범죄피해아동의 진술능력을 고려한 효과적인 조사기법에 관한 연구

A Study of Effective Investigation Methods in Consideration of Child Crime Victims’ Capability for Giving Testimony

In general, children are in the process of growing into a mature stage, they are not good at understanding and coping with certain circumstances. The testimony given by these dependent and immature children is mostly based on their accurate memory. However, it is not easy to have these children who are still lack of expressing themselves in language give testimony. The main reason why child testimony has been controversial in terms of reliability is that their memory is inaccurate or inconsistent. This kind of problem may occur because they are children. However, it is sometimes caused by an inappropriate crime investigation method. In addition, children can give wrong testimony because of huge stress from the investigation. Moreover, they are sometimes unable to state some facts until they are specifically asked. Even if distorted memory or linguistic egocentrism is found in child testimony, crime investigation would focus on child ability for giving accurate testimony with good understanding of an investigator’s questions in the past. Recently, however, the investigation method and procedure in consideration of the characteristic of children have become more important than children’s ability for giving testimony in child testimony. Therefore, it is essential for an investigator to try to understand children’s attitude and behavior during investigation. Furthermore, he/she is required to study child psychology and effective investigation methods in advance to get accurate testimony from children. This kind of investigation method and procedure could be a key to reveal the truth of the crime. Therefore, a special investigation procedure should be established when a child joins the crime investigation. After all, the government is obligated to guarantee that child crime victims would get a prompt and appropriate decision and take all possible actions to restore their rights from the crime.