Moving Forensic Psychology Forward with Kristjan Kask & Zuzana VasiliauskaitE

The latest Beyond BAFF episode features two guests, both highly engaged in forensic psychology and violence prevention in the Baltic States. You can listen to the full episode here.

Zuzana Vasiliauskaite holds a PhD degree and is an international expert on combating violence against women. She is a researcher and a forensic and trauma psychologist, as well as an expert at the Equal Opportunities Researchers Network at the Ministry of Social Security and Labour of Lithuania. Besides that, Zuzana is also a co-author of several methodical recommendations and training programs for various specialists on subjects like women, human rights, and gender equality.

Kristjan Kask is an Estonian whose research is about issues in investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses, as well as eyewitness identification. Currently, he works at Tallinn University where he teaches BA and MA courses in legal psychology. Kristjan has been an adult trainer in investigative interviewing of child and adult victims and witnesses since 2007 and trained different specialists.

First, I would like to know from both of you—how did you choose your specialization? What fascinates you about this field?

Zuzana: So, at the beginning of my career as a psychologist, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. But at the same time, I was volunteering for a non-governmental organization, Vilnius Women's House, which was the first one in Lithuania and in the Baltic States that provided specialized complex help for women survivors of intimate partner violence or domestic violence. And then during my master's, I went for Erasmus exchange to Tampere University.

However, they didn’t have many psychology classes at the master's level that I could take in English. So I took every course that I could on women's studies and gender studies. And by being there and having discussions with students, lecturers, and professors there, I realized that I have a passion for women, human rights, and more subjects that are related to forensic psychology or legal psychology.

And at the time I was already in the program, but I was thinking of changing it up because as I said, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and I thought I got the spot for free and I should use it. So as I returned, I no longer wanted to reapply. I was very happy. And within a few weeks, I got my first job, according to the specialty that I was obtaining and, and got a passion for.

Usually, for psychologists, it's a bit tricky to find their first job since they aren’t yet qualified to consult, to take clients on, they still have to develop the skills. And so, that was a big achievement for me and great recognition.

Kristjan: Well, my story begins with similar words, as Susanna said. When I started to study psychology, I wanted to be a counselor or clinical psychologist and I wanted to specialize in children or adolescents. And then when I was browsing different topics for my research, for my bachelor thesis, I found a popular science book about why children lie, and I read it.

I didn't like most of it because it was too popular science for me. But there was a chapter about child witnesses in court. And then I realized this is what I want to do. I started to read about it, and the first study I did was about children's person descriptions.

So it all started from there. When I went to study further for my master's, I continued to work, and after that, I already knew that I definitely wanted to do a PhD in this field. I knew that this wasn’t possible in Estonia and I ended up in England. I also participated in the training of witness and victim interviewing.

As a follow-up, Kristjan, if you did some interviews with the victims in England, are the lying symptoms or the ways how people interact universal? Or do Estonians have some more specific gestures or some other signs?

So, I was interested in the quality of the information. Because how people behave during the interviews is very different, and this is, I think, one thing we are both combating with Zuzana—that you shouldn’t focus only on nonverbal behavior.

If we think about how the witness statements are formed. They are made orally and then in a written form, as well. So it's basically still what the people are saying, not how they react.

The reactions, I think, are quite universal. However, you have to be culturally aware of what is appropriate or not appropriate in a certain culture.

Zuzana: And if I may add at the same time, the context is also important. Let's say we don't have enough information or at least law enforcement does not have enough information about trauma psychology and how trauma affects verbality, memory, and how witnesses construct their statements. They don't have legal knowledge. Most of the time, simple everyday victims don't have legal language or understanding and the police officer should work with them or interviewers, letting them put into better words what they experienced.

And looking from a trauma psychology perspective, it’s important to understand that after experiencing trauma, memory is no longer chronological. It’s fractured. The person might remember one bit, then remember another bit, or blend it with other traumatic experiences.

So it might be mixed, and if the interviewer or police officer doesn’t have this knowledge, they might accuse the victim of lying, changing their statements. and so on.

Zuzana, how much does the police want to collaborate with forensic psychologists?

I used to be highly involved in police officer training as a specialized psychologist at specialized complex help centers that provide help for women survivors of intimate partner violence.

The basis of this collaboration was protection from violence in immediate surroundings law that has been enforced since 2011 in Lithuania. So in that law, it's stipulated that three organizations – police, specialized complex help centers, and children’s rights agencies have to collaborate in order to give protection to the victims.

When it comes to policymaking, I'm working more on the consulting part of it. If there are initiatives at the parliament or coming from ministries on the legal revisions of certain laws or certain practices. So this is where I would be working more closely, either consulting decision-makers or being in the same room with police officers and talking about the issues.

Every third woman in the world, in Lithuania and Estonia, has experienced physical or sexual violence from their partners or some men in their life, and every second woman has experienced emotional violence. So I think it helps the police to understand what kind of clients they have or people they are dealing with and how to facilitate greater communication and collaboration with them, how to protect them better, and how to assist them in order not to traumatize them again.

Kristjan, how much has this field and the work of forensic psychologists and trauma psychologists changed in the Baltics in recent years?

I think law enforcement is more knowledgeable now about the consequences of the trauma experienced by different witnesses, whether minors or adults.

If I think of my training, what I do, then definitely the volume of those trainings are increased. So those who work in the area, acknowledge that they don't know enough from the psychological side. They know very well the law enforcement side. But the key to a good investigative interview is to get in contact with the person. And if you don't get good contact, it's very, very hard to motivate the witness to talk or to tell about what happened in their own words.

Zuzana: I think it's also important to note that it’s been at least 10-15 years that we have new international treaties all Baltic states are part of fully or partially.

One of them is a victim rights directive that stipulates that victims have to receive special attention and they have different needs. And another one is the Istanbul convention, which is a convention on violence domestic violence and protection from it.

Those treaties also kind of ignited more attention to forensic psychologists and also the knowledge that they have, and that they can help institutions to implement the changes that other international organs are demanding from our countries.

However, there are also things that non-governmental organizations can do. For example, we were able to convince the decision-makers that we needed 15-day protection from violence order. Before it was three or five days, which didn’t work.

Could you elaborate a bit on what this 15-day protection means?

Right now, violence against women is a human rights violation. When we conceptualize it from a human rights perspective, we no longer ask victims to be responsible for their own safety. So the paradigm has shifted.

It means that women and children who have experienced domestic violence have to stay in their own homes. So, the protection from violence order stipulates that in Lithuania, when the police are called to a place where there is violence against women or domestic violence and they don't have enough evidence to start a pre-trial investigation, but they see that the woman is unsettled, maybe there are some marks or things scattered, or something like that, they issue protection orders. It means that the abuser has to leave the house for 15 days and not make any contact with the victim.

So it gives space for women and it protects them. And for abusers, if they don’t breach the order, they are allowed to return. But if they breach it, the criminal code gets involved.

Kristjan, maybe you can comment on this as well. Does it work similarly in Estonia?

I'm not sure how many we have the protection, but the attitude is similar in that the violent person should go away, and not the one who suffers from it. So definitely we are moving in the same direction.

Now, could you tell us more about the focus of your research when you were living in the U.S. thanks to the BAFF scholarship?

Kristjan: I spent one year in a small college in Wisconsin called Beloit College. It's bordered by Wisconsin and Illinois. And there, I did research on, on eyewitness identification—how accurately we can identify perpetrators and what factors influence it.

This experience provided me with a nice of contacts with other scientists, and it was a very, very nice time there. While living there and having fewer things to think about, I also wrote a book about investigative interviewing in Estonian, so a year after I came back, it got published.

What I'm doing now for research is that we’re developing software to simulate adult witness interviewing. The software aims to give instant feedback to investigators, to guide them, and to ask more open questions or free narratives so that the witnesses can talk in their own words about what happened. Similar software already exists in the child witness area. Different universities have created these programs, but adults are a new topic in this sense.

Another thing is that my new book is coming out in late May. It's been five years since the last one, and now I have written a popular science book in the Estonian language about eyewitness identification, which is aimed at a very broad audience.

Zuzana: So, I went to the U.S. as part of the professional internship program, and I went there directly after my master's. I did my professional internship at the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma in San Diego, California. And, while being there, I realized that I wanted to do my PhD, and I even crystallized the subject that I wanted to focus on.

My focus had always been on the experiences of women survivors of intimate partner violence. But in my master’s, I was looking at the traumatic aspect, like post-traumatic stress disorder, and factors related to it. And while doing the research and carrying out interviews with the women survivors, I noticed that they were often talking about positive changes in their lives.

I was happy that there was something positive out of such a negative experience, yet it also seemed interesting. What is it? Because it wasn't just one woman. And of course, one common thing was that they all sought specialized complex help. And those women were talking about that.

So, while I was in the U.S., my supervisor, Professor Robert Koeffner told me that it's post-traumatic growth. And I thought, okay, that's interesting—it already has a name. So I started looking into it, and my PhD was on post-traumatic growth of women survivors of intimate partner violence and the different factors that contribute to it.

Finally, I would like to know what were the main things that you gained from your year in the U.S.

Kristjan: I think the most important part is to get myself out of my usual environment, get new contacts, and new experiences.

I had lived abroad, in England, for a longer period before BAFF. But still, it's good to see different cultures, plus the network of BAFFers is really valuable because this is how I met Zuzana and we decided to apply together for the personal development grant, as well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here together.

I think the BAFF community is a great asset in that we have people from very different areas, and at the same time, we can find collaboration partners from different Baltic countries, as well.

Zuzana: I think that it's a great opportunity. We both are from a very strange kind of profession if we look at people who mainly apply for BAFF programs. So I would encourage anyone from even a strange kind of professional background to apply because this experience really expands your understanding of the field you’re working in.

I was exposed to so many pioneers whose books or articles I had read. And I would get the opportunity to meet them. I could have personal discussions and feedback on my projects or even build lasting collaborations.

I’m also happy that BAFF brings the three Baltic sister states together. I think it's really beautiful. We are living so close, but do not necessarily always have close friends in other countries. And now I feel that I have at least one or two or even more than before.

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