International

Nov 21, 2013

polygraph examinations

While doing some recent (minor) reorganization WACPR's PDF section, I decided that it was time to address the issue of the polygraph. It was actually the article The Use of Truth-Telling Devices in Sexual Assault Investigations (which is not archived in any of my DropBox folders & thus the only one currently listed under "misc PDF's") that got me thinking.
 
Many years ago (in 2002, to be exact), a polygrapher explained to me that sometimes people (like alleged sexual assault victims) are NOT asked to take polygraph examinations. The reasoning, as I understood it, is that sometimes people could be too emotional (?traumatized?) for the polygraph to be of use.
Along those lines, consider the following three articles, which were published on Psychology Today's blog.
 


Having been through a very traumatic experience myself (my child was seriously injured & I was asked to take a polygraph examination), I can understand this. 

But I wonder: wouldn't the opposite also be true? For example, the person who had so seriously harmed my child was never found. (At the time, it appeared to me that he/she was never really sought). Sadly, I believe that the statute of limitations is up. If the guilty party were to take a polygraph now, wouldn't it be easier for them to "pass" it, knowing that, no matter what, they would not be charged?




For more on my story, see my Sept 17, 2012 post
or visit Aleksandra Rohan,
the blog I began (using a pen name) to accompany my forthcoming book.