Perspectives on improving communication during police interviews: insights from police officers and individuals convicted of child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse offences are abhorrent to society requiring interviews with suspects to be conducted with professionalism and understanding. This becomes challenging if an officer’s emotional responses and reactions to a suspect’s statements or descriptions hinder their ability to provide a full account. To explore this, questionnaires were distributed to detectives from four police forces in England and to convicted child sex abuse offenders in an English prison regarding four theoretical models related to cognitive distortions and the behaviours commonly referred to as “grooming”. Content analysis and Principal Factor Analysis were performed on the data obtained. Both detectives and convicted child sex offenders believed that a better understanding of cognitive distortions could increase the likelihood of openness and admissions during interviews. Additionally, both groups perceived that enhanced training would enable officers to more effectively identify and interpret these distortions, resulting in more effective interviews characterised by reduced negativity and aggression.PRACTICE IMPACT STATEMENT The research demonstrated that interviewing officers need to understand child abuser grooming behaviours, motivations, implicit theories, and cognitive distortions in order to minimise dominance and negative behaviours in interview. This has led to the development of two research-based training courses, compliant with UK legislation and practice, that are focused on enhancing child sex abuser suspect interviews.