the child’s alleged experiences. For example, sexual
offenses are emotionally disturbing and likely to upset
victims. One could, therefore, usually expect a clear
display of emotions from a truthful victim when being
interviewed. Absence of these emotions may indicate
that the story has been fabricated.
A second issue mentioned in the Validity Checklist
is appropriateness of language and knowledge.This
issue refers to whether the child’s use of language and
display of knowledge was beyond the normal capacity
of a person of his or her age and beyond the scope of
what the child may have learned from the incident.
When this occurs, it may indicate the influence of
other people in preparing the statement. For example,
to obtain custody, a woman may encourage her child
to falsely accuse her ex-husband of having had an
abusive relationship with the child. In an attempt to
make a convincing case, the woman may have pre-
pared the statement together with the child and may
have coached the child in what to say.
A third issue on the Validity Checklist is examining
whether the child demonstrates any susceptibility to
suggestionduring the interview. Statements of sug-
gestible children could be problematic to interpret
because suggestible children may be inclined to pro-
vide information that confirms the interviewer’s
expectations but is, in fact, inaccurate.Research and Evaluation
Despite the fact that SVA assessments are used as evi-
dence in court in several countries, it is unclear how
accurate these assessments are because no reliable data
regarding the accuracy of SVA assessments in real-life
cases are currently available. To examine the accuracy
of SVA assessments in such cases, it is necessary to
know what truly happened in the disputed event.
Obtaining this so-called ground truth is difficult because
it can only be determined via case facts, such as medical
evidence or other evidence, which indisputably links, or
does not link, the alleged perpetrator to the crime. Such
case facts are often not present in sexual abuse cases.
Research has been carried out in the form of labo-
ratory studies, but it has mainly been focused on the
third phase of SVA: the accuracy of CBCA assess-
ments. In those studies, either children, but more often
undergraduate students, told the truth or lied for the
sake of the experiment. Such studies showed similar
results for adults and children. In alignment with the
CBCA assumption, many CBCA criteria were moreoften present in truthful statements than in fabricated
reports. Overall, 73% of the truths and 72% of the lies
were correctly classified by using CBCA assessments.
Whether this reflects the accuracy of CBCA assess-
ments in real-life criminal investigations is unknown.
Students or children who tell lies and truths in an
experiment are different from children who tell truths
and lies in criminal investigations, and the accuracy
scores therefore do not necessarily reflect the accu-
racy scores in criminal investigations.
There are reasons to believe that applying the
Validity Checklist is sometimes problematic. It is pos-
sible to question the justification of some of the issues
listed on the Validity Checklist, for example, whether
the child displayed an absence of affect or inappropri-
ate affect during the interview. This issue implies that
the notion of appropriate affect displayed by victims
of sexual abuse exists, whereas it does not. That is, in
interviews, some sexually abused victims express dis-
tress that is clearly visible to outsiders, whereas others
appear numbed and cues of distress are not clearly
visible. The communication styles represent a person-
ality factor and are not related to deceit.
Some other issues, such as susceptibility to sugges-
tion, are difficult to measure. To examine a child’s sus-
ceptibility to suggestion, the interviewer is recommended
to ask the witness a few leading questions at the end of the
interview. Interviewers should only ask questions about
irrelevant peripheral information, because asking ques-
tions about central information could damage the quality
of the statement. Being allowed only to ask questions
about peripheral information is problematic, as it may say
little about the witness’s suggestibility regarding core
issues of his or her statement. Children show more resis-
tance to suggestibility for central parts than for peripheral
parts of an event.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the
exact impact that many issues have on CBCA scores.
For example, in one study, SVA raters were instructed
to take the age of the child into account when calcu-
lating CBCA scores. Nevertheless, several criteria
positively correlated with age. In other words, even
after being instructed to correct the CBCA scores for
age, the results still showed age-related effects, with
older children obtaining higher CBCA scores than
younger children.
Given these difficulties in measuring the issues and
in examining the exact impact of these issues on CBCA
scores, it is clear that the Validity Checklist procedure
is more subjective and less formalized than the CBCAStatement Validity Assessment (SVA)——— 759S-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:44 PM Page 759