ABSTRACT
For the cognitively unarmed child, an interrogation by experts is no contestÐchildren can be made to say things that are incriminating, even if they are false. In the summer of 1999, the city of Chicago witnessed a grisly murder and sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl named Ryan Harris. In the aftermath of discovering Ryan's body, two boys, aged 7 and 8, confessed to murdering her. The boys made their confessions without counsel present during a lengthy interrogation. Later, a 27-year-old ex-convict's semen was found on the dead girl's body and he now stands indicted for her murder. Why would those two boys falsely admit to things they didn't do? One possible answer lies in their eagerness to please adult authority ®gures. Children might respond in very compliant attitude during the interrogation, as they may be highly praised and given attention that is rare in their everyday life. The boys in the Chicago case sat around a table with two uniformed of®cers who held hands around the table and pledged to be on the ``same team''. The of®cers bought the boys food and explained that they could go home as soon as they helped the rest of the team clear up Ryan Harris' murder. After several hours of interrogation without the presence of an attorney or family member, each boy ended up admitting to a series of behaviours that they almost certainly could not have enacted, including raping the dead girl.
