Professor Nicholas Bala and Colleagues Successful at Obtaining New SSHRC Grant to Continue Child Witness Research

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An interdisciplinary research team, led by Prof. Bala of the Faculty of Law at Queen's, received a grant of $184,700 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for 2005-2008 to continue its work on child witness issues. This team has been conducting research, writing articles and giving presentations since 1998, and received almost $300,000 in grants from the SSHRC in the 1999-2005 period.

The primary focus of the first stage of the research was an analysis of the procedures used by courts for assessing children's competence to testify under s. 16 of the Canada Evidence Act, including identification of the psychological assumptions implicit in legal practices, and the empirical testing of the validity of those procedures and assumptions.

The research also studied use of closed circuit television, screens and videotapes to help children testify in the criminal courts. The present research is focusing on a range of issues related to the assessment of the credibility of children in the justice system, including issues relating to children lying and the detection of lying by judges and other professionals. The next phase of the research will address the ability of child witnesses to fabricate convincing stories about stressful events and the ability of others to detect such fabrications.

The research methodologies of this team have included surveys of judges and lawyers about practices and perceptions of child witnesses, studying children in mock testimony situations, and testing the ability of judges, lawyers, other professionals and law students to detect whether or not children are lying.

While research has been the major focus of their work, the ultimate objective is to improve how the justice system treats child witnesses. Prof. Bala has presented influential briefs to Parliamentary Committees, most recently on Bill C-2 in March of 2005, and worked with officials in the Department of Justice to help reform the laws relating to child witnesses. The team has also been involved in giving presentations and training on child witness issues to professional audiences, including judges, lawyers and social workers. Prof. Bala and his law student researcher are working with the National Judicial Institute on developing materials on child witness issues for use by judges.

The multi-disciplinary research team is led by Prof. Nicholas Bala of Queen's University, a leading Canadian Children's Law scholar. The co-investigators are: Prof. Rod Lindsay of Queen's University, an internationally recognized expert in forensic psychology; Prof. Victoria Talwar at McGill, a child psychologist with research expertise in the development of truth telling and lying in children; and Prof. Kang Lee, a child psychologist at the University of California at San Diego with expertise in children's honesty and cross cultural child development. An important community collaborator is Ms. Janet Lee, who has worked with child witnesses in the Ontario courts for over two decades, and supervises Queen's Law students working with child witnesses on Clinical Family Law placements.

The project has involved a number of graduate students in Psychology, and upper year LLB and graduate students in Law. Some of these students are pursuing careers related to the work that they did on this project. The SSHRC grants cover such expenses as the hiring of research assistants and conference travel to allow for the presentation of research results, as well as providing for a reduction in teaching responsibilities to allow more time for Prof. Bala to pursue his research