The Emerging Investigative Practice of Tele-Forensic Interviewing: Implications for Children’s Testimony

Safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the release of provisional guidelines for interviewing child witnesses via videoconference applications, and some interview centers became early demonstration sites for tele-forensic interviewing (tele-FI). This chapter discusses four cornerstones that underlie emerging support for tele-FI: investigative challenges predating the pandemic, increased access to and familiarity with digital media, encouraging results from studies that compared children’s performance across face-to-face and tele-FI modes, and the legal defensibility of tele-FI. The future of tele-FI will depend on results from future studies that evaluate children’s and interviewers’ reactions to tele-FI in the field, how tele-FI influences perceptions of child witness credibility and case trajectories, and the impact of tele-FI on the well-being of children, families, and communities served by the practice.