Grant: Operating Grant

Child sexual abuse is prevalent in the general population and can lead to serious health outcomes. Research on the capacity of children to recall events experienced has shown convincingly that they can provide accurate accounts of these events. However, the testimony of children tends to be incomplete and fragmentary. Children omit to report key information about touches on their body, the perpetrator and the location where the abuse occurred. In addition, these children are also more likely to have some delays in cognitive and language abilities that may impact their testimony. The proposed research concerns the evaluation of child capacity to recall touches on their body, persons and location after an ano-genital medical examination. Participants will include children with a wide range of cognitive functioning, the latter in terms of intelligence, memory, and verbal skills. Anxiety and pain experienced during the medical examination and its impact on children's memory will also be assessed. A total of 135 sexually abused children from 6 to 12 years old will be recruited. These children will be interviewed according to a structured protocol used in investigative interviews, one week after their medical examination. In addition, use of the interview protocol alone will be compared against two other retrieval strategies: interview protocol plus drawing and interview protocol plus mental context reinstatement. Results will help better understand children's memory and their capacity to recall physical touches in a context similar to the one for current investigative interviews. Results will also help medical staff better prepare children and parents for the medical exam so as to reduce its potential negative impact.