Fighting Back: What Jurors Don’t Get About Abuse

Child sexual abuse is never a child’s fault. Absolutely never. And it’s unrealistic to expect children to somehow fend off the predations of adult offenders. But do jurors believe that? Dr. Jonathan Golding, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, asked: What do potential jurors believe about children and resisting abuse? How do these beliefs shape their understanding of who is responsible for that abuse? And how does this influence the outcome at trial? The results of his study are concerning and have implications not only for juror education but also education of the general public at large.

Topics in this episode:

• Origin story (1:31)
• CSI effect and other extralegal factors (3:18)
• Hypotheses (9:44)
• Research results (12:02)
• Not their fault (15:48)
• College students and community members (18:09)
• A lack of progress on this issue (21:41)
• Implications for juror education (32:36)
• What’s next in research (42:53)
• For more information (46:54)

Links:

Jonathan Golding, Ph.D., is a professor of developmental, social, and health psychology at the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences

“Impacts of Victim Resistance and Type of Assault on Legal Decision-Making in Child Sexual Assault,” Kyle P. Rawn, Mary M. Levi, Andrea M. Pals, Holly Huber, Jonathan M. Golding, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, DOI: 10.1080/10538712.2023.2180468

Gail S. Goodman, Ph.D., director of the Center for Public Policy Research at the University of California, Davis, previously appeared on One in Ten to discuss “How Accurate Is Memory After 20 Years?”

Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.

Kyle P. Rawn

Steven Ceci, Ph.D.

For more information about National Children’s Alliance and the work of Children’s Advocacy Centers, visit our website at NationalChildrensAlliance.org. Or visit our podcast website at OneInTenPodcast.org. And join us on Facebook at One in Ten podcast.

Transcript

Season 5, Episode 11

[Intro music]

[Intro]

[00:09] Teresa Huizar:
 Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Fighting Back: What Jurors Don’t Get About Abuse,” I speak with Dr. Jonathan Golding, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. Now, as child abuse professionals, we all know and deeply believe that child sexual abuse is never a child’s fault. Absolutely never. And that it’s unrealistic to expect children to somehow fend off or fight off the predations of adult offenders. But Dr. Golding asked a different and very important question, which is: What do potential jurors believe about those things? What do potential jurors believe about children and resisting abuse? How do these beliefs then shape their understanding of who is culpable and responsible for that abuse? And, equally important, how does this influence the outcome at trial?

As you will hear, the results of his study are concerning and have implications not only for juror education but also education of the general public at large. I know that you’re going to find our conversation as interesting—and disturbing, honestly—as I did. Please take a listen.

[Intro music fades out]

[1:31] Teresa Huizar: 
You could have researched anything. You know? 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. 

Teresa Huizar: 
And you've been researching things for a long time. 

Jonathan Golding: 
A long time, yes.

Teresa Huizar: 
So I'm curious about: How did you come to start researching this intersection between the law and child sexual abuse?

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes. Well, it really did start with Gail Goodman. When I met Gail, it was 1981, 42 years ago. She came in and said, “Well, I'm starting some work on children as witnesses.” My advisor was on sabbatical, and I just said, “Oh, yeah, sure, I'll help.” And that was it. And the topic—I had been interested in kids even as an undergraduate—but the topic of kids and their vulnerabilities—

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
—just stuck with me. The idea that a kid in those early studies would not be believed because they were a kid, well, that was rough. 

And then it just went further. My first paper was about repression. I had read an article by Elizabeth Loftus, who you can argue is on the other side because her concern always is with issues of fabrication, reconstruction. And I was just fascinated. And, you know, what happens a lot, I talk to my colleagues, you just sort of get hooked. And from that point, looking at repression and I just moved into other areas of child sexual assault.

I'll be frank, they're relatively easy studies to run, but the number of questions is vast. And that really was it. 

So, and the thing I'll say too, because I do a lot of work on different types of victimization, the problem is, as you know, well, is simply you want a potential victim to get the fair shake in court.

Teresa Huizar: 
Sure.

Jonathan Golding: 
  And clearly children were not.

[3:18] Teresa Huizar: 
That’s right.

So the study that we're here to talk about today is really about juror perceptions of child resistance—

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes.

Teresa Huizar: 
—in a rape case, in a projected rape case, and the connection of those perceptions and misperceptions to the ultimate outcome at trial. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
And I feel like I want to set this up a little bit by also saying—because some of our listeners may be survivors. I mean, it's always maddening when you have to talk about issues around child resistance because— 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes.

Teresa Huizar: 
—you know, this can be very triggering for survivors, and we are not implying—neither Jonathan nor myself—that kids have to or should or should expect to resist. But this is still an important research project and I think really gives us some insight into jurors’ thinking, which is why we're covering it today.

So, Jonathan, can you just talk a little bit about from the outset, lots of people who listen to this podcast may not know much about what the literature has been, even predating your study. about jurors’ sort of perceptions on this topic. Can you just talk a little bit about that?

Jonathan Golding: 
First of all, I'd back up a minute in a more, sort of getting away from the lab, in the real world is not that many cases. People might think that every time a child alleges abuse it gets to court, and that's not happening. Because people have to understand that for a prosecutor to bring a case, they have to have a strong case. The problem is in child cases, there often is not a lot of evidence. 

People have been swayed a lot too by what's called the CSI effect. From shows like CSI, all the different iterations, they think, “Oh, there's always evidence, there's always DNA evidence.” And that is just not true. 

So when children do allege to be abused, first the prosecutor has to decide to bring that case. And if a child is brought to court, the problem is, is that there are many what we would call extralegal factors, factors that are outside of the legal system that come into play on whether—on how a child is going to be perceived in court. 

And now to your question, to get to exactly how are children perceived in court. I’ll just start with some of these extralegal factors as a way to sort of tie into this study on resistance. 

One big one is juror gender. It's been a very robust finding that females, females who are serving as jurors—and again, these are mock jurors in our mock trial studies—believe victims much more than males. 

There's a lot of hypotheses about it. One is simply, as I assume many of your viewers know, that women are victims as children of sexual assault more than males and little boys. So one argument is that women identify with victims more than males, and because in the majority of cases, males are the perpetrators, male jurors identify with a perpetrator and feel, “Oh wait, that could be me.” And they sort are hesitant to believe the child. So you get factors like that that come into play. 

The issue of resistance. I should recommend the person who's the grad student who's the PI, the principal investigator, Kyle Rawn, because he took this project on. He got in after I sort of came up with the idea, but I want to give him all the credit. He wrote it up and did the work, the bulk of the work. 

What had happened with me is that, again, this relates to this overall work that I do on victimization. In the rape literature, adult rape literature, a lot of laws—now they've been changed, some of them—but a lot of laws expected a woman to be able to charge rape had to resist, somehow, her assailant. And that was just ridiculous in rape cases, is why, most states, that's not there anymore, that aspect of law. And it made me think about child cases where again, there's not necessarily an expectation that kids resist, but if a child does not resist, the question was: What are jurors gonna think about that, resist versus not resist? 

And in that study too, we were also looking at it, and what's interesting is—one of these times I was, I guess on it—no one had ever really looked at this with children. Like they really hadn't looked at whether a rape was attempted and not completed versus a completed act. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
The resistance is the thing we were most interested in. Because you could sit back and say, “Wait, does everybody think that a child resists, you know, when you have this, let's say male perpetrator, that is just going to let this happen?” Now that could occur, especially if they know the assailant and most, the majority of cases, children do know their assailant.

But we also thought, “Well, wait. There's going to be times children are going to resist.” There was a published paper where, assailants, actual perpetrators, convicted perpetrators, talked about how the children reacted when they were committing the assault. And we were seeing that the assailant were saying, yes, in fact, kids did resist. 

And we looked at it. We thought it was important that there's two types of resistance. We looked at the idea of if the child just verbally said something versus they physically tried to resist. And that was where we were at really with the study. This idea, it hadn't been looked at. It was an issue that seemed important because children are going to be placed in this situation and were going to resist. That was the impetus of this study. 

And again, this is an extralegal factor. Because the issue of resistance is not in the statute about child abuse. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Right. Right.

Jonathan Golding: 
To us, that was very important.

[9:44] Teresa Huizar: 
You know, you've touched on a number of important factors that sort of led you to focus on this in the study, which I think is really interesting. What I'm also wondering is, what were your hypotheses going into the study, and what did you actually find in the end?

Jonathan Golding: 
Well, the hypotheses, we had several. First of all, on the attempted, we thought that there would be more guilty verdicts if somebody completed the rape versus attempted. And we thought that was partly because, just like the statutes are set up, attempted rape is generally a less severe felony than a completed rape.

On the resistance issue, we felt that the physical resistance—and in our case we used, the child scratched at the defendant—we thought that would lead to more guilty verdicts. 

And for verbal resistance, we also had there could be an external disruption or not. We had in the case, somebody knocking at the door. We thought still the verbal resistance would matter. Um, and again, these are both compared against a control where there's no resistance, no interruption, no verbal discussion. 

Another hypothesis we had in the study, which we always do in these child sexual assault studies, was about participant sex that I just mentioned. We had expected females greater than males, and we also expected the, what we call mediation. Again, I don't want to confuse anybody by this, but the question is if resistance leads to more guilty verdicts, physical resistance leads to more guilty verdicts than verbal resistance or there's no resistance. 

What we are always interested in our research, and not everybody looks at this but it's important, is what's the underlying reason? So for example, you could draw a straight line from resistance to verdict, but we want to see what's sort of in the middle. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
So if the child resists, you believe them more, and that belief leads to your guilty verdict. That's what we call either mediation or it's called an indirect effect. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Because it's sort of midway between the two.

[12:02] Teresa Huizar: 
So you laid out three or four hypotheses that you were testing as a part of this. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
And what did you, in the end, find? 

Jonathan Golding: 
We did not really find support for the attempted versus completed. So we would say that was a null finding. We didn't find any difference between the two, as far as physical.

Teresa Huizar: 
Which is interesting. 

Jonathan Golding: 
It is, and here's the tough thing, and again for your listeners, so they get a little feel for research here, not finding something doesn't mean that there isn't some difference there. It’s that the way we did our study, we were unable to see it. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Somebody else may do the study a little differently. They may, you know, when we give people a mock trial, we have to come up with basically a trial based on actual cases. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
But perhaps that trial isn't the one to make people feel that completed versus attempted there's a difference. 

So we are not done with that. When we get null effects, as do most researchers, if you believe it's still interesting you go at it, but maybe a different way. 

As far as the physical resistance, the critical thing is, that the physical, as far as resistance itself, physical resistance was the condition that sort of carried the day. That's where we found more guilty verdicts. In our studies, although we say we're interested in perceptions of children, that the main thing, because it's a trial, we want to see what's the outcome? What's the verdict results? We look at other things, but we want to see because that's what you look at in trials, whether you had a guilty verdict or not.

So clearly, if a child resists, and you could argue much like an adult rape victim, jurors are more willing to believe it happened. And we can get into why. Well, they think, you know, if a child resists then that means they must have been under attack. This is a problem, you could argue, because if the child does not resist, doesn't mean they weren't sexually assaulted. They could have been—people don't always think of it—they could have been, of course, freaked out, traumatized, and they just could not bring it. So you can read the literature, child abuse, the adult sexual assault. These are not situations—my nervous laughter there, I'm sorry, but it's, it's hard to imagine [for] anybody who has not experienced this. And this is why it's tough for me to think about this sometime, what it must be like. And how you could just be basically scared to the point that you can't move.

And people think, “Oh, how could you not resist?” Well, think about the situation you're in anytime you're victimized. It's a horrible situation. 

So it concerns us. The fact that we found that, I mean, it's good to see that resistance helps. It's a very difficult question. Does that mean we want to say the kids should always resist? 

You know, this is interesting too, related to adult rape. In the past, women were always told: Don't resist, because the assailant may do more harm to you. Recently I've seen some things where it doesn't say that. So it's a question, how do you talk to kids about what they should do? I don't have the answer here, and I'm not sure, you may know better what people are saying now to children and trying to talk to children if they ever were attacked.

In fact, I guess I would ask, do you know what is prevalent out there in telling children? 

[15:48] Teresa Huizar: 
I think that, sort of two things are important and are being said. One is that I think just like we prepare kids for other safety issues, we should prepare them for issues around child sexual abuse as well. So I think with the passage of Erin's Laws and Jenna's Laws— 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—where more of that is happening in schools, kids are being told as a part of that, you know, say no, try to get away, those kinds of things. However, the critical thing if you're telling a child that is to pair it with a message that it is not your fault, whatever happens.

Jonathan Golding: 
Right. Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
Or if you're not able to do any of those things. 

And so, I think it's this really fine line between—

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
—equipping kids, you know, to have the sort of safety skills that may actually be helpful to them. At the same time, not inculcating into them a sense that if someone abuses them, then they must have done something wrong. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm. 

Teresa Huizar: 
They didn't resist enough, or they didn't scream enough, or they didn't have the right reaction.

Jonathan Golding: 
Right. Right. Yeah. And that's a tough one. And that's, again, that's why I keep making this tie to adult rape victims who need to understand that if they didn't resist, no one should blame them. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Right. Right. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, this is this thing you read about. Well, why didn't, why didn't you fight back? There's a lot of reasons why not, especially if the person had a weapon, which again, in child abuse cases occurs too.

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
And in ours, my memory—I'm just sitting here now—I do not think we had the, the assailant had a weapon. There's a study right there whether people— 

Teresa Huizar: 
Well, absolutely. 

Jonathan Golding: 
—yeah, would care because people also … well, the weapon issue is a very big issue. And in a lot of child cases there are no weapons because the assailant feels they can overwhelm them.

Teresa Huizar: 
Sure. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Versus in a lot of adult rape there is. But it's a tough one now. That's why I say this whole issue of resistance, it's a touchy one because as we're talking about, it's like: OK, well, what do we do with this knowledge that people think kids should resist? Well, “think” in the sense they'll convict more. It’s hard to know, like you're saying, how exactly to present this to children. 

[18:09] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, one of the things I was thinking as you were talking, Jonathan— 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
—was about the fact that—I'm going to ask you in a minute what most surprised you about the findings. But I'll tell you what most surprised me, period, about the study. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
And that is that, you were asking this question of graduates. Were they graduate students or just university students?

Jonathan Golding: 
No, these, these are, no, in fact, we almost always now use community members. The way the research—

Teresa Huizar: 
These were community members?

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes. They're not undergraduates, and there's a lot of issues. I'll start to diverge a little and go off, but this—again, for your listeners to understand. In the past, everybody used to use undergraduate students in research. And there were a lot of complaints because undergraduates, they're a more homogeneous sample, more similar. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
They haven't had life experiences that we as older adults have had.

And then people started moving to run community members. Now, let me add one thing. Undergraduates can still serve on juries because they're 18 years old—

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes.

Jonathan Golding: 
—U.S. citizens, and they, as long as they haven't had a felony conviction. So to think they couldn't be a jury is wrong. So people started moving to community members, though. But I would say more, not because people didn't believe the results. They felt that, again, community members, they had more life experiences. They could be, for example, an 18-year-old is likely not going to be a parent versus an older individual. 

[Cross-talk]

Teresa Huizar: 
I remember 

Jonathan Golding: 
But I would tell you

Teresa Huizar: 
Jonathan.

Jonathan Golding: 
No, you go.

Teresa Huizar: 
I remember, in your study, reading the racial demographic breakout— 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
—of the participants. I don't remember the age breakout. Do you remember that? 

Jonathan Golding: 
The age breakout. Well, here you go, Teresa. I always, I have the article in front of me because that's one, you know, and I'll be frank with you, a lot of studies, I don't remember all of them, but I'm going to say

Teresa Huizar: 
No, no, you can't memorize it. I just thought maybe you might—

Jonathan Golding: 
Not at all, but the age is an interesting one. And then we often point out, let's see—you know what? This is interesting. We don't—but I will say in general—oh wait. In fact you got me. This one—I'm sorry to say you got me. This one was college students, but I'll just say, so then between 18 and 21. Typically we run—I'm very sorry about that error.

Teresa Huizar: 
No, no, no.

Jonathan Golding: 
But let me just say this then first. No, the age range—but let me say, you make a very good point about undergraduates. And so I had said that we've moved to more community samples.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
But here's the interesting thing. About five years ago I was part of a big, what's called a meta-analysis. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
For your listeners, what a meta-analysis does, it takes all the studies in a field. It compares them to look at whether there are differences. And what this meta-analysis did, it compared results from studies that used undergraduates that were in these courtroom situations and all the ones that used community members.

And basically we found no differences, very few differences. So even though this study had undergraduates, valid point still to say that they don't have the life experiences. For me personally, I'm not as worried about the results cause of this big meta-analysis. And evidently, I guess I'll say the reviewers of this article, peer reviewed, were not as concerned either. But again, you make a valid point. 

[21:41] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, actually my point was going to be a little bit different. [Laughter] 

Jonathan Golding: 
OK, go, go, go. I’m ready.

Teresa Huizar: 
So, you may be giving me more credit than credit is due, Jonathan.

Jonathan Golding: 
No, no, no.

Teresa Huizar: 
No, the point that I was going to make about that—my surprise wasn't community member versus students.

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm. 

Teresa Huizar: 
My surprise was, frankly, that I would hope that younger people would've moved beyond some of these biases. And I find it really distressing that people as young as this age range of college students would still hold the same kinds of sort of fundamental misunderstandings about child sexual abuse that older people do.

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
And that earlier studies—in fact, much earlier studies—show as it relates to adult victims. And so it feels like to me, this is not an area in which just culturally we've advanced very much in our understanding and beliefs about victimization.

Jonathan Golding: 
You should be writing more articles [Laughter] because you are absolutely correct.

It's disturbing. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah. 

Jonathan Golding: 
And see, here's the problem too, that I will say, the big problem with all this. It is not just, in this context of resistance, children resisting.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
I can pull out study after study, recent, old, where things are very similar. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Where people’s—and again, it's not just child sexual assault or child abuse in general. It is rape. 

When I do these studies—because here's an example. I talked about your gender. How can it be over basically almost 50 years—

Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah.

Jonathan Golding: 
—that men do not understand that women get raped, that children get sexually assaulted at the amount they do. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
And given all the news coverage and everything, they do not.

Why do we see—still see—and I'll tell you in general, the numbers are things like: Women will convict in our studies at about 70%; men are about half of that amount.

Teresa Huizar: 
Interesting.

Jonathan Golding: 
And you just say, how can this be? Now we have done studies where we can sort of up the males by giving certain types of evidence and things like that.

Teresa Huizar: 
Oh, interesting.

Jonathan Golding: 
But, but that's—and what I say to my students, I say, “We’ve got to kind of knock them, knock these guys over the head.” Because otherwise they just think, “Oh, this stuff doesn't happen.” Now going back to it—

Teresa Huizar: 
Or someone made it up, or whatever. Yeah.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. Well, this is the thing, right? And then again, we don't always—well, we don't know. Do they think it's because they feel they can be accused at some point? 

But it's beyond that and the identification issue, an interesting issue there. We find men, if it was just identification with the victim, there have been studies, I think I've only done a couple of these, but other people have done studies where they varied the gender of the victim— 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
—be it either a male or a female, and the guys still don't convict. 

Well, it's like, wait a minute. Somebody could argue, well, they just don't identify with the victim. But here we've, people have used the male victim. If you're going to identify with anybody, it's going to be that male victim. Oh, it's very disturbing, yeah. And here, this could go further about how disturbing. We've done studies in other people—in student/teacher situations. Like, let's say middle school, elementary school, where people think they will not convict as much if it's a female teacher and a male student. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. Yes.

Jonathan Golding: 
Because, and the argument there is, is that, oh, they don't see that as such a bad thing. Here's this male, let's say he is a high schooler, and his teacher wanted to have sex with him. People don't see that as such a bad thing. What? You know, kid’s been abused, taken advantage of, and somehow that's not as bad. It's all bad. 

[Cross-talk]

[25:40] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, it's like in many ways we've progressed, but in this area I feel like we're still as Neanderthals, basically.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes, yes, I would agree. It is … it's really—

Teresa Huizar: 
It is disturbing. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, people say to me, how do you keep doing this research? And again, whether it's rationalization or whatever, my view is, I'm trying to make it so children get a, they get justice. They shouldn't have to go to court and not get justice. And as you're saying, we are seeing some situations where at least kids will get some. 

So for example, let me give one other example, if this is okay.

Teresa Huizar: 
Sure. 

Jonathan Golding: 
We did a study, if you remember the Jerry Sandusky trial? 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Jerry Sandusky, you could argue, was only really convicted because one of the other coaches walked into that shower. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm. And saw. Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
And saw him molesting the boy. And we did a study where we had—a couple other studies have done this, but we specifically had an eyewitness to the abuse.

People will convict in that situation, but that again is saying they don't really—it's not like they believe the child, it's that they're believing this other adult witness. But at least there's something else that can increase the child's credibility. And that's what you're always trying to do in a court case, is you want to increase the child's credibility.

So this, again, it's this other factor. They're not going to believe kids as much. But if you can get these other things coming into play, they'll believe them more. 

I wanted to add one other thing about this credibility, even back to the resistance study. One important thing we found—I was talking about these indirect effects or mediators. We found that when the child physically resisted, the child's credibility rocketed up. And that is what was leading to the conviction. And that's what's so important. Whether it's something the child did, whether these other witnesses, the important thing is these other factors raise the child's credibility, and once you do that, likelihood of a conviction is greater.

Another factor here is a child's age. In general, younger children, let's say 6 years old, are believed in abuse cases more than let's say a 15-year-old or a 12-year-old.

And that helps children, because even though 6 year olds, people believe their memory isn't as good, they think they're more credible, they're not going to lie. Whereas they know 15 year olds, they may lie about their sexual activity and convictions aren't as great when the child is older. And that, again, that's considered another extralegal factor because that has nothing to do with the law.

That's just whether you're going to believe the kid based on their age. 

[28:34] Teresa Huizar: 
Well, I think, you know, so many disturbing things there to unpack. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah, yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
But of them have to do with, you know, we're placing kids in this completely untenable bind. 

Jonathan Golding: 
We are, yeah. Horrible.

Teresa Huizar: 
Where, whereas adults sort of start with a baseline of credibility, kids come into their disclosure already at a deficit in terms of adults believing them. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
Right from the get-go. So then we have to talk about convoluted ways in which their credibility might be bolstered to overcome, really just the biases that adults have about kids. And then, the—

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. And stereotypes, right. 

Teresa Huizar: 
right?

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
And then the age effect you're talking about. On the one hand we believe very young children more right?, than we do older children.

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
But at the same time, who would actually have the capacity to resist? 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
I mean, five-year-olds? 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
You know. So we once again come to a place where we're putting kids in this very convoluted bind about, “Well, why didn't you do the thing that you're least equipped to do so that I can believe you?”

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm. Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
You know? And if you're older and you might actually be in a position to say “no” or whatever, then, “We don't believe you because you must be liar.” It's, adults sort. Right?

Jonathan Golding: 
Right. No, you were right. 

Teresa Huizar: 
They sort for reasons not to believe kids, is what it boils down to. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right. And I agree with everything you're saying.

The one thing I'll add in a I, I believe in a positive way. There are some legal aspects, legal issues that have helped kids in the courtroom now.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
And these things include like courtroom accommodations, 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
So that a child sometimes doesn't have to testify and face their accuser. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes.

Jonathan Golding: 
They can testify through a video camera or even a prerecorded video tape.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Another thing is that children can have support dogs, and in some states, even support people—

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
—in the court with them. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes.

Jonathan Golding: 
Make them to feel—you know, testifying is a traumatic experience. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Not a good thing for anybody. But again, to think if you were abused and have to talk about that in open court. But these things have helped.

Another thing, the way the laws are written, a child, hearsay testimony in general, sort of secondhand information, is not allowed in court. But there are exceptions to the hearsay laws and included are these are these things, one of them is called “excited utterance.” So what that means is that if a child is abused and from the sheer trauma tells their parent, tells their teacher what happened, that teacher, that parent can come testify in court, which would not normally be allowed.

And I've done research on this where people who present hearsay testimony are believed a great deal. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
It's not like this testimony is put to the side. We've done this research, we did long ago, so there are some things to help the child, but everything you're saying is correct that there hasn't been sort of enough.

And the other thing, this is this Goodman and well, there's another well-known researcher other than Loftus, Steven Ceci. Do you ever hear that name? 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding:
OK, well there sort of decides where do you believe it or not, are kids reconstructing or not? So you have that you're fighting. It goes along with what we're talking about, whether you're going to believe a kid or not.

You know, kid walks up to you and says that “I've been abused.” You know, what do you think? You know, that's really what you're asking jurors is: Sit in court and somebody's telling you this happened. What evidence do you need? Is it enough that you just hear the children in general? No. As you had said, no.

[Cross-talk]

Teresa Huizar: 
Let me ask you something. 

Jonathan Golding: 
How do they describe it? 

Sure.

[32:36] Teresa Huizar: 
What do you think the implications of your study are for juror education? For actually what district attorneys will do in the courtroom in bringing in expert testimony to try to explain these factors? Do you think that there are implications from this study for that?

Jonathan Golding: 
Well, I think there are. The issue of expert testimony is always a very difficult issue because it's of course up to the judge whether he feels he wants to present it, allow that testimony to be there. Oftentimes judges will say, “Well, we don't need”—like, say you had an expert who was going to talk about children's memory—or here's another one, that children do not immediately disclose being abused.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
That it’s typical for them to let—but the judge may say, “Well, I'm not going to allow that because jurors know that already.” So getting the expert in is going to matter. Now, if the expert can go in there and say, “You know, most kids don't resist, and there's data to show this,” that may impact the jurors. 

The problem with experts, I've done, only, I've done a little research about experts, but others have done much more, is that if you have an expert for the prosecution, it’s probably a good likelihood you're going to have one for the defense. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Then what you get are these two experts. Do they just cancel each other out? Some research shows that they do. You can do it, you can try and bring your expert in. The question is, will it be effective?

The problem for prosecutors with experts, they don't have the money that the defense often has to pay experts to come into court. That issue comes up and just, is it practical? Is it going to happen? But what you're saying is correct. It'd be good to have experts who could come in to testify about the characteristics, the cognitive ability of children.

Because this expectation is that jurors—you know, community member, 18-year-old—somehow know all about kids. Well, they don't. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Right, right. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, they think they might, but they don't. Research has clearly shown that, that adults are not very good at determining whether kids are accurate or not. And well, that's the problem. That's why you would think that the courts would allow anything in the courtroom to show the jurors what are the facts. Then you get into issues that the defense could argue certain things are prejudicial. It’s a, it's a slugfest in that courtroom. 

[35:09] Teresa Huizar: 
What do you think then—I mean, if you think about any juror pool, as you pointed out earlier, it's just comprised of the community, you know, right?

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.

Teresa Huizar: 
So anybody over the age of 18 just about can wind up and who doesn't have a good reason to get out of it can wind up as a juror. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
So when you think about the child abuse prevention efforts and community education and awareness efforts that many child abuse professionals are doing, 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
And you look at the fact that you've uncovered a lot of bias, right— 

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes.

Teresa Huizar: 
—that just exist in the adult population of the US. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Mm-hmm. 

Teresa Huizar: 
What are the kinds of messages that this points out we should be promoting or educating basically any adult about?

Jonathan Golding: 
Right, right, you feel of course, I mean, at the simplest level of course there needs to be more. But the question always is, where should that occur? Did that occur, for example, in school, when you're in school K to 12, where you get a greater understanding? 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Because you could say—see, the other thing is you say, “Well, if you served as a juror, you should be told X, Y, and Z about—” whatever. it's sexual, assault, rape, you know, other crimes.

But again, the defense will cry foul on that and say you're, you know, you're biasing people the other way. This is what's tough. I, that's why I don't know the best avenue. I think, you know, you could argue college, being in college helps to some degree because if you take any psychology class and issues come up about abuse, or sociology class, you're at least made aware of data that speaks to, let's just say, even the degree that this is a problem.

But you'd say your average, you know, lay person, where are they going to get it from? They're not. In your, you know, general sense that I understand. I'm not sure. It seems like a real conundrum on how you can get your average person to gain this knowledge.

So even, Teresa, when we're talking and the data comes out and they'll say in the news, oh, new study shows one in three women in the their lifetimes, one in five or six males. Are people watching the news? I'm so upset with my own students in college. They don't read the news anymore. 

Teresa Huizar: 
That's a fair point.

Jonathan Golding: 
Right? So it's like, I'm not sure you know, is the media enough anymore? I don't think it is. 

[37:41] Teresa Huizar: 
That's a really interesting point.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
That because kids get their information from a lot of different sources, but not necessarily the news, so how do you teach them something they need to know?

Jonathan Golding: 
Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
And where's the best avenue for that? That’s an interesting—

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
That's an interesting observation.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah, and I don't—you know, we've thought about this because we were going to play around with judges' instructions, but again, judges' instructions are tough because both sides, in a sense, have to agree or they'll just appeal it. You can't say too much.

And I'll just tell you again, doing this so long, when I talked to my students, they said, “Oh, have you seen this in the news?” I'll get like one student. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, political campaigns. I say, “Well, any of you are politically active, whatever way? Either side?” No. It's really, it's disturbing. I don't, you know, I don't want to chalk it up. “Oh, it's all COVID.” No, I mean this is just—you know, when I was young, I'm going to assume for you, you know, my parents, they got the newspaper delivered to the house. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Everybody read the newspaper. We watched the news as the family, I don't think that's happening much anymore. 

[38:47] Teresa Huizar: 
Oh, I think that's true. I'm not sure they're doing much together as a family—

Jonathan Golding: 
Yeah. 

Teresa Huizar: 
—as a matter of fact. You know?

Jonathan Golding: 
Oh, right, right. So these important pieces of information, this idea. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, whenever they do studies, it’s always the one in three, I mean, that's a ridiculously high amount. 

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding:
You know, I'd been talking once about like date rape drugs in class. And tons of students said they knew of people who'd been affected, but that's like, so that's relevant to them. So they sort of take that in. They know more about things like that. But these overarching issues, I don't know why they're not in as interested. Because if it's one in three women, of course it's of all ages. They don't sort of put that, God forbid, that could be them. 

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah. Well, and I, 

Jonathan Golding:
Let me say one of the, I’m—

Teresa Huizar:
Go ahead. 

Jonathan Golding:
I just wanted a quick thing just to say about a gender issue. You know, I've been doing this for so long. I've had in my lab so few males, I can probably count them on one, maybe two hands out of 200 people who've probably worked with me, undergraduates.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding:
You say, “Wait, don't guys care about assault and all this?” But in a way you could say they're not as interested. So, and whether this, you know, again, changing demographics, whatever, but you know, it's almost always my graduate students, almost always females. That's, it's an interesting sidelight and maybe where, you know, again, people are how they're thinking about things. 

Not a good thought.

[40:18] Teresa Huizar: 
One of the things I was thinking about as you were talking, is that, you know, I don't know that we've adapted well to where kids do go and where they do get their information. 

Jonathan Golding:
Right. Yeah, I agree.

Teresa Huizar: 
And if you think about other public awareness and public health campaigns that have happened, they're not just relying on the news.

Jonathan Golding:
Mm-hmm. 

Teresa Huizar: 
And so, you know, how do we think about expanding what we think of as the places to share that information? Because— 

Jonathan Golding:
Sure.

Teresa Huizar: 
—as you're saying, kids are not watching the news and they're not reading the news on their phone. Instead, they're on whatever. Instagram, they're on TikTok, they're on wherever, but they're not, you know, they're not on CBS news glued to that, so, yeah. Interesting.

Jonathan Golding: 
Well, I would ask you, you would know this better than me, although I've seen, like I've seen some recent PSAs. For, let's say, uh, domestic violence. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
God knows what time I saw them on video. I didn't see them on TV. God knows when they're playing these, they're excellent.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
But they're not being placed. Are they being shown on Instagram, that they fear nobody's going to get on? Or TikTok or YouTube channel? Because that is where students are going. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes.

Jonathan Golding: 
They're getting on Yahoo News or you know, Google News, but I don't know if any effort is being put there. Because you're totally right. They are not sort of gaining this information as in the old days where it was this on your local news or in your newspaper. And that's, and I think this is really what we're getting at, is you have this uneducated group now. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
There's big difference. And you know, it's a real problem. And likewise with older people who may be really older, even older than me, who used to get their news a certain way and now they can't get it the same way. I feel they are really kind of out of it with understanding what, you know, facts are about abuse as an example. 

[42:19] Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah, you're raising all kinds of good points about the fact that we need to adapt the way that we're sharing this information.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes. Right.

Teresa Huizar: 
Or we're going to continue to have the juror pools that we do. 

Jonathan Golding: 
Right. It’s not going to change.

Teresa Huizar: 
And what your research is pointing out.

Jonathan Golding: 
Yes. No, it's, look, we're agreeing. It's, alarming and it's, as we also agreed, it's not—when you look at the prosecution data—

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
—it is not leading to, we are not progressing the way I think people thought after all this time. 

[42:53] Teresa Huizar: 
Yes, yes. So what's next for you research-wise? I mean, we've probably identified an additional five studies right here that would be interesting to do, but what’s next on your plate?

Jonathan Golding: 
Well, we have a lot going on. Although I'm old, I have some excellent students working. So this issue, for example, I'll just say I've been very interested in date-rape drugs. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
It hasn't been looked at a lot. I'm always interested—this isn't a kid issue—the victimization of the issues of alcohol. In a lot of adult rape, alcohol is implicated for either the victim or defendant.

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
And you could only imagine if a victim was drinking, oh, you're in trouble. You're in trouble in the courtroom. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Yes. 

Jonathan Golding: 
  “Oh, you didn't remember it?” How could you remember? 

Okay, with kids, one thing we're trying to look at a little more is in most of the cases people look at—this is a really interesting issue—but you know, of course there are serial predators for sexual assault. But you don't hear about that as often.

You know, in the old days there were all the preschool crimes and everything, and that was big time. There are serial predators now. I don't know how many are getting, you know, brought to court. We don't really understand much what happens if you have multiple children who were abused. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
Is that going get people to believe it more in that sense of you have some type of corroboration? It's something that we've been more interested in. 

Another issue I can tell you we've been kind of interested, the data shows pretty clearly that the, at least the men who are committing child abuse child sexual abuse, are pretty much in the 30 to 35 range. Then the question is, well, not everybody is that age, of course. What do jurors think about people from different ages who commit abuse? 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
Because you know, you always have now to say—to me at least, I don't know, I have this stereotype, the dirty old man. 

Teresa Huizar: 
Mm-hmm. 

Jonathan Golding: 
You know, say this older guy, never been married. Is he the pedophile? 

But things like this haven't been looked at. That's why there's a lot of issues with kids and, you know, we're seeing still a lot of studies looking at children and issues of consent and kind of interviews that are given to kids. The way kids give testimony is always interesting. And the way attorney tactics in the courtroom is an interesting issue. You know, some attorneys go right after the kids. Some try and play very soft. And there have been studies of that. There's a lot more going on. 

[45:25] Teresa Huizar: 
Jonathan, I think you're going to have another 30 years researching on these questions. [Laughter]

Jonathan Golding: 
I don’t know, 30. I, you know, the thing is, Teresa, I'll say maybe as a closing, if I didn't enjoy—and it's weird to say enjoy doing research about such disturbing things. But again, I feel we find a lot interesting things that—

Teresa Huizar: 
Mmm. Mmm.

Jonathan Golding: 
—things that hopefully help people. We want people to be knowledgeable. And just like we're saying, even when it doesn't paint a pretty picture, you have to understand what's going on in the legal system. And with that I would, I would want to make one other kind of, almost like just be clear about the limitation.

We acknowledge as do, everybody does this research. We're not in the real court. We're not looking at real jurors. But we are able to, with our research, control certain things. You know, every court case is unique, but in our research we can control the case and look at certain factors in isolation. That's the nature of research and that gives us, we feel, a very important picture on how these factors impact people.

So then look, it's not perfect, but you know, we're trying our best. 

[Outro music begins]

[46:35] Teresa Huizar:
Well, we thank you for the efforts that you put in. We thank you for the research and we look forward to further research. So thank you, Jonathan, for coming on to One in Ten.

Jonathan Golding:. 
Well, thank you so much. It was fantastic talking. Thank you again for the invitation.

Teresa Huizar: 
Have a great rest of your day.

Jonathan Golding:. 
OK. You also. Take care! Bye-bye.

[Outro]

[46:54] Teresa Huizar:
Thanks for listening to One in Ten. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And for more information about this episode or any of our others, please visit our podcast website at www.OneInTenPodcast.org.