People rely on their memories to provide details of events that happen in their lives. But it can often be hard to retrieve the details when feeling anxious, stressed, and overwhelmed by emotions.
Researchers at Griffith University are focused on helping victims of traumatic crimes to better remember and report their experiences. Their recent focus is on achieving justice for adult survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
The Centre for Investigative Interviewing has received a boost to pursue this important work thanks to a major philanthropic donation in memory of Dr Nina Westera, a police officer and then researcher who devoted her career to ensuring victims voices could be heard with clarity and integrity.
Dr Westera’s work highlighted adults who reported sexual assault and domestic violence were sometimes vulnerable to misunderstanding and miscommunication, and thus great care was needed to ensure the interview process helped them do their best.
Director of the Centre, Professor Martine Powell from Griffith Criminology Institute, acknowledged there were several challenges that needed to be addressed when interviewing victims about stressful or traumatic events.
“Historically the focus was on children and people with a cognitive impairment being classed as vulnerable. But there are often compounded problems affecting adults’ memory and willingness to report too,” she said.
“Interview frameworks used by police around the world are not always specifically designed with the unique needs of these victims in mind.
“A domestic violence victim may be worried about the consequences of reporting, for example, or they might be confused about some of the specific details due to having experienced similar prior attacks by the same perpetrator. What this funding enables us to do is follow through on Westera’s vision to develop specialised interview procedures for these witness groups.”
Understanding these issues and knowing how to address them in interviews would be a key area of focus for researchers as they built on Westera’s initial stream of work.
“To successfully prosecute a specific act of violence, it’s important that the victim is able to recall details of the incident to support the legal process,” Professor Powell said.
“However, we know that people who experience repeated acts of violence tend to recall generic details about what typically occurred with relative ease, but have difficulty recalling specifics of an individual incident.”
Dr Sonja Brubacher (Adjunct Senior Research Fellow) together with Professor Powell, would embark on several research projects related to supporting victims of personal crimes.
Dr Brubacher noted research had already uncovered a variety of verbal and nonverbal behaviours interviewers could use to build rapport and make interviewees feel more comfortable in interviews, but recommendations to use these techniques were broad, and interviewers often struggled to know when and how to put them into practice.
“When talking to the police, it’s critical that victims feel listened to, and as comfortable as they can be, so that they can access their memories and give their best evidence,” Dr Brubacher said.
“Improving just outcomes for adult sexual assault complainants may require more simplified and streamlined police interview frameworks.
“While research in this area is growing, there are still many things we don’t understand about the supports vulnerable adult victims actually need in police interviews, and when interviewers need to provide them.
“This donation to continue Westera’s important work has real potential to make a difference for victims who come through the justice system.”
