Which Kids Do We Believe?

Black children and other children of color are less likely to be believed when reporting sexual violence and are considered less credible by jurors. But in multidisciplinary team settings, we pride ourselves on openly discussing all aspects of a case and coming into a case neutrally and allowing the disclosure and any corroborating evidence to determine the future direction of a case. But are we overconfident in these factors being enough to avoid disparate substantiation rates in child sexual abuse cases? Dr. Maggie Stevenson joins us to talk about how race affects whether children who disclose sexual abuse are seen as credible.

Topics in this episode:

• 1:43 – Origin story
• 5:06 – Previous research
• 7:31 – Study design
• 10:35 – Examining a difficult topic
• 14:57 – Hypotheses
• 20:06 – Findings
• 23:26 – Advice for child abuse professionals
• 28:43 – Policy implications
• 31:27 – A small test of change
• 33:05 – Next research
• 37:08 – For more information

Links:

Margaret (Maggie) C. Stevenson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, Kenyon College

“When Disclosure Fails to Substantiate Abuse: Child and Perpetrator Race Predict Child Sexual Abuse Substantiation,” by Margaret C. Stevenson and Molly A. Rivers, Child Maltreatment 2023, Vol. 28, Issue 4. DOI: 10.1177/10775595231157729

Bette L. Bottoms, Ph.D.

The Legacy of Racism for Children: Psychology, Law, and Public Policy, edited by Margaret C. Stevenson, Bette L. Bottoms, and Kelly C. Burke (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Criminal Juries in the 21st Century: Psychological Science and the Law, (Oxford University Press, 2018)

“Effects of victim and defendant race on jurors’ decisions in child sexual abuse cases,” Bette L. Bottoms, Suzanne L. Davis, Michelle A. Epstein, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 34, Issue 1. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2004.tb02535.x

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.

Chapters

• 1:24 Origin story
• 5:06 Previous research
• 7:31 Study design
• 10:35 Examining a difficult topic
• 14:57 Hypotheses
• 20:06 Findings
• 23:26 Advice for child abuse professionals
• 28:43 Policy implications
• 31:27 A small test of change
• 33:05 Next research
• 37:08 For more information

Transcript

Season 6, Episode 10

“Which Kids Do We Believe?,” with Maggie Stevenson

[Intro music]

[Intro]

[00:09] Teresa Huizar:
 Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Which Kids Do We Believe?”, I speak with Dr. Maggie Stevenson about the effects of race on child sexual abuse substantiation rates.

Now, from past research literature, we know that Black children and children of color are less likely to be believed when reporting sexual violence and are considered less credible by jurors. All of this is strong evidence of implicit bias. But in multidisciplinary team settings, we pride ourselves on openly discussing all aspects of a case and coming into a case neutrally and allowing the disclosure and any corroborating evidence to determine the future direction of a case. But are we overconfident in these factors being enough to avoid disparate substantiation rates in child sexual abuse cases?

As you will hear, a brave CAC [Children’s Advocacy Center] and its MDT [multidisciplinary team] and a researcher decided to examine this important issue. What they found will both surprise and disappoint you. But I hope it’s the first step in examining the ways in which the disparities in case outcomes may very well have an origin story—and one that demands intervention right from the very start. 

I know you’ll be as interested in this conversation as I was. Please take a listen.

[Intro music begins to fade out]

[01:43] Teresa Huizar:
Hi Maggie. Welcome to One in Ten. 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Hello. 

Teresa Huizar: 
So, I’m just going to start at the beginning. First of all, I just really appreciated, I—I was about to say the study you did, but now I’m aware that there’s a follow up, so we can talk about that a little bit too. But I’m wondering what brought you to this work in the first place, really looking at the intersection between race and substantiation rates in child sexual abuse cases?

Maggie Stevenson: 
That’s a really excellent question. I mean, I could sort of start at the beginning, which was, you know, that I was raised in a small Ohio, rural Appalachian area, went to a high school that was virtually all white. And then when I went to college, I went to the big city of Columbus, Ohio, Ohio State University—to me, that was a big city—and was placed in a dormitory where actually the majority of the students were students of color, two African American roommates. And it was sort of that early experience of that I’m now sort of retrospectively really grateful that I had, knowing now what I know about the effects of and, you know, positive effects of interracial interactions and experiences on early life, and your early life on later life outcomes and attitudes. 

And it was also at Ohio State University that I just became fascinated with psychology. It was a social psychology class in particular that I just fell in love with. And I really just remember vividly being sort of simultaneously fascinated but dismayed—just horrified at all of this, you know, evidence, the scientific evidence. Which in my mind, psychological science is really just magic. You know, just what we can discern about human behavior, but particularly what we were able to show experimentally with respect to racial bias. And especially how that manifests in the legal system. 

And so that was just something that stuck with me. I knew that that was something that I wanted to continue to explore and I wanted to explore it from a scientific psychological perspective, but within a legal context, an applied context. And so I pursued Ph.D. programs where I could do that. I ended up going to the Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I worked with Bette Bottoms, who was my mentor there, and that allowed me to study exactly what I wanted to do. 

You know, one of the first studies I ever did there was an experiment where it was a mock trial. I randomly assigned participants to read about a juvenile offender whose case had been transferred to adult criminal court. I randomly assigned them to believe that the juvenile offender was either Black or white. And that was one of the first studies where I found this experimental evidence of, male jurors but not female jurors being significantly more likely to convict the defendant when they believed he was Black than when they believed he was white. 

So I’ve always had this interest from my early days as a graduate student, sort of understanding the various ways in which race, psychology, children, and the legal system, you know, the intersections of those topics. That led to several studies and sort of later a book that Bette and I published on exactly that, sort of the various ways in which children, psychology, race, and the law intersect. 

[05:06] Teresa Huizar: 
You’ve kind of made a very nice segue into my next question, actually, which is, there had been really little, if any, existing research looking specifically at race and substantiation rates and child sexual abuse cases, as opposed to other types of trauma treatment, other types of things. However, there had been—and you, I think, did a beautiful outline of that in your paper itself—there had been a body of research on really the impact of myths and stereotypes—particularly racial myths and stereotypes—on case outcomes and juror bias. And can you talk a little bit about that?

Maggie Stevenson: 
Absolutely. So we do have experimental research in the lab. You know, that kind of research in a laboratory context, it’s high in internal validity. We can experimentally control everything, you know, all of the components of our materials. And so, when you do that, you have high arguments for pointing to causality.

You know, we know that the only difference in these participants’ experiences with it was that they believed that the child sexual abuse victim was either Black or Latinx or white. And then when you do that and you find effects on perceived credibility of that victim—which was a study Bette Bottoms did, and she did find that—then we know it has to be the race of the child, right? It can’t be anything else because everything else was held constant. Those studies, I still find them very, you know, seductive. They’re so clean and controlled. 

But you know, you’re right. We didn’t really have the study where we could point to actual cases of real children who had experienced child sexual abuse and how does race shape those outcomes? Now it’s messier because you can’t know, well, were the cases that the Black children experienced equivalent to the cases that the white children experience? But you know, you can … you can do your best to measure and to statistically control for factors that you think might have explained those effects.

And so that’s one thing I did try my best to do. But at the end of the day, you know, I think you do need both methodologies to really sort of paint the full picture. And I think we are getting closer to that now. This study, I think, did help fill in a gap in that literature.

[07:31] Teresa Huizar:
So, related to that, you know, let’s talk a little bit about the study design itself. Just in layman’s terms, describe what you did. [Laughter] You know, how did you design it and how did you approach it? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Yeah, so this is a really good question. And I think, you know, especially for researchers who are interested in forging connections with organizations that serve the population you’re wanting to learn about. For me, this was a lengthy process. You know, I was a new baby professor in 2008, and earlier, as a graduate student, I had done some assessment work for Children’s Advocacy Centers. And so I was eager as a new professor in a new community to forge that connection with the local Children’s Advocacy Center.

And so I reached out, made some connections. They didn’t really go anywhere at first, but over the years, they did. We connected more. And, you know, it turned out that they had all of these data, you know, and they’re just a regional institution. And, you know, they can’t do it all. They can’t run the analyses and test the research questions that they might have. And I said, I would be happy to do that with you. And so it became a bit of a, you know, friendship with the people involved there and this sort of collaborative effort. 

My collaborator was the lead child forensic interviewer at that center there. And so, you know, she had all of these data and had the ability to sort of de-identify all of it to where I could get IRB approval at my institution and code it and analyze that. 

And so what we were able to do was we were able to discern, you know, of these 382 cases that we had from, you know, 2016 to, I want to say 2018, of children who entered this Children’s Advocacy Center, all who underwent a child forensic interview, we were able to have a code that told us whether or not during that interview—now they’re all there for suspicions of child sexual abuse. So we were able to determine, of those children who were undergoing that forensic interview, which of them disclosed that abuse and which of them did not disclose abuse. 

You know, we also had information on their age, their race, their gender. And the same is true for the alleged suspected perpetrators, right? We also had coded information on whether or not that allegation, suspicion of child sexual abuse, was eventually substantiated by the Department of Child Services. So we had that information. 

And I will say, and this is something I’ve run the analyses on, but it was subsequently we also got information on whether or not that abuse allegation led to the perpetrator’s arrest and whether or not that abuse allegation led to prosecutorial referral. Did they refer that case for possible prosecutorial consideration, I suppose I should say?  And so I know those analyses aren’t in that original publication, but I’ve run those and we find the same the same effect. 

[10:35] Teresa Huizar: 
It seems to me that it would take a high level of trust on the part of the Children’s Advocacy Center to partner with a researcher to examine a topic that is fraught and difficult. Right? You’re really looking, in a way, at the clearest possible way of examining whether there’s a racial bias in your own interventions. I think that’s a brave thing to do. And I’m curious about whether this is an idea you brought to them, or they brought to you, or you were brainstorming together and came up with this or—? How did you all decide that this, in this friendship that you’re describing, that you would examine?

Maggie Stevenson: 
We didn’t start out there. And in my experience, you know, especially if you’re kind of trying to get connected and to collaborate with organizations like this, you don’t start with what you want to do. You start with what they want to do. For researchers out there who are wanting to build these connections, I would never recommend pitching your research questions. I would only ever recommend asking them, “What can I do for you? How can I help you learn what you want to know?” And so that’s what I did. And they had questions. 

And the first study that we published was totally different. They had developed and had been administering a child sexual abuse prevention education program in the local schools in the area. And they had gotten into many schools, but not all schools. And sort of the question was, well, what does this child sexual abuse prevention education do? We know from a lot of research, it enhances child education, child knowledge, but no one had really studied its actual effect on abuse substantiation rates, whether or not the child eventually discloses during child sexual abuse forensic interview. 

And so what we were able to do is we were able to, again, with all of the children who entered the forensic interview context, we were able to discern whether or not they had attended a school that had administered that child sexual abuse prevention education program or not. A lovely control group. You know, that’s something we can’t randomly assign, but it naturally happened. And that was delightful for us to be able to sort of compare and see if having been exposed to a child sexual abuse prevention education program affected that child’s subsequent likelihood to disclose child sexual abuse during the forensic interview. And it did. 

So the kids who happened to attend a school where there was a child sexual abuse prevention education program were more likely to disclose during that forensic interview context than kids who hadn’t. And that increased disclosure likelihood in turn drove increased likelihood of abuse substantiation. 

So that was really kind of novel. No one had ever linked a child sexual abuse prevention education program in that way to both disclosure and substantiation. So that was our first publication. And it directly, you know, for them, it was beneficial because it showed them that all of their efforts investing in this child sexual abuse prevention education program were for good. And that, you know, funding should support it. And it was consistent with new policy—you know, Erin’s law, for instance, that was coming out, mandating that all schools in various states—wherever it’s being passed—incorporate child sexual abuse prevention education.

To your question, you’re right. You know, I think especially questions regarding racial bias are sensitive. You know, it’s possible that there would have been some reluctance if that was sort of the outset, but at this point, we’d sort of formed this really, you know, trusting kind of relationship. And at the end of the day, you know, these kinds of questions are just consistent with the missions of these centers. You know, if we think about why do Children’s Advocacy Centers exist?, it’s to help children in this process, in this, you know, very difficult context. It’s to facilitate outcomes that are fair for these kids and that are appropriate for these kids.

And to the extent that there’s racial bias, well we ought to want to know. And we ought to want to be able to address that. So I feel like that was consistent with their goals and their missions and ought to be, I imagine, for all Children’s Advocacy Centers. 

[14:57] Teresa Huizar: 
That’s right. And, you know, it speaks so well of them that they were very interested in determining this so that if there were any, they could address the issues that this study raised for them.

So, let’s kind of turn back to what the study was. You took a group of cases with the Children’s Advocacy Center. You’ve described kind of variables that you controlled for, but also things that you looked at. And what were your specific hypotheses? What were you testing for, essentially? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
So, we were interested in exploring whether there might be main effects of child race on child sexual abuse substantiation likelihood, maybe also perpetrator arrest likelihood, prosecutorial referral likelihood. That was later. But not just main effects of that. We also explored main effects of perpetrator race on, for instance, child sexual abuse substantiation likelihood. 

Now, these things are hard to do, because in an experiment, you could just randomly assign participants to one of four conditions. But in the real world, child race and perpetrator race are just naturally confounded. Most child sexual abuse is same race—child and perpetrator are the same race rather than interracial. And so we really couldn’t look at interactions between child race and perpetrator race. But if we could have, we would have also hypothesized potential interactions such that the child sexual abuse substantiation likelihood would have been highest for cases involving a Black perpetrator or perpetrator of color and a white child, whereas it would have been the lowest for cases involving a white perpetrator and a child of color. 

And, you know, this is in line with a whole host of existing research and theory with respect to stereotypes that people endorse about child sexual abuse victims of color, or just victims of color generally. We could talk about that body of research, but it’s also in line with stereotypes, linking Black people with criminality.

And, you know, I think it’s worth noting that there is sort of this unique legacy of racism in the United States linking sort of like that notion of the bestial Black male rapist. Right? And so, that was invented during the Reconstruction era just following the Civil War as a means of incarcerating and subjecting Black youth and men to forced labor as a way to build back the South. And so, you know, they were charging them with these bogus allegations of raping women, white women in particular. And so this sort of ethos has led to subsequent experimental research showing some evidence that people are particularly punitive if it’s a Black perpetrator and a white victim as compared to any other victim/defendant racial combination. 

Now, more recent experimental literature does not show those kinds of consistent if they’re more complex types of effects. And this is likely because you can’t do studies like that now. People are savvy. The participants suspect that you’re measuring racial bias. The demand characteristics kick in. I tell my students all the time. They’re always interested in manipulating race in these legal contexts. And I’m just like, “Be prepared for it to fail miserably because at the end of the study, when you ask participants to guess what the study was about, so many of them will say outright, ‘Well, you were, you told me that this defendant was Black. So I bet you told the other participants that he wasn’t.’” You know, so they get it. And they are motivated to behave in socially desirable and non-racist ways. So you can’t always find it now in an experimental context. But there’s so many reasons to believe we would still find this in actual real world legal contexts.

[18:47] Teresa Huizar: 
So you’ve been talking about the sort of perpetrator side of this. But you also looked at the victim side of that and how race might intersect with that. And so can you talk about what your hypotheses were there? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Absolutely. So for the victims, what we do know is that, there are, again, negative stereotypes, particularly about victims of color.

We know that Black women and girls in particular are stereotyped as hypersexual, manipulative, and that these negative stereotypes, sometimes referred to as the Jezebel stereotype, are linked experimentally with diminished perceived credibility of Black child sexual abuse victims but not white child sexual abuse victims.

So people endorse these stereotypes. There’s variability in the extent to which people endorse them, but they exist. And they do shape perceived—diminished perceived credibility of children of color. That was the theory that led to the hypothesis that children of color who disclose child sexual abuse are going to be perceived as less credible than white children who would disclose sexual abuse. And that diminished perceived credibility is going to drive diminished abuse substantiation likelihood. 

[20:06] Teresa Huizar: 
So now let’s talk about what you actually found. And so talk to me about your findings and what you—I mean, did any of it surprise you? Or were you just sort of like, “Well, I was expecting to find this and I found it”?

Maggie Stevenson: 
That’s a great question. It was what I had hypothesized. But I will say, you know, you’re not hoping to find these kinds of facts there. They were, you know, upsetting effects. I kind of feel like—and particularly for this study.

So, so we did find that, when white children disclose abuse, their likelihood of abuse substantiation virtually skyrockets. It increases by a multiplicative factor of over 55. But that doesn’t happen for child sexual abuse victims of color. In fact, that, it doesn’t increase the likelihood of abuse substantiation hardly at all.

The same is true for prosecutorial referral. When white children disclose abuse, the likelihood of prosecutorial referral goes up substantially. And that doesn’t even move, it doesn’t even increase the likelihood of prosecutorial referral when children of color disclose. And these were mostly Black or Latinx children, but mostly Black. And so it didn’t surprise me, but I did have the feeling of just sort of wanting to drop kick my computer. You know, it’s just an upsetting effect, really.

[Cross-talk]

Teresa Huizar:
Absolutely, I mean—

Maggie Stevenson:
But yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[21:27] Teresa Huizar:
When you shared these results with the Children’s Advocacy Center, I’m just curious about their reaction. Because it’s one thing as a researcher very familiar with the literature to know that you’re likely to find this. It’s upsetting when you find it, but you are very familiar with the likelihood that you will find it. Whereas that might or might not be true of a multidisciplinary team who is very invested in making sure that they’re doing the right thing. They’re advocating for kids, all of those things. So what was the reaction to that that you received when you shared it? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Yeah. So it’s sort of unfortunate that this sort of happened right—so, like, I was working in this area up until—in this location up until 2021. COVID was happening. I was running these analyses and discovering these sorts of things but had moved institutions. So, just that physical moving away from a community has made it harder to continue to connect and really sort of, like, work with that institution. Now, that is something I do want to do. And, you know, I think there are challenges there that we ought to anticipate. I’m not an intervention scientist. You know, I know that’s a whole discipline and I really respect that researchers who are able to get into an organization and sort of build change and meaningful interventions. I haven’t really done that. You know, this is still new for me and I’m still sort of—that’s a goal I have, which is to sort of, you know, what are the next steps?

Well, obviously, we want to address this. We want to unpack and see, you know, what’s going on here? How is this happening? How can we mitigate it? And I do think that that’s going to take sort of a holistic, all hands on deck approach. And I think you could do that. I think Children’s Advocacy Centers are built for that, you know, that sort of interdepartmental connection is there already. So I am optimistic, but I still think there’s a lot of work left to do. 

[23:26] Teresa Huizar: 
Unquestionably. So I’m wondering with this, you know, you’ve talked about—and the paper itself talked about some implications and sort of next steps. And I’m wondering, for child abuse professionals, I think that one of the things that we have to acknowledge is that intention is not the same as outcome, right? That we have good intentions. We are trying to do the right thing. All of these things. But I think research can be helpful in pointing out to us when, despite our good intentions, there’s a serious course correction that needs to be made somewhere.

And I’m wondering, not with that particular CAC but just in general, and in general for child abuse professionals, in general for CPS [child protective services] and others who may be working within the legal system, what do you think they should take away from these findings? So you may not be there to help them implement those changes, but what do you see as the clear implications that people should be attending to?

Maggie Stevenson: 
I think there’s discussions and conversations about these issues that are happening, but maybe not enough, right? So maybe that’s sort of like a starting place is having these kinds of conversations. 

I will say, too, I feel like so often, you know, we think about child sexual abuse disclosures and race and we sort of ask ourselves, well, what’s going on when a child of color is being interviewed by a white forensic interviewer? And I think these are great questions. You know, does a white interviewer make it so that a child of color is less willing to disclose than maybe a Black forensic interviewer? And you know these things are possible, but we really don’t have a ton of evidence to show that in this child forensic interview context that always happens, although there is some evidence to show that that sometimes does happen. 

But this research shows that, even when these kids are disclosing, what happens afterwards is not up to them. It’s sort of like, they did their job; now it’s time for us to do our job. And what does that mean? And what does that look like? 

And, you know, I’m not naive enough to think that there’s a simple answer to this. I think that we’ve got to think not only about our own racial biases and attitudes that might be contributing to this behavior—that are contributing to this kind of outcome and this kind of disparity. 

But, you know, I also think we need to think about how systemic and institutionalized racism has made it so that Black families are, you know, naturally going to be less trustful of these systems and also more vulnerable in ways that are going to interfere with their ability to participate in these kinds of investigations, in ways that are going to facilitate abuse substantiations and prosecutorial referrals and so on and so forth. 

I feel like there’s new research that’s coming out that’s showing that, you know, simple things like, can you can you take time off your job? You know, you get child care. Can you come be here? Can you support—do you have financial means, you know? And so we know, because of systemic racism, there’s racial differences there. And so these things matter with respect to how child sexual abuse investigations proceed. They shouldn’t matter. But we know that they do. So I think we need to think holistically and systemically. 

[26:41] Teresa Huizar: 
It seems to me, too, that there are some specific decision points that occur in an investigation, and that that is an opportunity to really examine what one is doing to ensure that implicit bias is not having an overweening effect on what happens next.

So, you know, long before you’re worried about people’s transportation here or there or taking the day off, you’re making the decision to substantiate. That’s made the day of the forensic interview most of the time. In fact, immediately thereafter, generally speaking. And so, you know, that’s not something where a whole bunch of other factors are likely to influence that decision.

And so I think that there’s a key opportunity for the CAC in coordinating a lot of what happens and helping organize the discussions that immediately occur after the forensic interview, when the team is kind of convening to discuss what happened in it and what will happen next. That’s a critical intervention point. And I think that it’s something for us as child abuse professionals to be thinking about how those discussions go, what are we discussing, and in what way we’re discussing it and what questions we’re asking each other and ourselves. How are we interacting with the caregiver immediately after the forensic interview that may shape our decision making about how quote unquote cooperative the family is likely to be?

So I think that there are a lot of really practical opportunities when the team is doing the post-interview, sort of convening and conversation and information sharing. I think that’s maybe a more critical juncture than we’ve heretofore known. And so I appreciate that your research is sort of highlighting that that’s not just informal information sharing. That’s really the decision point in many ways for what’s going to happen in terms of justice for a particular kid. And especially kids of color. 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Oh, absolutely. I agree. 

[28:43] Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah. So I’m wondering if you think, you know, we’ve been sort of talking about some of the practical implications of this day-to-day with teams and with Children’s Advocacy Centers. I’m wondering if you see any policy implications for this? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
You know, you made a really good point, sort of paying attention to what happens in that immediate aftermath of that interview. And, you know, it could be that we invest or we support policy that would prioritize considering issues related to equity.

Because I think until we do, ultimately more kids are going to be vulnerable—disproportionately kids who are already vulnerable, is what this, this research would suggest. So I think policy that prioritizes attending to issues related to equity. I would love to see policy that would include sort of, you know, do we collect data? Do we examine these kinds of research questions? Within our own institution, are we accountable for those kinds of, you know, outcomes? I don’t think there is policy right now that does that. But I think that’s a good first step, is just sort of policy that would facilitate the kind of data and the kind of research that would answer these kinds of questions at institutional levels at broader scales. 

You know, this was just one study. And I think we need it at a broader scale and national level. And I think it could happen within individual—and should be happening, you know, at the individual CAC level. I think that’s a good first step because then it does help pinpoint the intersecting moments, the decision making places where we could intervene and consider how are biases shaping these kinds of outcomes?

I think education, you know, is a component of that. Education that prioritizes awareness of racial biases is important. And we should be doing that, but it shouldn’t just be sort of a one-off. You know, you check the box and you did your racial bias training. It needs to sort of be built into the ethos and the culture. And to be continual.

And even there, like, although that all should be happening, I still think we do need sort of meaningful interventions in place where we find where this is happening. I think that the research is showing, you know, these education-based interventions, although important, aren’t going to do it all, right? We need to sort of be able to get a little bit more fine-tuned and intervene in practice. 

[31:27] Teresa Huizar: 
It makes me wonder, you know, just as a small test of change, what would happen if when a child disclosed, if before someone said it was unsubstantiated—they were going to unsubstantiate a case—that they had to really articulate their reasons for that? 

Maggie Stevenson:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar: 
You know? You’ve got to outline it: What is it about this that makes you think this is? Because really when you’re not substantiating something, you’re saying there’s not enough evidence to believe it actually happened. So, what’s the basis for that? 

You know, and I think even making people articulate the basis would be interesting. Because I think now a lot of it is just a sentence or two that gets said and kind of this back and forth. Because it happens very quickly.

I think that’s the other thing that might surprise people that are outside of this world, is that this is not people sitting down for a day-and-a half seminar to debate the merits of a case, right? There’s so many cases. There’s such a volume of this. There’s such experience on the team that typically these conversations are happening in a fairly compressed time frame. And so I think there’s a lot of room, I think, to interrogate how you might make that conversation, at whatever speed it’s happening, more meaningful and addressing the kinds of things that you’re concerned about, and that we’re all concerned about. Which is making sure that we’re making decisions on the facts and not because of some implicit bias that’s rolling around in the background—

Maggie Stevenson:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
that we can’t quite recognize or articulate but is affecting negatively the children who are in front of us and deserve our help. 

[33:05]
 So let me ask you this. You’ve been talking about research. Where’s your research taking you next? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
So I conducted a subsequent sort of analysis of these data because there also are a lot of perpetrators in the sample that are adolescent perpetrators.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Maggie Stevenson:
Adolescent sex offending is pretty common. And so that was sort of another research question that we had was, how does the race of the perpetrator intersect with whether or not that perpetrator is an adult versus an adolescent in terms of outcomes. So abuse substantiation, arrest, prosecutorial referral, that kind of thing. So that was something sort of recently did.

[33:47] Teresa Huizar: 
And what did you find with that? 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Yeah, so with that one, we did find that, when the perpetrators were white, as you would expect and I think hope, I think it’s a developmentally appropriate and reasonable because adolescent perpetrators are just different from adult perpetrators in a lot of ways. They’re less likely to reoffend. They’re more amenable to rehabilitation and to treatment. 

And so what we do find is that when adolescent perpetrators are white, they are diverted from criminal legal system involvement, they’re less likely to be arrested for that child sexual abuse. They’re less likely to be referred for prosecution.

And that didn’t happen, though, for the perpetrators of color again, mostly Black and Latinx  in the sample, but when they were perpetrators of color, whether or not they were adolescents versus adults did not shape their arrest or their prosecutor referral likelihood. An adolescent was as likely as an adult to be referred for prosecution and arrested when there was this child sexual abuse allegation. Which of course, you know, sets the stage for subsequent, you know, long-term lasting life outcomes in all aspects of life, you know—education, employment, you know, future criminal legal involvement as well.

[35:12] Teresa Huizar: 
So I think that that’s just another excellent research, well, an excellent research article, but also it has excellent implications for CACs in that more and more are working actively on cases that involve youth offenders and kids with problematic sexual behaviors. And more and more of them are providing treatment to youth with problematic sexual behaviors.

And so thinking about that unique role they have in, you know, yes, interviewing the kids that have been acted out on, but also providing treatment to these youth who have acted out. That’s a real key intervention point. And there’s an ability for the CAC and the MDT to kind of interrupt what you’re describing and make sure that again, they’re not applying unequal justice and deciding who should be diverted. Because we certainly know that, as you’re saying, these kids are really amenable to treatment. And CACs know that better than anybody, since they’re the ones in many cases treating them.

Maggie Stevenson: 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar: 
Yeah. Well, great. Well, it seems like you’ve got probably lots of interesting research in the queue and yet to be done and yet to be disseminated and all of those things. And we really appreciate you coming here to talk about what you’ve done so far in this important space.

[36:29]
 I’m wondering if there’s anything else I should have asked you and didn’t, or anything else you wanted to make sure that we covered today?

Maggie Stevenson: 
Mmm. That’s a good question. I think we covered everything that I was planning on chatting and sharing with you. So I think, I think we’re good.

[36:42] Teresa Huizar: 
So, Maggie, I hope that CACs continue to partner with you and I’m sure they will. 

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And we just really appreciate you, you know, kind of putting the mirror in front of our faces on some issues that are important for us to look at and examine really carefully and see what we can do to do better and making sure that every kid who comes through the door has access to justice and support and healing and all those things. So thank you so much. 

Maggie Stevenson: 
Absolutely. It was a pleasure chatting with you. 

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[37:08] Teresa Huizar:
Thank you for listening to One in Ten. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. And for more information about this episode or any of our other ones, please visit our podcast website at OneInTenPodcast.org.

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