Interviews of children in a Portuguese special judicial procedure

Since 2007, alleged victims of child sexual abuse in Portugal have provided evidence in a mandatory “Declarações para Memória Futura” (DMF; English transl. ‘Statement for future use’) proceeding. In order to protect children from having to testify in court, interviews conducted at the DMF can be used later as trial evidence because the hearings are conducted by judges. The present study examined 137 interviews with 3- to 17-year-olds conducted in several Portuguese criminal courts. Detailed examination of interview transcripts showed that 69% of all questions asked were option-posing questions, 16% were directive questions, 11% were suggestive questions, and only 3% were open-ended prompts. The vast majority of details provided by children were thus obtained using the risky recognition-based prompts (i.e., option posing and suggestive questions) associated with the risks of contaminating and limiting children's informativeness, both potential threats to the credibility of their testimony. There is an urgent need to address this issue and consider the implementation of a scientifically validated structured interview protocol in Portugal.