Vulnerable victims and impact of trauma

This report is currently under review.

This report is currently under review.

This report is currently under review.

Interviewing people who have experienced traumatic events requires specialized training and careful consideration of how trauma impacts memory (McGoey, 2018; Haskell and Randall, 2019). Forensic interviews with vulnerable victims should be conducted in a manner that balances the needs of the victim with the evidence-gathering requirements for criminal proceedings.

Victims may be vulnerable for many reasons. For example:

In Canada, there are some offences where victim vulnerability is assumed, and these are often gendered crimes. This includes victims of sexual offences, intimate partner violence, criminal harassment, or human trafficking. Victim vulnerability is also assumed in cases where the victim is a child, an elderly person, or a person with a disability.

Impact of trauma on memory

Forensic interviewing can be particularly challenging due to the vulnerabilities of victims and the impacts of trauma. In the past decades research on the impact of trauma on behaviour, memory and recall has necessitated that interviewers consider these impacts when conducting interviews. After a traumatic event has occurred, victims may experience neurological changes that make recalling details difficult (Haskell and Randall, 2019; Lonsway, Hopper and Archambault, 2022). The brain’s prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions, including managing complex processes like problem solving, logical reasoning, planning, and memory. During a traumatic event the body releases stress hormones which can cause a rapid and significant loss of prefrontal cognitive abilities, inhibiting one’s ability to rationally think, plan, and reason. The amygdala, responsible for processing threatening stimuli, releases stress hormones to suppress the body from performing unnecessary bodily actions (like digesting) which allows the brain and body to focus all resources on defense (Haskell and Randall, 2019). A traumatic event can influence both short- and long-term memory retrieval and can impact parts of the brain responsible for releasing hormones and storing memory.

Women and girls who are victims of gender-based violence are often victimized by someone they know or an individual they trusted. When this occurs, the traumatic event is alarming and threatening, but also extremely confusing. Women have reported a range of emotional and psychological responses in cases where they have been assaulted by someone they know and trusted (Haskell and Randall, 2019). There are also pervasive myths and stereotypes about victims of sexual and gender-based violence and how they are expected to behave (e.g., appearing extremely distraught, wanting to avoid the perpetrator, etc.) (Coordinating Committee of Senior Officials Working Group on Access to Justice for Adult Victims of Sexual Assault, 2018). When these responses to trauma are not understood by justice system practitioners, or if practitioners subscribe to myths about how victims are supposed to react, it may cause police or investigators to perceive that the victim is being dishonest, thus eliciting additional challenges in the interview process that may ultimately impact the victim’s willingness to discuss the event. Investigators may see an interviewee’s body language, emotional expression, or lack of eye contact as signs of dishonesty or may view a lack of engagement as uncooperative rather than understanding the physiological and neurological implications of trauma (Lonsway, Hopper and Archambault, 2022).