It depends on where you are, but for us, most of what you said is correct.

It killed me not to be in the room with my son or watching behind the mirror as he told his story. But the reasoning makes sense. First, kids may not share everything if their parents are listening, especially if they are ashamed. The questioner may be a stranger but they are amazingly trained to earn children's trust and help them tell their truths. Sometimes kids hold back information from their parents to protect their parents or because it's so awful. Secondly, if you watch your child be question, you'd be a witness in a way. Then if you are ever called to testify to what your child told YOU, the defense could argue that your testimony was tainted by watching that interview.

I know it's hard to let your little one talk to a stranger. I was terrified that my son would be scared or embarrassed and wouldn't feel open. But he did great. And yours will too! Much love.

We were assigned an attorney by the state. It sounds like that is what is going on in your case too. I asked them straight out if I needed to hire an attorney and they said no, they were handling it.

The only one in the interview is your child. In our case as detective, a doctor and CPs were watching on the TV, making notes.

Often children are influenced by the presence of a parent, or other person close to them. While we feel we are giving our children strength and support, our child may feel nervous, embarrassed, scared, shy, all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. This was VERY hard for me. But I followed directions and kept reminding myself that the "professionals" knew what they were doing (in our case it worked).

I copied and pated my comments from another post that may also help.

My children had to take the stand alone. the only family allowed in the court room were the ones that think they are lying. None of us that supported my children were allowed in the courtroom while they testified. There was no screen to shield my child from looking at their grandfather. Their advocate did not get to sit next to them.

They had to testify in person. We simply told them to not look at "him" if they didn't want to. we told them they could turn their chair. They only had to look at him once, to identify him. They could look directly at our attorney and their advocate. Both had established positive, solid relationships with our children. They were allowed to take something to the stand with them to comfort them. A smooth shiny stone to stroke, a tablet to draw on. A build a bear.

It all sound truly awful doesn't it? We all waited in a little room outside of the courtroom and had games and coloring books and snacks. All of our supporters were in that room. We were also 5 hours outside of our town so we didn't have everyone we felt we needed.

Guess what? We didn't need all of our family there, My children had mommy and daddy, our legal team, and their advocate. We were all brave and strong. My children did fantastic. They knew they had a job to do. To go in, tell the truth. I did not do so good. I crumbled several times.

My children have gained such strength and love for their supporting family through this.

We did not have DNA evidence. Our therapists were not allowed to testify. They did call an "expert witness" that testified though.

None of us could be in the court room when our children testified. But we were allowed to be there for the rest.

I am at work right now and feel as if I am babbling. If I missed something, let me know and I will try to help the best I can.

MUCH LOVE and STRENGTH to you!

I forgot to say. In a small town where my FIL is highly regarded as a foster grandparent, a strong church goer, a community supporter. No DNA evidence. It took the jury less than an hour to decide guilty. 50 years in prison.

Bonnie...You have to try to figure out what's best for you, but from our experience, if you can afford it, I'd highly recommend at least consulting with an attorney. Face it, us "normal" people who don't live in the court system on a daily basis don't know how to navigate it. Our attorney guided us through what we had to know, what we might want to do and what we would want to avoid. In a nutshell, our attorney through the criminal process really saved us. Just remember...while I'm sure that these people that you're talking about are sympathetic, ask yourself what their motives are. Only the attorney that you hire for yourself is truly going to look out for you first.

And I would add to USAdad that the perps attorney is truly going to look out for him first - and that is where it gets ugly. Our perps attorney told him not to admit to anything, that the only way he could get him off is if he didn't admit to anything (although he had already admitted to something and we had already been told that). Our social worker said it didn't matter if he admitted it or not, he would still be charged. To this day, my sister blames me and feels like I was being vindictive and trying to ruin her family and has believed everything that her counselor and attorney told her (things like, they put all kinds of ideas in the victims head during the forensic interview) - so in her mind, he only has done what he admitted to and everything else that my daughter has described to me was planted in a 30 minute forensic interview. When courts and lawyers get involved, it gets ugly - so be prepared, and since there has already been so much discussion between you, and the perps family, it may be a good idea to get a lawyer because so much time has passed and so much information has been shared. I just have a feeling they are going to try to turn this around and blame you because this has drug out so long. Just my thoughts. I did call and consult a lawyer friend before our forensic interview, and he was happy to represent me if needed, but he said that we really shouldn't need one. The only thing my daughter had to do with the legal process was going through the forensic interview, we had no contact and no information about his court dates/charges or outcome. THe only other thing that we did have involvement in was applying for victims compensation - which we were awarded because he was charged (it is a small amount put into an account that my daughter can have when she turns 18 - the advocated encouraged us to apply and it could be used as a 'tool' in the future to validate that she was believed by not only us, but by the state - and we wouldn't have been awarded it had he not been found guilty). Good luck, this will be a long road, and hopefully not too messy for you.