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The centers, which are funded in part by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, are designed to be child-friendly places where people who need the child’s information - such as law enforcement, child welfare workers and prosecutors - can watch the interview via closed circuit television in another room and then make decisions about how to proceed with investigations and court cases. The interviews are currently considered hearsay, even though they depict the victim’s own statements, because they happen outside of court - at a child advocacy center. When the girl left the courtroom, she found a room where she turned off the lights, hid under a chair, “and was rocking and catatonic for at least an hour,” Bozeman said. She couldn’t answer any question, let alone those about her sexual abuse. In one of Bozeman’s cases, a 10-year-old girl on the stand looked at the jury and froze, Bozeman said. Of those, 23 percent were under the age of 6. In 2021, 57 percent of the children interviewed at Maine’s child advocacy centers, where children talk to trained interviewers after disclosing abuse, were under the age of 12. Complicating her cases even further is that most of them involve children - often young children. She believes sexual assault is the most difficult crime to prove. She will pick only a small percentage for prosecution. Prosecutor Kate Bozeman reviews more than 100 reports of sexual assault each year in Androscoggin County alone to decide which cases she is likely to win in court. The deputy district attorney for the office handling cases in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties is hopeful the change will result in more successful prosecutions. LD 765, sponsored by Anne Carney, D-Cape Elizabeth and signed by Mills on June 16, will now allow children’s recorded interviews with a neutral interviewer to be allowed to be admitted to a court instead of requiring them to testify, though children can still be cross-examined by a defense lawyer. A child’s testimony may be the most critical piece of evidence a jury will consider. They described how some cases never moved forward because child victims were unable to talk in court about what happened to them, even though they had done so in a more child-friendly setting.
Meanwhile, prosecutors and victim advocates shared horror stories of children suffering breakdowns before and after having to testify in front of their alleged abuser and strangers.
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