Protective Parent Panic
Anna Salter
Geraldine Crisci
Disclosures during Divorce
&
Coaching Mothers
What is Coaching?
Liar?
1) Know It Isn’t True
Tell Child to Lie
2) Know It isn’t True
Convince Child It Is True
Inadvertent coaching?
1) Believes it’s true
Suggests abuse to child
Inadvertent Coaching
Believe it’s true
Want to protect child
Repeated interviews with suggestions
Evidence?
Mother is angry at father
Mixing and Matching Theories
Angry mother – Doesn’t like father
Takes down father’s pictures
(after disclosure)
Ignored finding him watching
porn with child in room
Ignored erection with child on
his lap
Coaching Mom?
Angry mother – Doesn’t like father
Takes down father’s pictures
(after disclosure)
Ignored finding him watching
porn with child in room
Ignored erection with child on
his lap
n
Angry mother
Thinks maybe red flags
Writes in diary erection is
“no proof of anything”
Upset (not vindicated) at
disclosure
Initially does not believe
Myth 3
Impact of Stereotyping
If mother is angry at father and says
negative things about him to children,
children will produce false reports of child
sexual abuse
Sam Stone Study
Preschoolers
Once a week
4 weeks
12 incidents Sam Stone clumsy
Visited classroom 2 minutes
Did nothing clumsy
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Sam Stone Study
Interviewed 4 times over 4 weeks
Last 3 interviews
Told directly
He had ripped a book
He had soiled a teddy bear
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Sam Stone Study
10 weeks later
Interview
Tell me everything that happened
I heard something about a book . . .
I heard something about a teddy bear . . .
Sam Stone
One or both misdeeds
46%
In response to probe
72%
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Sam Stone
Gently challenged
½ recanted
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Missing Point
Nobody reported sexual abuse
Angry Mothers
Your father left us
Your father doesn’t pay child support
Your father is bad
Your father is a bastard
Implications of Sam Stone
My father is a bastard
He doesn’t pay child support
He’s mean to my mother
NOT
My father sexually abused me
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Sam Stone
No evidence non-sexual stereotyping
Produces
False reports of sexual abuse
( Leichtman & Ceci, 1995)
Sam Stone
No previous experience to contradict
Met Sam Stone 2 minutes
Extrapolation
Incest cases?
Angry mothers, no sexual suggestions
Suggestions Inconsistent with
Experience
Told children 6 million dollar man unable to
carry a can of paint – too heavy
3 weeks later
Rejected suggestion; he was strong
(Ceci et al., 1981)
Role of Memory
Memory increases
Suggestibility decreases
Signs of Coaching
n
Mom believed abuse in absence of disclosure
n
Mom questioned the child repeatedly
n
Child eventually acquiesced
n
Disclosures match mom’s questioning
n
Child preschooler
Cases without Evidence of
Coaching
Disclosure to others, not mother
n  Mom did not believe abuse before disclosure
n  Mom did not intensely question child
n  Mom has negative or ambivalent reaction to
disclosure
n  Mom is distressed, not relieved at disclosure
n  Mom may tell child negative things about father,
but only in nonsexual areas
n  Mother angry irrelevant
n
Angry Mothers?
Angry at father
Say bad things about him
DOES NOT SAY that he abuses children
Accused of “stereotyping”
Myth
Repeated Interviewing
Produces False Reports
True: Repeated Interviewing with
Suggestive Questioning Produces False
Reports
Mousetrap Study
(Ceci, Lyndia, Huffman & Smith, 1994)
Mousetrap Study
Preschoolers
Younger group 3-4
Older 5-6
Interviewed about different events
Some happened; some false
Interviewed parents for true events
Positive and negative
Mousetrap Study
Fictitious Events
Getting hand caught in mousetrap
(negative)
Going on a hot air balloon ride
(positive)
(Ceci, Lyndia, Huffman & Smith, 1994)
Mousetrap Study
“Try to remember if it really happened. We
made this list up by talking to your mother
and father to get them to tell us about
things that really happened to you when
you were younger, but not all of the things
that I am going to read you really
happened.”
Interviewed 7 to 10 times over 10 weeks
(Ceci, Huffman et al., 1994)
Mousetrap Study
True events almost always accurate
Fictitious Events
Hypothesis
“that children would begin by denying that
they remembered the fictitious events, but
over time Increasingly assent to them.”
(Ceci, Lyndia, Huffman & Smith, 1994, p. 395)
Fictitious Events
“Our expectation . . .was not borne out, at least
not overall.”
(Ceci, Lyndia, Huffman & Smith, 1994, p. 396)
Fictitious Events
Initial Session
44% younger children agreed
25% older children agreed
Fictitious Events
By last session
Fewer children agreed to false events
7% decrease older children
8% decrease younger children
(Ceci, Lyndia, Huffman & Smith, 1994)
Summary
“The results of this study demonstrate that
while it is possible to mislead young
children into claiming that they
experienced nonevents, the frequency of
doing so does not increase over time.”
(Ceci et al., 1994, p. 397)
?
[Referring to bicycle study] “As in the
previous study [mousetrap], with each
session children increasingly assented to
false events.”
(Ceci and Bruck, 1995)
?
“Initially when you ask children ages 3 to 6
this question, 99% of them get it right,” but
“by the 10th, 11th week, the majority of 3and 4-year-olds will claim that getting their
hand caught in a mouse trap really
happened.”
(Interview with Ceci, Morning Edition,
Children’s Memories. NPR radio. 6/26/97
•
?
“The mere act of repeatedly imagining
participation in an event caused these
preschoolers to falsely report that they had
engaged in the events when they had not”
(italics added) (Ceci et al., 1997)
?
“By the final interview, more than 1/3 of the
children reported remembering an event
that never occurred, and in most cases
these were events that they had denied
remembering earlier.”
(Leichtman et al., 1997)
?
“At first all the kids say no, but then, once a
week for 10 weeks, they ask the question
again – no coercion, no leading questions
as in the child abuse cases. They just
gently repeat the question. . . . By weeks
four or six or 10, most of the kids are
saying, ‘Yes, it happened.’”
(20/20 From the Mouths of Babes (ABC
television broadcast 10/22/93)
Repeated Interviewing
n
“Repeated questioning across sessions has at
times facilitated memory, possibly because
recalling an event is a form of rehearsal that
serves to reactivate traces. This has been
found in several studies in which children have
recalled approximately 10% more information
on repeated recall versus a single test . . . In
other studies facilitation has not been found.”
(Ceci & Bruck, 1993)
Crazy Mothers?
n
Inadvertent coaching mothers
n
Protective parent panic
n
Mentally ill – severe personality disorders
Protective Parent Panic
n
Parent who did not know about abuse
n
Becomes unhinged at disclosure
n
Acts irrationally
Acts Irrationally
n
Misrepresents facts
n
Transfers emotion to child
n
Poor boundaries – unable to distinguish
between child’s views/needs/wants and
her own
Acts Irrationally
Susie
4-years-old
n  On trip with mom, mom’s friend and
friend’s daughter
n  Girls taking baths
n  Men in the house – girls ran around house
nude
n
Friend – too old to run around nude with
men in house
n  Discussion of good touch/bad touch
n  Susie – dad had touched her “squeal”
before
n  Friend: What is “squeal”
n  Susie pointed to vagina and pulled it apart
n
Friend: Happened in bathtub, right?
n  Susie: “ No, in the my bedroom.”
n  Friend: “Did dad say anything to you
when he did this?”
n  Susie: “No, he just makes a sound like a
pirate and he says UHHHH” – made a
moaning sound
n
Friend told mother and said to call child
protective services
n  Mother: “I can’t do that. I’d lose my chld
support.”
n  Fried called.
n
DV against father
n  Police came
n  Downstairs neighbor came out
n  Were police going to do anything about
how he’s treating that chld
n  Crying during shower time
n
One night a “terrorized sound”
n  Child “crying and crying and saying,”NO,
No.”
n  Went upstairs
n  Dad: She’s fine. Has some bathing
issues.
n
Dad brought Susie home
Mom asked him to fix fish tank motor
Wanted him to wait at door
He pushed her aside and went to get motor
“He took one hand like one hand on my arm
and just sorta” moved her aside.
Susie says, “Come in, daddy. Come in.”
He gets mad – extension cord
n  Goes in her room and sees his shotgun
n  Demands she give it to him
n  She says no and he yells
n  He doesn’t take shotgun; doesn’t ask
again
n
n
Sends note to her attorney that she had to
call police because dad had threatened
her and her daughter with a loaded
shotgun and at that moment she feared for
both her life and Susie’s because he was
in a blind rage.
DA refused to prosecute
n  She said it was because she forgot one
small push
n  Clamed dad had friends in DA’s office
n