Potential for police investigator bias:the impact of child sexual abuse victims’ background characteristics on perceived statement credibility, case outcome and quality of interview questions

This preregistered experiment aimed to investigate the impact of backgroundinformation regarding an alleged victim of child sexual abuse onpolice investigators’ perception of the credibility of the victim’s statement,expected case outcome, and the type of questions police investigatorsplan to ask the victim in an investigative interview. We expected that theage and the description of the alleged victim’s character would affectperceived credibility, prediction of case prosecution and the use of biasedquestions in the interview plan. Indonesian police investigators (N = 369)read a case vignette of either a 5- or a 15-year-old female victim of childsexual abuse, including either a good character, bad character, or nocharacter information. Participants receiving the story of the 15-year-oldalleged victim perceived the victim as having contributed more to thecrime, predicted the case as more likely to be withdrawn and includedmore biased questions in their interview plans than those who receivedthe story of a 5-year-old alleged victim. Moreover, participants being toldthat the alleged victim had a bad character perceived her statement asless reliable, having contributed more to the crime, predicted the case asmore likely to be withdrawn or dropped-out than those who receivedinformation about the alleged victim with a good character. We did notfind any effect of our background information manipulation on the perceptionof suspect guilt, and on the estimated likelihood of the allegationbeing confirmed by corroborative evidence or being prosecuted. Thecurrent findings suggest that background information can negativelyaffect police investigators’ judgment and decision-making when workingon a child sexual abuse case