RADAR premiered almost two decades ago. At the time, the field was already crowded with established interview protocols (e.g., NICHD, RATAC, APSAC, NCAC, ChildFirst). RADAR was introduced to challenge widely-accepted interview standards and to provide leadership in redefining best practice.

Since the early 1990s, the field has largely prioritized specificity— protecting adults from false allegations—over sensitivity— ensuring the protection of children from ongoing abuse (Everson & Rodriguez, 2020). This specificity bias is reflected in the widespread use of the single-session interview which has dominated the field for most of the last 30+ years. Yet, it has long been recognized that disclosure is often a painful and protracted process that may require more than a single interview session. (e.g. Sgroi, 1982; Summit, 1983). Regardless of child characteristics or the strength of other evidence in support of the abuse allegation, forensic interviewers have routinely been denied the flexibility to conduct a follow-up session of non-disclosing children —lest excessive questioning contaminate the child's memory and place an innocent adult at legal risk.

Specificity bias is also evident in the field’s hyperfocus on interviewer suggestion during the one-hour, videotaped interview while largely overlooking the impact of perpetrator suggestion— via threats, intimidation, or psychological manipulation— during potentially prolonged and unrestricted access to the child (Everson & Rodriguez, 2020). Unfortunately, even minimal access often enables perpetrators to instill long-lasting psychological barriers to disclosure.

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In 2015, Kathleen Faller published a landmark 40-year review tracing the evolution of child forensic interviewing practices from 1974 to 2014. Dr. Faller reached similar conclusions about inherent specificity bias in our field:

"Much of the research and the practice advice has been driven by the concern that forensic interview practices might elicit false reports of sexual abuse and thereby jeopardize the lives of adults. More recently, there is an appreciation that the single forensic interview, limited to open-ended questions, may jeopardize the lives of children, who are fearful of disclosing their abuse. Developing a balance between interview strategies that correctly identify sexually abused children (sensitivity) and correctly exclude children who have not been sexually abused (specificity) is enormously challenging, and the stakes are high." (Faller, 2015, p. 57)

The stakes are indeed high. The child’s report of abuse in a formal forensic interview is often the most determinant evidence in investigations of child maltreatment. Research suggests that up to 50% of true child and adolescent victims of physical and sexual abuse may fail to disclose when formally interviewed (Lyon, 2007; HershkowitZ, Lamb & Katz, 2014). This unacceptably high rate of disclosure failures can be attributed, at least in part, to the lack of forensic balance in interview methodology. Forensic balance is defined as giving equal emphasis in interview design and instruction to preventing both errors of overcalling and undercalling.