ANN ARBOR—Despite the importance given to courtroom statements made by victims in cases of child sexual abuse, a child’s testimony is not necessarily the key to convicting child molesters, say researchers at the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.

Rather, effective cooperation between police, prosecutors and professionals in child protective services (CPS) can help reduce further trauma to children and increase the number of criminal convictions—largely through higher confession and plea rates.

“Decisions about sexual abuse usually come down to a child’s word against an adult’s,” says Kathleen C. Faller, U-M professor of social work. “Often, sexually abused children are at a disadvantage because they lack adult communication skills, don’t know what to do when they are sexually abused, and are under the power and control of the offender.

“Our research suggests attention should be focused elsewhere, on the professionals and system coordination. Adults can and should bear primary responsibility for obtaining successful outcomes in child sexual abuse cases, not child witnesses.”

In a new study to be published in Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal, Faller and James Henry, WMU assistant professor of social work, found that defendants in 64 percent of cases where they were accused of child sex offenses confessed to their crimes and in 70 percent of cases entered into a plea bargaining agreement—thanks mostly to successful intervention by law enforcement officials and CPS.

Less than 5 percent of the cases studied actually went to trial, sparing a large number of children from rehashing details of the traumatic incident in open court.

The researchers used data from 323 cases of alleged sex crimes against children in St. Joseph County in southwestern Michigan from 1988 to 1998. Specific information gathered—with the help of St. Joseph County Prosecutor Jeffrey Middleton—included child and suspect demographic data, involvement of police and CPS, child disclosure patterns and caretaker responses, offender confessions, offender pleas, trial and child testimony information, and sentences received by offenders.

According to the study, in nearly all (96 percent) of the confessed cases (206 out of 323), offenders either completely or partially corroborated the statements given to investigators by victims.

A little more than a third of the alleged offenders took a polygraph and about 63 percent of them failed the test, Faller and Henry say. Lie-detector tests were not given to the remaining majority of suspects because they admitted to at least some of what their victims had described.

Overall, charges were brought against 69 percent of the defendants in child sexual abuse cases referred to the prosecutor’s office by police or CPS, the study shows. About three-fourths of all suspects received some sort of punishment, with about 90 percent of those found guilty sentenced to jail or prison.

The researchers say that child protective services (CPS) was active in 57 percent of all cases. Specifically, CPS was involved in about 87 percent of the cases in which alleged offenders lived with the child and in roughly 42 percent of cases where they did not.

Nearly three-fourths of the cases included videotaped interviews of the victims, although an interview was more likely to occur if CPS was involved (85 percent of the time vs. 57 percent with law enforcement, but no CPS involvement), Faller and Henry say.

Most children (81 percent) initially reported their abuse to someone they knew (parent, caretaker, other relative, etc.) before telling police or CPS, they say. The disclosures of 54 percent of the children in the entire sample were intentional, 28 percent were unintentional, and 2 percent involved both intentional and unintentional elements.

“Although children and families in the criminal justice system may not be representative of all sexual abuse cases, these cases show that children confide their sexual abuse in trusted adults, are believed and supported by their caretakers, and can prevail in the criminal justice system,” Faller says. “However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, these children did not prevail by providing testimony in criminal trials.

“The victims’ success in these cases derives almost entirely from effective intervention by professionals with offenders so that they confess and plead to their crimes.”

Kathleen C. FallerChild Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal