Exploring justice aspirations of child sexual abuse victims in police investigative interviews

Abstract

Investigative interviews with children reporting sexual victimization aim to capture their accounts of events in their own words. Beyond recounting incidents, children may express personal justice goals. This pioneering study analyzed 300 transcripts of real interviews with child complainants aged 3 to 15 years to explore this possibility. Extending prior research on adults, we examined the types of justice goals children articulate, the timing of these expressions within the interview, and the interviewer prompts that elicit them. Our findings indicate that most children voiced one or more justice goals, particularly a desire for recognition of their victimization and its wrongfulness. These goals were often expressed spontaneously, with minimal direct prompting from police interviewers. The results highlight the importance of listening attentively to children as active participants seeking justice, offering insights for institutions and researchers to better understand children’s agency in the justice process.