PUBLISHER’S NOTE: I first became aware of the “Forensic Experiental Trauma
interview” early in 2015, from an article thatappeared in a Portland, Oregon
street newspaper called ‘Street Roots News’. The article truly caught my attention. I responded with a
post on Monday, February 2, 2017, under the heading: “Forensic Experiential
Trauma Interview: “(FETI): Why an article on this unique method for conducting
in sex crime investigations published by a Portland, Oregon
street newspaper – Street Roots News – caught my attention! (I am running the
entire article below as I expect I will be devoting more space to FETI as it appears to be proliferating in North America. The post began: “PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Every once in a
while I am confronted with information, an article, a report, or a study,
that makes me pause for a moment or two, and say to myself,
"Hmmmm. Most interesting indeed!" The following recently
published article, published by "Street Roots News" falls in
this category. Street Roots News says it "creates income
opportunities for people experiencing homelessness and poverty by producing a
newspaper and other media that are catalysts for individual and social change."
I am intrigued for several reasons: First, I had never heard of "the
Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview", or "FETI," which is the
subject of the article - described as a "technique (that) can
be broken down into three basic steps designed to enable the officer to collect
as much forensic psychophysiological evidence as possible." Second: The
article says that "most officers" investigating sex crimes have been
using the controversial Reid Technique of interrogation on complainants.
That's news to me! (I have seen many critiques of The Reid Technique.
This is the first time that I have heard an allegation that it can
traumatize a complainant in a sex crime investigation. The reality is that the notorious Reid Technique has often
been criticized for traumatizing possibly innocent crime suspects during
interrogations. HL) Third: There is a reference to the job of the
officer conducting a FETI interview as "taking a disjointed
story and translating it into a report that makes sense,” he says. Hmmm. I was
taught in Criminal Procedure 101 that the police investigator's job was
to get a straight forward narrative to determine whether a criminal
charge is to be laid, and, if so, for use in court. That's why the idea
of a police officer filling in the blanks and
"translating" what the subject was saying caught my attention.
Four: We are told that the FETI technique is being viewed favourably by
U.S Army investigators and that "It's quickly taking hold in other
branches of the military as well." Hmmmmm! Five: A police officer who is
reported to lead a sex crimes unit and has taken a course on FETI, is
reported as saying that exhibiting signs of the neurobiology of
trauma can make a victim appear more believable - and that these signs can then
aid the prosecution, serving as 'psychophysiological evidence' that the victim
actually experienced a violent attack. This also had my wheels spinning. Aren't
we in a bit of trouble when a police officers entrusted with the task of
determining whether a crime has occurred see their job as being to make a
victim appear more believable - and when, after taking a course, police
officers use "signs of the neurobiology of trauma" to "aid the
prosecution" by "serving as psychophysiological evidence that the victim
actually experienced a violent attack?" I hope this post will not be seen
as an attack on FETI as, until I read this article I knew absolutely nothing
about it - and I know nothing more than what I read. There is no doubt in mind that FETI is well-motivated,
and that it has been set up to overcome serious barriers that victims of sexual
crimes are all too often confronted with. I am just trying to describe my
initial reaction and to bring FETI to the attention of the readers of this Blog
– and to make sure that FETI has a valid, proven scientific basis before it is
accepted and becomes a regular
fixture in the criminal courts. I am concerned that if there is not a valid scientific basis innocent persons persons will be wrongfully prosecuted and face wrongful convictions - and the victims of sexual crimes will face having their cases thrown out of court because of exposure to legal attacks based on the lack of a scientific foundation for FETI .
True, the article wasn't published by the New York Times or the
Washington Post. Wikipedia tells us that Street Roots News is a biweekly street
newspaper published in Portland,
Oregon, United States. The paper is sold by members of
the local homeless community and is published every two
weeks on a Friday. Vendors receive 75 cents for every $1 paper they sell. The
paper features alternative news, interviews, and poetry written by local
journalists as well as people experiencing homelessness or working with the
homeless." I am a fan and supporter of street newspapers. They
assist the homeless - and I often find their articles, like this one, to
be interesting, informative and provocative. Occasionally
they run content that you don't find in the mainstream media. So Bravo to
author Emily Green and Street Roots.” News. You certainly caught my attention! HL"
STORY: "How understanding the neurobiology of trauma helps Portland police work with domestic violence survivors," by Emily Green, published by Street Roots on January 20, 2015. (Street Roots News is a biweekly street newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, United States.)
STORY: "How understanding the neurobiology of trauma helps Portland police work with domestic violence survivors," by Emily Green, published by Street Roots on January 20, 2015. (Street Roots News is a biweekly street newspaper published in Portland, Oregon, United States.)
GIST: (This is the entire story): "Becky”
was in a state of disbelief. One week ago she told her boyfriend she was
pregnant. Now he was handing her a hat, insisting, Becky says, that she cover
up the bleeding wound he had allegedly inflicted to the back of her head only
moments earlier. She needed to get herself together. A neighbor had called
9-1-1 during the commotion, and now two Portland police officers were waiting
for someone to answer the couple’s front door. “It happened so fast. I was in complete shock,” says Becky,
who asked that we not use her real name. “I just did what he said. I didn’t
realize how bad it was,” she says. In that state of shock she told the officers
at the door that nothing had happened and that she was OK. “They left without
even taking my name,” she says. “I thought for sure he was going to get
arrested, but he didn’t.” Domestic violence cases are often a challenge. From
victims who don’t want to testify to a lack of witnesses and physical evidence,
they are uniquely difficult to prosecute. In 2013, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office
pressed charges in less than half the domestic violence cases it reviewed. And
over the past decade, resources to the Portland Police Bureau’s Domestic
Violence Enhanced Response Team (DVERT) and Domestic
Violence Reduction Unit (DVRU) have been reduced. They now
have about half the manpower they did 10 years ago – five officers assigned to
the DVRU and two officers plus a Multnomah County Sheriff Office detective
assigned to DVERT. With this staffing level, they have the resources to
investigate only about 7 percent of domestic violence reports received by the
department each year. In 2013, out of a total of 8,179 domestic violence
reports, only the 586 most serious cases were assigned to the domestic violence
unit. About 3,000 of the calls
were categorized as non-crime reports and required no further action. Sgt.
Ronald Mason, head of DVERT and DVRU, says that the call from Becky’s neighbor
was most likely categorized this way. The cases the domestic violence team cannot take on fall to
other PPB officers. However, Portland’s domestic violence team has an advantage
that other officers, and in fact the majority of police across the country do
not. They underwent a specialized training last summer on what some are calling
a revolution in the way investigators interview violent crime victims — which
can be key to ultimately closing a case. Behind the shock and confusion Becky was feeling, as she talked to officers at
her front door, is the neurobiology of trauma. In the event of a traumatic
experience, chemicals released in the brain impair a victim’s cognitive
functioning, making it difficult to think logically, says Dr. Christopher
Wilson, a psychologist who has trained law enforcement across the country how
to interact with people who are experiencing this phenomenon. He says
traditionally, most officers are trained in the Reid technique of interviewing
— the systematic who, what, when, where and why line of questioning — which can
be very effective when trying to extract information from a perpetrator. But
when officers take a similar, controlled and direct approach to interviewing
someone who has just experienced a violent attack, it can cause anxiety and
fear, causing the survivor to shut down and feel unsafe answering questions
truthfully. The traditional
practice of interviewing has been known to perpetuate self-blame in domestic
violence survivors. (Why did you stay with him if you knew he was violent?) It
can also result in police reports containing insufficient and contradictory
information. To the un-trauma-informed investigator, many behaviors exhibited
by someone who’s just experienced a traumatic event double as signs of lying.
Behaviors such as an inability to remember the chronological order of events,
nervousness, avoiding eye contact or of recalling sounds and smells with more
ease than physical details about his or her attacker, are all the result of
effects trauma has on the brain. In the days that follow, the survivor can
often remember details of the violent episode with more clarity. Discrepancies
between the initial report taken at the scene of the crime and follow-up
interviews can strengthen the abuser’s defense and lead police, attorneys and,
in high-profile cases, the public, to blame the victim. Experts agree it would
be ideal to wait a couple days before interviewing the victim at all because
it’s difficult for someone who has just experienced trauma to give a coherent
account of events. The Portland Police Bureau is aware of this phenomenon,
citing it as the reason for delaying interviews with its own officers for 48
hours after they’ve been involved in a shooting. While the police bureau isn’t
delaying victim and witness interviews, Mason says that a couple days have
usually passed between the time the initial report on a domestic violence case
is taken and when his unit follows up. He says the initial report is like a
snapshot, and by the time his investigators contact the victim, it’s easier to
get a cleaner and more accurate picture of events. Mason says that while his officers already had a basic
understanding of the dynamics of domestic violence, his squad got a better
understanding of the physiology of trauma and has incorporated things they
learned from attending this unique brand of training, created by Russell
Strand, in August. PPB’s Sex Crimes
Unit will receive an abbreviated version of the same
training later this month at a seminar put on by the Oregon attorney general’s
office. Strand is a former
military police investigator and current chief of Behavioral Sciences Education
and Training Division at the Military Police School at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.
He has turned an approach psychiatrists have been using since the dawn of
modern psychology into a program that teaches criminal investigators how to
interview trauma victims. It’s called the Forensic Experiential Trauma
Interview, or FETI. The technique can be broken down into three basic steps
designed to enable the officer to collect as much forensic psychophysiological
evidence as possible. The first step is genuine empathy, as Strand explains
that victims should never be treated as witnesses to their own crime. The
second step is this question: Help me understand what you are able to remember
about your experience. And finally, shut up and listen. As Mason explains it, a trauma victim’s
memory is “like a jigsaw puzzle that’s been thrown into the air. The puzzle
pieces land all over the place.” He says it’s up to the detective to collect
the pieces from the victim as they are disseminated, sorting out the important
pieces that help reveal the story. “It’s taking a disjointed story and
translating it into a report that makes sense,” he says. Investigators in the
U.S. Army have fully adopted the FETI approach, and it’s quickly taking hold in
other branches of the military as well. According to David Markel, one of the
nations foremost FETI experts, it’s made a big difference in the military. “What we’re getting from our field
agents in the military is that this manner of approach in interviewing victims
of trauma is having a phenomenally good affect on how these cases are
investigated,” says Markel. “It’s also having a great effect on how they’re
prosecuted and how they’re perceived by other soldiers and other military
personnel. We’re actually getting fewer complaints from victims about how they
are treated by investigators because this is a much more empathetic approach.” According
to Sgt. Peter Mahuna, who leads PPB’s Sex Crimes Unit and has already taken a
course on FETI, exhibiting signs of the neurobiology of trauma can make a
victim appear more believable. Markel says these signs can then aid the
prosecution, serving as psychophysiological evidence that the victim actually
experienced a violent attack. Markel
served as a lead investigator at the Lafayette Police Department in Colorado
for 18 years and worked as a law-enforcement training consultant before he
began working with Strand to train Army investigators on the FETI technique.
Now that it’s been implemented in the military, he’s turning his attention
toward training civilian law enforcement and has taught investigators in
Ashland how to conduct this style of interview. He says officers who have
received this type of training make up a very small percent of law enforcement across
the county, putting officers in PPB’s sex crimes and domestic violence units
ahead of the curve. But most of
PPB’s 950 police officers have not received this training, and they are the
officers who ultimately handle the bulk of the department’s domestic violence
cases. Mason says it would cost about $800 to train each officer through
Strand’s program, but Mahuna says he is exploring ways of extending a shorter
and less-expensive form of this training to the rest of the bureau, hoping it
might eventually be worked into its annual weeklong in-service training. PPB spokesman Pete Simpson says that,
“only a few people have been though the FETI Training and there is still a long
way to go before it would be proposed as a standard for the entire organization.”
To date, only one Multnomah County sheriff detective, who is also a member of
PPB’s domestic violence team, has taken a class on FETI. But the sheriff’s
office is reportedly considering using the principles she learned during the
course she took with DVERT for the future training of its first responders and
other uniformed units. Martha Strawn Morris, director of Multnomah County and
city of Portland’s Gateway
Center for Domestic Violence, works closely with DVRU
officers in her work. First responders to 9-1-1 calls give survivors
information about her center, and many times women will follow up with her
office the next day to connect with resources. Sometimes a police officer will
meet a survivor at the center to either write up a report or to take down
follow-up information. Strawn
Morris says she has noticed a difference between the way officers in Portland’s
domestic violence unit interview a survivor and the way patrolmen from East
Precinct, who are summoned when a DVRU officer isn’t available, interview a
survivor. “The DVRU is less likely to victim-blame and is more sensitive to the
dynamics of domestic violence. They’re just better trained on this particular
topic. I’ve come to believe, working with domestic violence survivors over the
last four years, day in and day out, that victim blaming is the default
position for all of us. It’s not just police officers,” Strawn Morris says.
“I’ve heard patrol officers really emphasize the fact of (the survivor’s)
intimate relationship — ‘Well, he was your boyfriend right?’” She says the
implication is that the survivor chose him, knew what he was like, and
therefore invited this. “And unfortunately, many survivors hold those same
beliefs,” Strawn Morris says. “And then the cop comes along and enforces that
same belief.” “Amanda,” who also
asked that we not use her real name, didn’t feel as if she was being heard
after multiple attempts to involve law enforcement in the aftermath of an abusive
relationship she had ended. At one point she says her ex-boyfriend forced his
way into her home, and fearing for her life, she called 9-1-1. She says the two
officers who responded to her call seemed to be indifferent about her
situation. At the time, she says, her whole body was shaking and her mind had
completely shut down. “I couldn’t advocate for myself or answer any of their
questions,” she recalls. She says her ex-boyfriend “was sitting right there
intimidating me, and right before the police got there he was chasing me around
the house threatening to kill me.” According to court documents, that scenario
ended in the police asking her ex-boyfriend to leave, which he did. After
filing pre-restraining and pre-stalking orders, Amanda eventually sought the
help of the Gateway Center. It was there that she was connected with DVRU and
FETI-trained Officer Dan Romanowski. She says he appeared to genuinely care
about her situation. “I felt like he really believed me,” she says. “He seemed
to go out of his way to help me.” Once she adjusted from the shock of her
alleged attack, Becky also decided to press charges. She went to the Gateway
Center, where advocates connected her with an officer to start processing her
case. Markel says FETI took about four years to become standard practice in the
U.S. Army, and that FETI programs are currently being developed to teach
officers how to interview perpetrators too, because they often identify
themselves as victims. But law
enforcement can be slower to adopt new ways of doing things, says Markel. He
says it can be difficult for most police officers to wrap their heads around a
concept that puts the interview in the hands of the victim. “It’s so ingrained
in us, as law enforcement officials, that we have to be in control of all our
interviews,” Markel says. “But once they truly understand it and start to see
it work, it becomes easier and easier.” ‘Options’ program a new approach to sexual
assault The police department in Ashland has implemented an
innovative new approach to handling sexual assault cases. The You
Have Options program puts decisions about how to move
forward with an investigation into the hands of the victim. The program’s creator,
Detective Carrie Hull, says that since its adoption in 2013, the number of
sexual assaults reported each year has more than doubled. The department has
also seen a drastic increase in positive interactions with law enforcement,
Hull says. “The techniques that we
use are not complicated and they are not new to law enforcement. We just have
formalized them so survivors understand that these actually are options at the
police departments that offer them,” Hull says. She says the real difference
between this program’s approach and the traditional way of conducting an
investigation is time. When a person’s home is burglarized, the residents may
be traumatized, but they want the burglar caught and want police to move
forward with an investigation right away, she says. They may feel bad about
leaving their front door unlocked, but the police are not likely to chastise
them for that mistake. But with a sexual assault case, says Hull, the victim is
more likely to internalize mistakes he or she made, and is going to need a lot
more time to process that decision. For that reason, she says the Ashland
Police Department is ready to listen when the victim is ready to talk. The
program also gives victims the option to stay anonymous, have someone else file
the report for them, decide whether or not investigators will contact the
person who assaulted them and include them in other decisions about the
investigation. “There are
evidentiary problems that can come from that,” Hull says, “but the alternative
is, if they never come in, we’re never going to get to a place where we are
potentially turning a case over to a DA where those evidentiary considerations
will come in.” In 2014, Sgt. Peter
Mahuna, head of PPB’s Sex Crimes Unit, attended a weeklong training on the You
Have Options program. A main component of the program is the Forensic
Experiential Interview (FETI). Mahuna says he likes the program and may
implement aspects of it. He says it would be difficult for a department the
size of Portland’s to sign on officially considering that to be a recognized
member, all 1,100 people who work in the bureau, including nonsworn staff,
would have to undergo the training."
The entire
story can be found at:
http://news.streetroots.org/2015/01/20/how-understanding-neurobiology-trauma-helps-portland-police-work-domestic-violence
http://news.streetroots.org/2015/01/20/how-understanding-neurobiology-trauma-helps-portland-police-work-domestic-violence
