistrust, and their potential reliance on a trafficker for basic needs. Law enforcement, especially local police, tend to ask high numbers of closed-ended and potentially leading questions when interviewing trafficking victims, with minimal levels of support provided once the victims respond. Interviewers with prior training in child forensic interviewing tend to use a greater amount of rapport building and slightly more open-ended questions, although even these interviewers fall back on closed-ended questions somewhat frequently. Adolescent victims, as might be expected, often respond in evasive, reluctant, and even sassy ways, especially to local police, and at times provide minimal useful information regardless of what type of questioning tactic is employed. The way in which rapport is built with trafficked adolescents appears to be crucial for establishing a positive relationship and eliciting clear and complete disclosures. Law enforcement needs to be better trained on rapport, but also on hallmark characteristics of trafficked adolescents that make them reluctant, so that law enforcement understand why adolescent victims might behave the way they do and how best to respond to that behavior.

Last Modified: 07/09/2024
Modified by: Jodi A Quas