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During his questioning, Attorney Brian Neary pointed to standard practices that call for interviewing childen of 20 to 25 minutes.
The girl in the Leaf case was interviewed for 123 minutes — including a 4-minute period during which the chief investigator, Lt. Cora Taylor, left her alone in the interview room while she located “penis dolls” — Neary said.
- BULLETIN: The trial was briefly halted today after a water leak caused a light fixture to spark and smoke, forcing the evacuation of the Bergen County Justice Center twice this morning. Business resumed around 11:30 a.m.
Just before Taylor left the room the girl asked to speak with her mother, but the investigator discouraged her, saying, “We’ll be finished in a few minutes and you can talk to your mother then.”
The length of the interview was more than four times longer than recommended by Cornerhouse, the prosecutor’s gold standard for evaluating child sex abuse, said Neary, a former prosecutor (above, left).
The child was fidgeting and, with a history of toileting issues, “had an accident” because Taylor wasn’t taking the visual and verbal cues that she was uncomfortable because she had to go to the bathroom, he insisted.
Despite the Cornerstone guidelines, Taylor countered, “there is no restriction” on interview time as long the youngster is responsive.
“If the child is engaged, focused, paying attention and clearly is responsive to the questions being asked, and if outside of telling me they don’t want to continue, I will proceed and interview the child,” she said.
Taylor and Neary also clashed over the best method of questioning a youngster — free recall, focused recall, multiple choice or yes/no — and what were or weren’t leading questions.
Taylor said “free recall” questioning is considered best — an example being: “Tell me what happened.”
A focused recall, she said, “contains information the child provided in a free recall question.”
Both agreed that leading questions “contain the answer in the question,” but they disagreed over which of those posed by Taylor did.
Neary played the video, examining her methods, question-by-question.
At one point, Taylor asks the youngster whether Leaf made him touch her. She said he didn’t.
“Remember, I told you everything we talk about in here is the truth,” Taylor says on the video.
At that point, the girl changes the story.
“Do you hear the tone of your voice?” Neary demanded.
“My tone is the tone,” Taylor responded. “You can hear it on the video.”
Other issues that emerged over the two days included a 21-minute gap in the videotape of the forensic interview.
In the first half hour, the child steadfastly denies she was abused. After the gap, her story changes.
STORY / PHOTO: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
PREVIOUS:
EXCLUSIVE: A retired investigator testified today that Bergen County detectives searched for child pornography on the work computer of former Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf — a fact apparently not told to defense lawyers or prosecutors before his child sex abuse trial began this week. READ MORE ….
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EXCLUSIVE: The second day in the child sex-abuse trial of former Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf in Hackensack today featured a former investigator testifying about an interview she observed with the then-4-year-old girl who prosecutors say was the victim. READ MORE ….
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UPDATE: Showing considerable composure, an 8-year-old girl testified in Hackensack today that former FOX 5 reporter Charles Leaf never touched her and that molestation allegations she made to a therapist years ago were fed to her by her nanny, whom she called “Weronika.” READ MORE ….
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