Can a child’s forensic interview be wrong?

What a Forensic Interview Is, and Why It Decides the Case

In a child sex-crime case, one recorded conversation often becomes the entire prosecution.

A forensic interview is a recorded conversation between a child and a trained interviewer, usually at a child advocacy center, with police and prosecutors watching from another room. It is supposed to be a neutral, non-leading way to learn what, if anything, happened, without contaminating the child’s memory.

In practice, that recording frequently becomes the heart of the State’s case. There is often no other evidence, no DNA, no injury, no witness. If the interview was done well, it is fair evidence. If it was done badly, the entire prosecution is built on a contaminated foundation, and that is exactly what we investigate.

How a Forensic Interview Gets It Wrong

Children are uniquely suggestible. These are the ways an interview, or the events before it, can distort the truth.

Leading and Suggestive Questions

Open-ended questions (“Tell me what happened”) produce reliable answers. Leading questions (“He touched you there, didn’t he?”) plant the answer. Young children especially tend to agree with an adult authority figure, and once an idea is suggested, it can become part of their memory.

Repeated Interviews Before the Recording

By the time of the official recorded interview, a child has often already been questioned many times, by a parent, a teacher, a police officer, a CPS worker. Each of those conversations can reshape the account, and many were not recorded, so no one can see what was suggested. We document every prior interview we can identify.

Coaching and Adult Influence

In custody and divorce contexts, an adult with a motive can coach a child, sometimes deliberately, sometimes through repeated leading questions and emotional pressure. The child ends up reporting something they believe is true. This overlaps directly with the motive to fabricate.

Reinforcement and Reward

When an interviewer praises or reacts positively to certain answers (“Good job, you’re being so brave”) the child learns which answers please the adult and gives more of them. This subtle reinforcement can steer an entire interview.

Source Confusion

Young children can blend real events, things they overheard, things they saw on a screen, and things adults said into a single confident account, without any ability to separate what actually happened to them from what was suggested.

How We Challenge the Interview

We treat the recording as evidence to be tested, frame by frame.

A forensic-interview challenge is detailed, technical work. Our process:

• Obtain the complete recording and transcript, plus records of every prior interview by parents, police, CPS, and others.
• Analyze it against accepted protocols (such as the NICHD and similar structured-interview standards), counting leading questions, suggestive techniques, and reinforcement.
• Retain a child-suggestibility expert to explain to the jury, with the science, how the questioning could have shaped the account.
• Map the contamination timeline, every conversation the child had before the recording, and what could have been suggested in each.
• Move to limit or exclude a profoundly flawed interview, and prepare a cross-examination that walks the jury through each leading question.

Our goal is to show the jury that the account did not come purely from the child, but was shaped by how the child was questioned, and that an account shaped that way cannot be trusted to convict.

What This Looks Like in Real Cases

A few patterns we see again and again in Phoenix-area child cases.

• The custody case. An allegation surfaces during a bitter custody fight, after the child has spent weeks with one parent, and grows more detailed with each retelling.
• The chain of interviews. A child is questioned by a parent, then a school counselor, then an officer, all before the recorded interview, each one suggesting a little more.
• The leading interview. The recording itself is full of yes/no and “did he” questions, with praise for the “right” answers.
• The recantation. The child later says it did not happen, only for the State to argue the recantation, not the accusation, is the lie.

If Your Child Is Being Interviewed, or You Are Accused

Move quickly, the interview may already be scheduled or done.

• Do not talk to detectives or take a “confrontation call” without a lawyer, see suppressing unlawful evidence.
• Do not contact the child or the other parent about the allegation.
• Preserve the custody and communication record, filings, texts, and timelines that show context and motive.
• Call a sex-crime defense lawyer immediately, the sooner we are involved, the more of the interview process we can scrutinize.

The Other Defenses We Build Alongside This One

A winning sex-crime defense almost never relies on a single tactic. We layer these strategies together as part of our full Phoenix sex crimes defense. Explore each one: