Lawyers' experience questioning children in Canadian court.

Autor: Bruer KC; Department of Psychology, Luther College at the University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2, Canada. Electronic address: kaila.bruer@uregina.ca., Williams S; Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, McGill University, Room 614, Education Building, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2, Canada. Electronic address: shanna.williams@mcgill.ca., Evans AD; Department of Psychology, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada. Electronic address: aevans@brocku.ca.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Child abuse & neglect [Child Abuse Negl] 2022 Dec; Vol. 134, pp. 105930. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Oct 24.
DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105930
Abstrakt: Background: International research has explored lawyer-child interactions in court; however, little focus has been spent examining other aspects of lawyers' interactions with children (e.g., interview preparation; building rapport).
Objective: The present study investigated lawyer's self-reported interactions with child witnesses.
Participants and Setting: Participants included 96 lawyers (M age  = 40.34, SD = 11.07; 52 % female) practicing in Canada with experience questioning child witnesses (under 18 years old).
Methods: A survey was used to gather self-reported data on how lawyers prepare for, question, and respond to children as witnesses in court. We then explored whether these strategies differed depending on the role of the Canadian lawyer (i.e., prosecution or defence), experience, or gender.
Results: Results indicate that lawyers report and demonstrate knowledge consistent with current best practices in questioning children. While gender and experience did not appear to play a strong role in lawyer-child interactions, prosecutors reported behavior more consistent with best practices compared to defence lawyers.
Conclusions: These findings provide important insight into strengths and weaknesses of lawyer-child interactions in court as well as highlight a strong need for future research to examine the link between self-reported behavior (i.e., perceived behavior) with observable behavior (i.e., actual behavior) in lawyer-child interactions.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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