Podcast on Crimes Against Women
The Conference on Crimes Against Women (CCAW) is thrilled the announce the Podcast on Crimes Against Women (PCAW). Continuing with our fourth season, the PCAW releases new episodes every Monday. The PCAW serves as an extension of the information and topics presented at the annual Conference, providing in-depth dialogue, fresh perspectives, and relevant updates by experts in the fields of victim advocacy, criminal justice, medicine, and more. This podcast’s format hopes to create a space for topical conversations aimed to engage and educate community members on the issue of violence against women, how it impacts our daily lives, and how we can work together to create lasting cultural and systemic change.
Podcast on Crimes Against Women
How Trauma-Informed Interviews Prevent False Confessions and Protect Survivors
One decision in the interview room can change a life—or ruin it. We sit down with interrogation expert David Thompson to unpack why survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking are uniquely vulnerable to false confessions, and how science‑backed interviewing protects truth without compromising justice. The conversation moves past TV tropes and into what the data actually show: a significant share of DNA exonerations include confessions that never should have happened. We explore the three core errors that drive these outcomes—misclassification, coercion, and contamination—and translate them into plain‑language risk points that any investigator, advocate, or attorney can spot and fix.
Rather than glorifying confrontation, we focus on curiosity, empathy, and structure. David explains how trauma‑informed, rapport‑based interviewing increases disclosure, accuracy, and case solvability—all backed by large-scale field studies. We talk about why behavioral “lie detection” fails, how the false evidence tactic breeds memory distrust, and what simple safeguards—recording, open‑ended prompts, time limits, legal counsel, trained advocates—do to keep both survivors and cases safe. Along the way, we examine gendered bias in financial abuse cases - pointing to an example featured in the Netflix documentary film, "Tinder Swindler." We also explore youth and disability as vulnerability multipliers, and the ripple effects wrongful convictions have on public trust and real offender accountability.
If you work in law enforcement, legal practice, advocacy, or forensic nursing—or you’re simply a citizen who cares about justice—this discussion offers a practical roadmap to prevent harm while getting better results.
The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics, multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
SPEAKER_01:In this country, 31 million crimes. 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes, there is a murder. Every five minutes, there is a rape, every two to five minutes, there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business. And I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
SPEAKER_02:Today's conversation will be about false confessions and wrongful convictions, primarily of domestic violence, sexual assault, or trafficking victims and survivors, women who, in moments of desperation, either engaged in criminal activity to cope or survive, were the victims of a crime and not believed or who killed their abuser. Survivors are especially vulnerable to coercive police interrogation tactics, including long high-pressure questioning, false evidence, or promises of leniency. Many others falsely confess out of fear, hopelessness, or misunderstanding, believing that they can clear it up later in court. Today we'll explore how investigative interviewing, the initial phase where trust and openness are built, can make or break the ethical foundation of an interview. When done right, it encourages accurate, detailed disclosures. When done wrong, it can lead to devastating consequences. David Thompson, an expert in interviewing and interrogation techniques, will help us examine how trauma-informed approaches can protect survivors from further harm. David Thompson is a partner and president of Wicklander Zulowski and Associates, responsible for the company's strategic vision and oversees the business's day-to-day operations. Mr. Thompson also leads the evolution of interview and interrogation curriculum development to provide research-based investigative tools to practitioners while driving change in the industry. He is a highly requested speaker who has presented customized training sessions to clients in both the private and public sectors. Additionally, Mr. Thompson has presented at public sector training sessions, including multiple organized crime associations, as well as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Marshall Service, New York State Office of Attorney Generals, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and many others. Mr. Thompson has also delivered seminars domestically and internationally for multiple Fortune 500 companies. He hosts the Truth Be Told podcast that focuses on mastering the art of strategic conversations. Dave, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about such an important topic.
SPEAKER_02:Today we'll be discussing your work in the field of strategic conversations. And it may be important to make the distinction that there are interviews and interrogations of perpetrators or offenders, and then interviews and interrogations of victims or survivors that can lead to a false confession or a wrongful conviction for both parties. So for the purpose of this podcast episode, we would like to focus on how victims and survivors can end up falsely confessing to the commission or complicity of a crime, or can be re-victimized or re-traumatized when they are recalling details of a crime against them and they are not believed or being taken seriously. So that being said, before we really dive into the whole topic, help us understand your background. What led you to the interview and interrogation space and ultimately to the work that you're doing now?
SPEAKER_00:My background is kind of a little bit of all over the place. I worked in the field conducting investigations. The company that I'm representing here, Wicklander Zelowski, has been in the field of training and teaching interview and interrogation techniques for over four decades. So really a long time of teaching effective communication strategies. And I know what we'll get into today is how much of that has changed over the last four decades and really more specifically the last 10 years. But for me, I was somebody who was in the field as a practitioner conducting interviews and investigations and just took a passion and an interest into how research can impact science and practice and learned a lot about wrongful convictions and false confessions in the most recent years and brought that into our training curriculum.
SPEAKER_02:So how has that become your niche topic?
SPEAKER_00:I grew a passion for how powerful communication can be sometimes in the wrong way and understanding the impact that investigators can have with good intent, but maybe the wrong outcome. And really the kind of turning point for me, like most people nowadays, I got hooked on watching Netflix documentaries and I saw the Making a Murderer documentary back almost 11 years ago now about Brendan Dassey's case up in Wisconsin. And I saw this interrogation of a young, vulnerable person, interviewee, Brendan, and immediately was frustrated and aggravated and also felt like, hey, if we've got this platform of training investigators, we also have a responsibility to stand up for when we don't feel like it's being done right. And at that time, I kind of took a passion of learning about what's the impact of improper investigation techniques, and since then have really learned a lot more about how this impacts survivors, interviewing witnesses and then interviewing maybe suspects or people of interest in different crimes.
SPEAKER_02:This is a topic that has not been talked about very much until recently. This is kind of more current information, and listeners may not realize the magnitude of false confessions and wrongful convictions, especially as it relates to domestic violence survivors. Can you share some statistics of how pervasive this phenomenon is?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know what's crazy when whenever I discuss false confessions, whether it's in a training room or in a courtroom, people immediately think, well, I would never falsely confess. This is probably just something I see on a TV show or a documentary or Law and Order. But in the last three decades now, thanks to groups like the Innocence Project and other groups, DNA has been able to show us tangibly and substantially how many proven innocent people have also been wrongly convicted and falsely confessed. And what they have found, and the numbers change as we continue to get more data, but approximately 30% of DNA proven wrongful convictions, meaning these are not cases turned over on appeal. These are cases where DNA has been able to prove these people were innocent. Between 25 and 30% of those cases contained a false confession. And these are from suspects of maybe rape or homicide cases. And so when we think about that number, which is pretty staggering, that means courts have allowed those confessions to be admissible. That means jurors have heard those confessions. And when we relate that to survivors or people who've experienced trauma, the research shows that anybody who's been exposed to trauma, especially maybe like a domestic violence survivor, is even more susceptible or vulnerable to falsely confessing. A lot of those same elements in an interrogation room can be what they've experienced in the traumatic events leading up to that in their life. So things like being more accommodating, being more complicit in order to avoid potential punishment. So that's the numbers that we have. And with a number we don't know is how many false confessors are out there that we haven't identified yet because the evidence hasn't proven.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, and that could be very difficult to ascertain. Before we get into the full details to false confessions and wrongful convictions, let's get some definitions out of the way. Could you explain to us the similarities and differences between interviewing and interrogating?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Scary word, right? Interrogation. The immediate implication is we've got somebody in this kind of cinder block room with a light hanging and a phone book and all these kind of crazy things. And so I think there's two different ways to look at this. If we look at it from more of a legal definition, right, a lot of different things apply when somebody is in a custodial interrogation. Miranda may apply, right? Somebody is not free to leave. They're being accused of a crime. They're being directly questioned about that crime by somebody of law enforcement or a sworn officer. Typically, when you're looking at an interview, are more non-custodial. These might be more witnesses, maybe a complainant, a victim interview. It could be a survivor, it could be somebody that's more fact-gathering. And so when you look at it kind of from a legal aspect, you can categorize is this an interview and it's non-custodial, or is this a custodial interrogation? However, as we're going to continue to explore kind of false confessions and the evolution of interviewing, really what we're trying to focus on is that every conversation should be an investigative interview, regardless if the person you're talking to is suspected of wrongdoing, or they're the one coming forward to complain of some type of wrongdoing. Changing the goal of why am I walking in that room? Is it to get an admission or a confession, or is it just to get information? And our goal is to move every conversation to the latter is let's just try to get as much actionable information as we can.
SPEAKER_02:So I don't know much about interrogation practices or strategies or interview strategies as they relate to this particular topic, but I would assume that approaching anything from the position of curiosity may give you the results that you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're right. Curiosity is such an important mindset to walk in with. We call it an investigative mindset what details can we get to help us maybe eliminate potential options or maybe narrow down or find more evidence. What you often see in either false confession cases, or as we're talking specifically about maybe survivors being interviewed and being either forced or compelled to give information that's not true, is when an investigator lacks curiosity and instead replaces that with assumption, assumption of guilt, assumption of ownership, biases, those types of things, a premeditated kind of mindset instead of allowing the interviewee to tell the story themselves.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and that could be particularly difficult for when interviewing survivors, right? And that's why it's so important to use those trauma-informed survivor interview techniques, which is something that we are going to get into as well in this conversation. Now, when we talk about communication, a lot of us have heard the old adage, communication is key, and that can mean a lot of different things to different people. How does that apply to your work and how crucial is this adage in the world of effective and successful interviewing and interrogation?
SPEAKER_00:It's everything, right? I mean, when an investigator wants to get information out of somebody, it's the same concept if somebody wants their kids to tell them the truth, or they want their friend to feel comfortable to share something awful that happened in their life, or their significant other to share what happened during their day. Communication is so important, and it's more about talking. It's more than just listening. It's being an engaged listener. It's developing rapport in an effective and genuine way. It's projecting empathy with sincerity. It's asking questions and actually reflecting on somebody's answer. So, yeah, communication is fundamental in the investigative interview and really in everything that an investigator does. But for people that are listening that aren't in that occupation, you communicate every day, whether it's with your coworkers, it's with your family members, it's with your friends. And we all kind of fall into the same traps. We all walk in with assumptions, we walk in with sometimes outside voices, you're having a bad day, and you take that into a meeting at work. And so communication is fundamental, but it's really focusing on what is the most effective strategy to be sincere, genuine, and try to get as much actionable information out of that conversation as possible.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And also don't always approach it. I'm not an expert in this, but I'm going to offer my opinion. Okay. Don't approach it as if everyone would understand what you mean maybe the first time around. Use terms that really tell your story in a way that is both meaningful to you and can be received by others, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I had somebody I was talking to about something similar to this. It's almost called like the curse of knowledge, right? When you feel like you have so much information about something or you work it every day and you're talking to somebody, you think they know what you're what's in your head already. And yeah, it's recognizing you know everybody that we talk to has a different background, different experiences, different knowledge level of what you're talking about. And even in the investigative space, if you hang out with a bunch of cops for the day, there's a lot of lingo and jargon and 10 codes that you're going to hear that most people have no idea what they're talking about. And when those things can creep in to a conversation with a survivor, they can be intimidating, they could be potentially misleading, and they can be confusing.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell That is exactly what I was trying to say, but didn't say very well. You clearly know how to do this job, right? Having conversations and interpreting what other people say.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell You get credit for thinking of the idea. So that's how this works.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's fair. Yeah, thank you. You mentioned empathy a couple of minutes ago, and it can be difficult to understand or even empathize with someone who falsely confesses because many people believe that a person who would not admit to committing a crime that they did not commit. So let's get into that part of this conversation and that topic. Can you share with us some of the common reasons as to why people falsely confess and how the training that you offer helps to address those factors?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier. It's so hard to communicate to people that have never been in a position like that. Why would somebody falsely confess? It's the same thing, you know, when we talk again about survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault or these terrible crimes, people think, well, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you do this? And it's like, unless you're in that situation, it's so hard to describe the pressure and the emotional kind of overbearing of your will in those circumstances. Where I've gained the most empathy for people that have falsely confessed is having the opportunity to talk to people who've actually been in that situation. And there's a ton of research, and we can talk about the research and what the science says, but sitting down and having a conversation with somebody who was in an interview room or an interrogation room who had to make a decision, a risk versus benefit decision of do I confess to something I didn't do, or do I continue to try to assert the fact that I'm innocent where it's not going anywhere? What's the best choice here? And some false confessions we can talk about are voluntary. People come in and they just say, hey, I did this because maybe they want credit. Maybe they want to take ownership for something so somebody else doesn't get in trouble. But the majority of false confessions are a source of some type of coercion by the investigator. So you've got a person who's either feeling like they have to be compliant with the investigator because they're refusing to accept denials or their own narrative. And then you also have false confessions that can be a source of contamination. And we can dig into both of these things, but that's more so where a person starts to almost believe that they could be it's a coerced internalized confession where they actually start to believe what the investigator is saying is true, right? Well, maybe I blacked out. Well, maybe I don't remember what happened, and maybe what they're telling me is the actual narrative. So you've got kind of two categories that we can dive into, one of which is the coerced confession where somebody knows coerced compliant. They know they didn't do it, but they feel like there's no choice other than complying. The other is they start to self-doubt maybe what the investigator is saying is actually true.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell And anyone who's watched any of these true crime shows on TV has a feel for what those interviews look like and interrogations look like. And to be clear, it's not just with alleged perpetrators that these conversations are happening, it's also with victims. So a woman who is being interviewed by police about a sexual assault can be talked out of the fact that it actually happened to her, even though she just reported it, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah, and let's kind of break that down. So when you look at what the research shows on how a false confession kind of transpires, there's really three main errors. And these can apply, as you mentioned, in a suspect interview, or it can apply in an interview with a survivor. The first of which is called misclassification. And so this means what caused an investigator to classify the person they're talking to as either guilty or as a liar or being untruthful. The second is coercion, which we can dive into. That's kind of the tactics being used. And the third is contamination. But let's stick with the first of misclassification. What happens often with survivors is investigators are observing physical behavior and they're listening to the verbal behavior, and somebody's story is kind of out of sync and some of the details are missing. And what we know, obviously, from what the research has shown us, is that's a direct reflection of somebody who's experienced trauma, where we all react differently, our behavior is different. But an investigator who's maybe not properly trained or not trauma informed, or any lay person that's listening, right? You've all talked to somebody in your life, or they're telling you a story about something, and you think, I don't think that story's true. They shouldn't laugh when they told a story about something bad that happened, or I would have been more angry than they were if that happened to me. Those are all assumptions. We don't know how we would react unless we were in that situation. So the first thing to think about is how are we improperly assessing somebody's credibility based off of their maybe physical behavior or their memory? The research shows us that just talk physical behavior, for example, our accuracy at identifying deception based off of somebody sneezing and scratching their face and crossing their arms is about 54%, which means we may as well flip a quarter and have just as good luck. And so kind of step one is how do we remove this bias of this person feels guilty, it smells like they're lying to me, I don't really like the way they're telling the story. That means they're a liar. And let's convert that to, hey, let's be trauma-informed and understand that that can happen. What information can they give me and how can I investigate those details?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, those are all excellent points. And anyone who's in this type of work as part of their career would understand some of the necessary training that needs to be taken in order to participate in these interviews in the most appropriate way. So maybe we can talk for a minute about that. What practices and protocols can law enforcement and legal agencies implement to help mitigate these types of confessions and these behaviors from investigators?
SPEAKER_00:Training is obviously important, and I'm going to stand on that. One thing that's kind of interesting, when you think about all the training that investigators get, and there's so many responsibilities that law enforcement has, we sometimes underestimate how many areas a law enforcement professional has to be an expert in day to day. And so there's a lot of training. But what's interesting is when you think about, you know, they got to carry a firearm and they go through training in the academy and they probably have to re-qualify annually, or depending on what state they're in. Um maybe if they carry a taser, they have to go through training on the taser to be certified and then have to requalify. When you talk about communication, de-escalation, interviewing, interrogating, most states, most agencies don't have requirements for how much continued education does somebody have to have, right? A lot of agencies will say for law enforcement, you mean? For law enforcement, right. So you might go to a two-day or a three-day or five-day course, and then that's it for 15, 20 year career, maybe a couple of random trainings here and there. But one thing is when we send somebody to training, first of all, making sure it's current. Imagine going to your doctor and having surgery, and they told you they graduated medical school 20 years ago, but they don't believe in any research since then, right? You'd probably find another practitioner.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, don't do that.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So I think it's continued education, but it's also making sure, just like anything in life, you can send somebody to training, but are we following up? Are we evaluating, are we recording the conversations if possible? If they're with a survivor, maybe depending on the situation, maybe not the right time to do it. But is there a secondary interviewer? Is there people that are giving feedback? Um, so training is one. Recording documentation is another. Evaluating the process consistently and providing feedback is really important. And then it's really making sure we know what we're evaluating. And so we can dig into that. But you know, we talked about misclassification as kind of the first error of a false confession. What you're talking about now is what is the investigator actually doing in the room with that information, right? What, how are they asking questions? What's that process look like? And that's the part we can spend some time on. This is where people need to be better interviewers every day in life, better communicators, so that we're allowing people to feel like they can cooperate with us versus have to be compliant with us.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, great points. There are many law enforcement detectives and investigators who believe that they are doing the right thing in the name of justice by aggressively confronting suspects, especially if the evidence appears to line up or the suspect seems to be uncooperative. So I have several questions to explore around this topic. So we'll just take them one by one. And to begin, where do interviewers possibly get this wrong?
SPEAKER_00:Step one, I think, is what is the goal of the conversation? And a lot of times if you're walking in with somebody based off what you just said, right, the evidence is lining up, the person's giving us this vibe that they're being resistant or uncooperative, who wouldn't walk in the room with a presumption of guilt? We know that that makes sense. The problem is that's not the right mindset for an investigator. An investigator, as you mentioned earlier, should walk in with curiosity and should walk in with, even if I've got evidence that points in a certain direction, even if I've got this, you know, spidey sense, gut feeling, whatever you want to call it, that the person's not being truthful. My job is not to try to be a lie detector in the room. My job is to try to get information I don't already have. How can I get information that can go further investigate? I think step one is let's just let's change the goal of the conversation. And the same thing we're talking to a survivor. It's not necessarily how can I prove that the survivor story is wrong or how can I prove it to be true? It's how can I create a situation, an environment where they are comfortable enough to share as many details as possible with me so I can go do my job and investigate? That's the goal of these conversations. What's the purpose of that outcome can kind of change what's the process we're going to use to get there.
SPEAKER_02:Perfect. So we have step one there. What specific skills are interrogators missing in order to get this right?
SPEAKER_00:I think there's a few things, Era. You mentioned earlier trauma-informed interviewing, and really just talk about trauma-informed. It's making sure investigators are aware and have the knowledge of how trauma can impact somebody's ability to recall information, to be present and how they present themselves in the interview room, what the details are going to look like, potentially how their behavior may be off from what we suspect to be or hope to be normal in the conversation. So I think one skill set a lot of investigators can learn more about is being more trauma-informed. A second is how to actually project empathy and develop rapport from a science-based perspective. A lot of times people think about rapport and they think, well, I met my neighbor out yesterday cutting the grass and we talked about the weather, so we developed some rapport. And that's nice. That's just kind of breaking the ice, and that's just having these nicety conversations. And you get a lot of people that might be advocates, it could be sexual assault nurse examiners, that could be dealing with survivors in a variety of ways. There's a lot of different fundamental ways where people have needs-based rapport. What do they need to feel comfortable in this current situation? What do they need to feel comfortable, not only just from a mental health perspective, but also comfortable enough to share some pretty intimate and traumatic experiences in their life? So I think investigators can learn more skill sets on how to effectively develop rapport and then how to just be a better listener. We talked about active listening all the time, but how to actually listen to what somebody is saying, reflect on the answer, leave space and hold that space for somebody, and then respond appropriately with more follow-up questions. Again, that goes back to step one of what's our purpose. If we walk in with a singular goal, you can feel that during the interview. Every question is going to be leading and guided towards one specific goal. If we change the goal, it can affect the way that we question and interact with somebody throughout the conversation.
SPEAKER_02:So is rapport building effective even when you believe someone committed a violent crime?
SPEAKER_00:Rap building is not only effective, it's essential. And even in the most high-stakes investigations, there was one of the largest, if not the largest, field studies of interrogations was done a few years ago, focused on rapport-based interpersonal techniques and some really high-stakes interrogations with counterterror suspects. Lawrence Allison was one of the authors on a book titled Orbit to give them credit for all the research that they did. But if I remember, I believe they re-reviewed over 2,000 hours of footage of interrogations and coded what are the different elements of rapport and kind of interpersonal dynamics during the conversations. And so if you think about it, in the most high-stakes conversations with people that couldn't have less in common, you've got somebody who really just terrible mindset of what they want to do and some intelligence that could be life-saving information that you need to get. So you have a lot of pressure on the investigator. And they found that having rapport and treating people with humanity and respect was the most efficient way to gain the most actionable intelligence. So if we're seeing it in that high-stakes conversation, you can just understand, you can kind of extrapolate that to all these other conversations of how essential rapport is to allow somebody to feel comfortable sharing their truth.
SPEAKER_02:Good to know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's quite a few tactics we can talk about, one of which is even insincere rapport. If you talk about, just to build off of the rapport concept, there was a study recently done, and I just forgot the name of the author of the study, but the concept was when we talked about these specific types of cases with crimes against women. They had participants review or watch videos, like the sex ed videos you might watch in grade school. And then they watched these videos and then they had them interviewed by people afterwards on what did you learn in the video? What were kind of some things that you saw? And these are uncomfortable conversations naturally.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_00:But they had people broken into groups. One group had a rapport condition. So when they were interviewing, they were following up with the questions. Hey, I know this might be difficult to talk about. I know this can be embarrassing, but just share it with me. And that's interesting. Can you tell me more about it? And then the other group, no rapport, right? Just a line of questioning, answer, question, answer, question. And what they studied was not only a survey afterwards of the participants of how did you feel, and you had a huge increase in obviously the feeling of rapport and comfort. But they also, and of equal importance, measured how much information did they get. And they had a significant increase in the amount of information and the accuracy of information obtained in the group that had rapport. And so when you think about that, if you're interviewing or talking to somebody that's a survivor, even a witness, about a really intimate, uncomfortable, traumatic event, it just shows you how essential rapport is to allow people to feel comfortable to share such an event, right? Or so many details about such an event. So some of the tactics that can lead to false confessions, one of which is just not having enough rapport to allow somebody to feel comfortable to tell you their truth, right? Instead, they feel like they just have to tell you what you want to hear. Another issue that we see often is called the false evidence ploy, lying about evidence, essentially. So in the United States, there's a Supreme Court law in 1969, Fraser versus Cup, which actually allows investigators to lie about evidence during an interview. So they could say, Maria, we have your fingerprints on the weapon, or we have your DNA here, or we have video footage of whatever. Investigators, to a point, are allowed to lie about evidence. We're actually seeing a change in that practice. Right now, I think there's 10, maybe now 11 states that have passed legislation where if investigators lie to a juvenile about evidence, that confession is presumed inadmissible, which is good, move forward. But one of the tactics investigators have always used because they've been trained on it and it's been permissible is lying about evidence. So imagine talking to a survivor who's being told, I hear your story. However, we've got video that shows. That you actually willingly walked into that house, or we've got your DNA in a room that you said you were never in, or whatever the lie is. Now you've got a survivor who's already dealing with trauma, who maybe let's say there's a situation where they were under the influence. So now the investigators suggesting things may have happened, they don't remember it happened. And those types of things, the false evidence ploy, can cause people to have what's called memory distrust and start to think, well, if you're telling me that you've got video, you're telling me you have witnesses and you have DNA, maybe my memory is wrong. Maybe you're right. Right. And that can be one of the causes. And I'll just real high level, and you we can dig into these further. Some of the other issues are leading questions, a concept of maximization and minimization, which is basically if you cooperate with me, this will be good, this will go well for you. If you don't cooperate with me, you're probably the worst of the worst people. And then the last of which is what we call contamination. And that's where investigators might be feeding too many details to the person in the interview that they just regurgitate back to them.
SPEAKER_02:Wow, that is a lot to unpack. But I appreciate all of the background information on that. Now, just to illustrate, let's use an example. You had the opportunity to interview Cecilia from the Tinder Swindler, who was a victim of a horrible financial abuse who fought to be heard and believed, as well as get justice for herself and others. Can you share some of the pitfalls you discovered during her interview with law enforcement?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Cecilia, first of all, all the credit in the world to her. Cecilia, I've talked to as well as Jamana Kidd, is another person who is a victim of financial abuse. A con artist took advantage of her. And so both women, extremely powerful and vulnerable people to be able to share their stories. And so give them all the credit in the world for doing so. And what I've learned in really the conversations with both of them, and it's not just law enforcement, it's when somebody comes forward and they have to talk to maybe a bank that is saying, hey, there's some fraud on your account. They have to talk to maybe an attorney, a prosecutor, an investigator. It can be an uphill battle. And a victim or a survivor often can feel isolated and alone, and there's not a lot of support there. And who's going to believe me? And Cecilia shared some really some interesting perspectives, and same with Jamana with me. One of which, Cecilia, for those that didn't watch her story on the Tinder swindler, and now she goes around and is educating other potential victims of romance scams and financial crimes out there. Essentially, she had somebody who swindled her through a version of a romance scam who basically was who he was, but then kind of trapped her into this fake relationship, essentially, made her feel like she needed to help him financially for a variety of reasons, and ends up taking advantage of her and her feelings towards him, and took a whole bunch of money from her. And in that process, she was explaining to me that when she came forward, especially as a woman, that it felt different than if a man came forward with the same issue. And what she explained to me on our conversation is if a man came forward, and again, we're kind of stereotyping and this that may not happen all the time, but generally speaking, if a man came forward and said, I got taken advantage by this, you know, this attractive woman and she stole my money, and you know, what would be the perspective people would have of the man? Like, uh, I can understand how that must have happened to you. Like, I've seen what she looks like, you know, I get it. Right. That's maybe the public perception. Cecilia shared with me when she kind of came forward that some of the first impressions were, well, what the heck? This ditzy blonde fell for this guy. What's wrong with her? Was she just looking for something? Right. There's these kind of stereotypes were victim blaming, must be her fault. You know, this must be this ditzy woman. That's why it happened. And for those of you, if you're just listening, not watching, I used air quotes there. But the concept was, and it was really powerful hearing it from her is how investigators, the public, financial crime investigators might look at these issues differently if it's a male or a female presenting as the victim and all these presumptions that are already being made. And it helps you as an investigator. And the reason I talked to Cecilia is to try to educate investigators, but what are the biases that we're walking in with? And even if we're not, what is that survivor walking in with fearful of? Even if the investor did everything right, she may walk into the interview thinking they're gonna think I'm an idiot. They're gonna think I was in this for the wrong reasons, they're gonna blame me and maybe I'm not even gonna come forward.
SPEAKER_02:And very often that is the case.
SPEAKER_00:Right, exactly. And so as we talked earlier about rapport, you know, I think it's important for people to understand it takes a lot for somebody to come forward and share these things, a lot of vulnerability. And they more than likely are going through this process internally themselves first, right? Who they're not gonna believe me. I don't remember the details, I don't have any proof, all these kinds of things. We need to take that in consideration as investigators of understanding how much it took for somebody to come forward and have a little bit of grace in that interaction to make sure we can continue to support them throughout the process.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. That was an excellent example. Thank you for giving us the information on that one. So just moving on a little bit from there, because domestic violence or sexual assault victims and survivors often suffer a variety of traumas, as we've discussed. And these can be physically, physiologically, psychologically, or emotionally, and these may impact their ability to effectively communicate. And you've kind of touched on this already. But how do factors like age, mental health, or intellectual disabilities affect the likelihood of giving a false confession?
SPEAKER_00:There's a recent white paper that I recommend people go if you're really interested in this topic. It's open source. It's called Police Induced Confessions 2.0. And in that paper, they talk about factors that contribute to the likelihood of a false confession. And one category are the dispositional risk factors. And this can be anything from trauma, it can be age, and age is more than a number, right? Developmental age is different than just numeric age. And it can be life experiences, it can be other intellectual disabilities and things like that. It can be the state that person's in that day if they're under the influence, right? If they're intoxicated. We know that those things can cause a higher susceptibility for people to falsely confess. And I'll just kind of break these in two ways. One is it makes them more suggestible. They're somebody of a youthful age, for example. And what the research has shown, it's not just this magic number of 18, right? We all know when you hit your 18th birthday, you're not magically an adult all of a sudden.
SPEAKER_02:True, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Um what the research shows, it's more around the age of 25 that people are more kind of developmentally mature, especially males with the front. I wasn't gonna say it, but you got it, right?
SPEAKER_02:I couldn't resist.
SPEAKER_00:The research says it, so you're right. But what's interesting, if you think anybody that's listening, if you know, imagine when you were 16, 17, and a lot of you probably listening, maybe social media did not exist when you were 16 or 17, which is probably a good thing. And you think about how often you have to educate people of that age, don't post that, right? Don't put that on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever, because that might come back and haunt you 10 years from now.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:But when you're 16 years old, you're not thinking about 10 years ahead. You're thinking about what's this gonna do for me today. And that's one example of how that same kind of immediate gratification can happen in an interview setting of somebody of it, maybe a youthful age is well, I don't want to be in the interview. I don't want to be sitting in a police station. I don't want to be in the back of a patrol car. I don't want to be, you know, at a school resource officer's office. The easiest way to remove myself from an interview is tell the investigator what they want to hear so I can go home. And maybe the attorneys will figure it out. Maybe they'll realize I was, you know, there's other evidence that clears me. Let me just get out of the setting. So investigators need to be aware of that, right? What who am I talking to? What vulnerabilities might they have? The other issue, and there's a variety of things that can happen when it comes to suggestibility, but the other perspective is not only what incentivizes somebody to maybe falsely confess, it's how do they present themselves in the interview that creates a bias now from the investigator. So we talked a little bit about this before, but if you have a survivor who has maybe experienced trauma, you know, maybe there's a trigger during the interview that causes them to have a kind of a behavioral reaction that seems abnormal. Maybe they tell their story and they're stoic. There's no emotion. Maybe they laugh when they tell their story. An investigator who's not trauma informed might take each one of those things as, hey, that's weird, right? Why is there no emotion when they're telling me about this really terrible attack? And so it's two things. It's yes, it makes people more suggestible. People who've been in a partnership with intimate violence exists, may feel the same concept or context in an interrogation where I better just comply with somebody because I don't know what's going to happen if I don't, right? That same kind of victimology. And then on the other side, it's again how do they present themselves to the investigator? And how can we be more trauma-informed in our observation of these people?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I appreciate that. And one thing that comes to mind for me while you were explaining that process is that victims of, let's say, domestic violence or sexual assault, or even victims of other crimes, and uh still people who commit crimes have virtually zero practice being in an interview with law enforcement or participating in an interrogation. So there is no training for the civilian because no one ever expects to be in that situation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a really good point. I mean, even think about to make this really practical in real life for people, walking through the metal detector at TSA or going through customs when you're going to a new country, some people you automatically feel like you've got a kilo of cocaine in your backpack or something.
SPEAKER_02:It can be very intimidating. And even though, you know, I got nothing going on, right? But I'm like, gosh, they're gonna find something. I know I did I packed something wrong today.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so now think about that. Something with zero, very low stakes. You've done nothing wrong, but you might be nervous because it's just an uncomfortable setting, you're not used to it. Now, now, if we play this out, right, that nervousness could be interpreted by a TSA agent or border patrol as well. Why is Maria looking a little off? Why is she like looking around and sweating all of a sudden and kind of crossing her arms? She must have been up to no good. That's the same thing that can happen in interviews. So you're right. This is something that you investigators have to realize. We may conduct interviews every day. You're in this setting every day. The police station is your office, potentially. The patrol car is your office. Somebody's men maybe has never been in there before, especially a survivor. You gotta think about how intimidating that can be to go to somewhere you've never been. It's the same reason when I go to the doctor's office, my blood pressure, they think I'm about to die until they take it 15 minutes later and then everything's fine.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. White coat syndrome is a whole other story. Just sidebar on that, is there any training for individuals or s a resource for individuals who might want to understand what that process is of police investigation or interrogation just for their own knowledge?
SPEAKER_00:There's there's a great book that just got published, I think it was last year, called Duped by Saul Casson. Saul's a professor at John Jay University. He's also one of the leading scholars in police interrogation, false confession research. The book was written in a way that's for lay people to understand what happens in an investigation. The concept of the title, duped, is people kind of being duped into falsely confessing. And and Saul does a really great job in that book. I highly recommend it of kind of giving case examples. He worked on Amanda Knox's case and he talks specifically about that one and some others. But how you, as a person, as a parent, can be just more educated and informed as to what happens. You know, and the other thing that's interesting, there's been this just wave of true crime podcasts, documentaries. You know, it's good to watch, but all but just like anything, watch it with an open mind, knowing that you may not be getting all of the information that's relevant. But there's just a lot more out there to help educate, you know, your juror today is a lot more educated on what happens in an interrogation room than they would have been 10 or 15 years ago. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, absolutely. And thanks to true crime, as you mentioned, podcasts and series and so on, it's not always like that. So please do not take that for, or maybe take that for what it's worth. The community at large wants offenders held accountable and wants to trust that the criminal justice system gets it right. But what happens to the fabric of society, to victims' sense of security, cooperation, and justice when suspects who did not commit an assault, rape, or homicide are wrongly convicted based off of a false confession?
SPEAKER_00:There's a ripple effect that happens, right? When we have a wrongful conviction, let alone a false confession, but when you have a wrongful conviction, there's a ripple effect. We can talk about police community relationships, which we know are already strained in some spots throughout the country. And so when you have investigators get somebody to falsely confess and then convict somebody, it can give this perception that the entire kind of courtroom working group isn't doing it right. And what faith do we have in the system if they're gonna get it wrong? And and things like lying about evidence, like I talked about earlier, that could cause or contribute to a false confession. When investigators lie, that's gonna continue to just tear apart the police community relationship and the trust that we need to have with law enforcement. It's also gonna create this disconnect between other survivors or witnesses wanting to come forward in the future, right? If we have somebody who the wrong person was convicted, that there's a couple things that are gonna happen here. First of all, the wrong person being convicted, it's gonna impact their life, their family's life, their kids' lives. But let's think about the fact if we've convicted the wrong person, that means the actual guilty person has not been brought to justice, which means they're potentially still out there perpetrating more crime and more victims. That's not justice for the victim. And that's essentially the opposite of public safety of what investigators want to do.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's not good for anyone. And everything that you just mentioned feeds the narrative that is just gone on way too long that law enforcement is corrupt and cannot be trusted. And thereby when people are victim of a crime like domestic violence, they may hesitate to report it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And investigators want to get it right. And if we if we think about this whole conversation, these are really difficult cases because a lot of times these types of cases, there's not a lot of physical evidence sometimes. Sometimes there is. Sometimes it relies on interviews and talking to people who were present or who were there. And it can be really difficult for investigators to represent the survivor, but really their goal is how do I get as much actionable information as possible so we can figure out what happened. And in that process, biases come into play, right? We're not getting the details. The details don't make sense, or there's confliction with the evidence, or the person's being resistant. And all these things can lead to these kind of miscarriages of justice. But law enforcement, and generally speaking, that's the opposite of what they want, right? They're they're out there to try to protect the community and make sure people feel safe and comfortable. One wrongful conviction can contaminate that perception for an entire agency.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and we've seen countless examples, and I could list them here, but I'm sure some will come to mind for people that it really only takes one incident to change the perception for good or for bad.
SPEAKER_00:And and the investigator, right? We've talked about how it's gonna obviously impact the survivor. And now if we've convicted the wrong person and we eventually determine that, that means we may have to re-traumatize the survivor because there may be another trial, another investigation down the road, appeals that they're gonna have to deal with. And I will also say, and people may not appreciate this part of it, but it does impact the investigator too. I've met investigators who've been a part of wrongful conviction cases that are well-intended, really good people, good investigators, and they missed something or they didn't realize that they fed too many details to somebody until it was too late. And so it's just it's got this ripple effect across the entire criminal justice system and of course to the people directly involved in the case.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell Yeah, those are really good points. Are there any gaps of knowledge or training that you have observed within the legal realm that helps facilitate re-victimization of those wrongly convicted?
SPEAKER_00:One of the things that I have seen is it's interesting when people are wrongly convicted and they serve time, and I've met again, this has been just such a humbling experience to meet people who've been on death row and been exonerated, who've served decades that were innocent and been exonerated. And what's really troubling that you know, people that watch documentaries and they see the true crime stuff on TV is they think, oh, this person they got exonerated and now they filed a$20 million lawsuit, or now they're on TV shows or whatever. That is few and far between, right? A lot of people who've been wrongly convicted when they finally are able to prove their innocence, which is not an easy feat, and they're able to no longer be incarcerated. What support do they have then? That that's the huge gap. What support do they have to get a job? You know, somebody who's been locked away for 20 years that now they don't have credit score, they don't have an email address, they don't, how are they going to fill out an online job application when they haven't been online in two decades? You know, they don't know how to get their social security number. There's all these different simple things that we kind of take for granted. And then just natural social skills, right? You have somebody who's been, again, incarcerated for quite some time. Are they familiar with how to navigate in today's world? And so more support for folks who are lucky enough to reach the exoneration point. When I say lucky enough, because there's some people that we know are wrongly convicted and are still locked away trying to fight for their freedom. So I think there's a there's just a gap in the re-entry plan for those folks and the support.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. Yeah, that there are some new programs these days that address the things that you mentioned, but there are probably nearly not enough. And it begs the question about how victims and survivors and those who have been falsely convicted and imprisoned cannot afford legal representation or even work with attorneys who might or might not be trauma-informed. So, what tips do you have for any of those populations to get the support system that can help them either avoid a false confession or challenge a false conviction?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's tough because like we mentioned kind of at the onset, is a lot of times people feel alone, right? A survivor feels alone, even in the beginning of trying to report something in the first place. I can't advocate stronger than to get an attorney, even if you have to get a public defender because you can't afford an attorney. A lot of investigators and police that may be listening, you know, it's funny because when we teach interview and interrogation techniques, of course, an investigator wants to be able to talk to somebody and they feel like the attorney is always going to get in the way. But if you asked an investigator, hey, if you or your kids were ever pulled in for an interview, what would you tell them to do? And well, get an attorney. Well, what if you were right? If you were pulled in, if you're an investigator listening and internal affairs pulled you into a conversation, you're not doing that without your union representative in the room with you. Right. And so I think people just need to know that you do you have rights in these settings and you should you should leverage those rights, right? Is making sure you have the proper support. There's a lot of great advocate groups out there that can help, you know, even help throughout the trial process to make sure that you feel comfortable and prepared and kind of help throughout the trial and even post if that happens. But uh don't be shy and asking for help, I think is the simplest way to put that. But you have rights, make sure that you use them.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's always good advice. Where can people learn more about your work and this topic?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, our website is w-z.com. So that's really, really easy. We got a lot of stuff on there, free resources. I'm very active on LinkedIn, so there's probably a million Dave Thompsons out there. But if you find Dave Thompson and then a CFI, certified forensic interviewer, you'll find me. And as we were talking earlier, we've got a podcast as well for people that are podcast junkies. Once you listen to all of the podcasts on crimes against women episodes, then check out Truth Be Told. We also have a podcast where we talk to people just about communication in general, but all free resources.
SPEAKER_02:I could not agree with you more. Dave, thanks so much for being on the show.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Thanks for having me, and thanks to all for listening to such an important topic.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 21st Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women will be held May 18th through the 21st, 2026, in Dallas, Texas. Learn more at conferencecaw.org and be the first to know about all conference details, as well as the latest on the Institute for Coordinated Community Response, Annual Conference Summit, Beyond the Bounds, and the National Training Center on Crimes Against Women when you follow us on social media at NationalCCAW.