Remembering rape: Police interview procedures and complainant meta-memory processes during police interviews

The current processes involved in reporting a sexual assault requires victims to recollect the offense multiple times to medicolegal professionals. This process is distressing and can contribute to victim re-traumatisation, as their recollections of the offense and their accuracy are often challenged (Antaki et al, 2015). Victims have likened the process to a 'second' rape (e.g., Lees, 1993; McMillan & Thomas, 2009). Additionally, dismissive, non-supportive and challenging responses from legal professionals can be deleterious effects to victims' recovery (e.g., Ullman & Peter-Hagene, 2014), and be detrimental to their memory recall.
Our project partner, Saint Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC), provides forensic, counselling and aftercare services to individuals who have been sexually violated. We will collaborate with SARC to gain invaluable insight into practitioner's perceptions of interviews, victims experiences of the process, and the legal and operational challenges that arise in investigating offenses. Using this knowledge, we will then draw on strategic meta-memory process theory - which predicts information volunteered by rape complainants depends on their certainty that the information is correct - (e.g., Goldsmith, Koriat, & Panksy, 2005) to develop and test a new psychological theory about meta-memory processes during interviews, with a focus on the prevention of re-traumatisation of victims.
Previous research has argued that eyewitness meta-memory performance is poor, and that confidence is a poor indicator of accuracy (Wixted & Wells, 2017). However, recent research paints a more positive picture in showing that confidence is a reliable indicator of eyewitness memory performance, even when memory strength is low (e.g., Colloff, Wade, Wixted, & Maylor, 2017; Flowe et al., 2017). Strategic memorial process theories predict that when memory encoding is weak, and when the plausibility of their account is challenged individuals will decrease the informativeness and be less confident of their statements under high criterion instructions. Across 4 experiments, our project will answer the following questions: (1) How often do victims experience challenges regarding the accuracy of their memory during police interviews, and how does this affect their engagement with the interview and legal process? (2) How do legal practitioners evaluate the accuracy and reliability of complainant statements during police interviews? (3) How does memory strength and report criterion placement affect the accuracy and reliability of information disclosed over the course of the interview? (4) How are meta-memory processes and memory accuracy affected by the current procedures that are used to interview complainants?
Through our collaboration with SARC, interviews with medicolegal practitioners and victims of sexual assault will be conducted to better understand the context in which victims are interviewed and how this affects their memory reporting. Then, using the 'participants choice paradigm', we will develop an interactive dating scenario and interview participants using a standard two-phase police protocol. Instructions will be used to manipulate participant's memory report criterion (high criterion, low criterion, and current police instructions). We will vary memory strength by manipulating the retention interval between scenario encoding and the interview in one study and vary whether the participant is challenged about the accuracy of their free recall account in another. Accuracy will be measured by determining the number of correct and incorrect details reported during the interview, and confidence will be collected through expressions of (un)certainty. This project will contribute to research on complainant meta-memory processes during police interviews, and how these interviews can be better conducted through the implementation of trauma--informed protocols to ensure the prevention of re-traumatisation.