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Trauma Informed Interviewing

Understand before you ask

Lead with empathy. Uncover the truth.

The trauma-informed deployment of the Teach to Talk® philosophy and the Adaptive Strategies Compass™. Built for the interviews where trauma sits at the table, victim or suspect, and the case turns on getting the conversation right.

Trauma changes how memory is encoded, how disclosure unfolds, and how the body responds in the room. This course teaches investigators, HR professionals, attorneys, and educators to recognize trauma responses, build rapport, and create the conditions for accurate disclosure, all while minimizing the risk of re-traumatization.

Get the truth. Do no harm.

Real empathy. Real conversations. Real impact.

Trauma aware·Build trust·Adaptive approach·Elicit accurate information·Do no harm

Sector
Multi-Sector
Duration
1 or 2 Days
Tuition
$345–$525 / attendee
Level
All Levels
Format
Agency On-Site
POST Credit
Variable by State
Request This Training
Why This Matters

Most interviewers were taught to read inconsistency as deception. Trauma rewrites that rule.

When the body experiences trauma, the brain reorganizes how an event is encoded. Memory becomes fragmented. Disclosure becomes non-linear. Details surface out of order, weeks later, and sometimes not at all.

Investigators trained on traditional models see this and read it as deception, embellishment, or unreliable witness. The case collapses. The victim is re-traumatized by the process meant to help them.

Trauma-informed interviewing is not about being soft. It is about being scientifically accurate. The same approach that produces healing in the victim produces the kind of complete, credible, court-ready statement that the case actually needs.

Understand before you ask. Earn the disclosure before you test it.

Bring this training to your team

Trauma and the brain: how stress hormones disrupt the prefrontal cortex and reshape memory encoding during traumatic events Hover to enlarge
Trauma Impacts

What trauma actually does to an interview

Trauma is physiological before it is psychological. It rewires four systems that every interview depends on, plus four survival responses that walk into every room with the victim.

Memory

Fragmented encoding. Non-linear retrieval. Detail gaps that fill in across sessions, weeks, or therapy.

Behavior

Flat affect, agitation, withdrawal, or composure that misreads as indifference, evasion, or fabrication.

Perception

Time distortion, tunnel attention, sensory hyper-focus, and gaps where the brain went somewhere else.

Communication

Disclosure shutdowns, contradictions that reflect encoding rather than lying, and language that flattens or fractures.

Fight
Confrontation, anger, defensiveness
Flight
Withdrawal, avoidance, leaving
Freeze
Stillness, blank affect, dissociation
Fawn
Appeasement, agreement, false compliance
Who Should Attend

Built for the professionals who carry these conversations

Special Victims InvestigatorSpecial Victims Investigator
Patrol OfficerPatrol Officer
HR InvestigatorHR Investigator
Title IX InvestigatorTitle IX Investigator
Victim AdvocateVictim Advocate
AttorneyAttorney

Also built for HR investigators, Title IX investigators, child welfare staff, victim advocates, and any professional whose work begins with a difficult disclosure.

For New York agencies whose recruits met the DCJS trauma-informed standard at the academy, this course is the working-investigator continuation, calibrated for the case types recruits do not see until they are in the field.

Operational Outcomes

What investigators will actually be able to do

Investigators will leave the course able to:

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Recognize the physiological and behavioral signatures of trauma in the room

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Build rapport and relational safety that supports voluntary disclosure

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Use language and pacing that minimizes re-traumatization without softening evidentiary standards

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Ask questions that account for trauma's effect on memory rather than fighting against it

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Distinguish trauma-driven inconsistency from deception

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Recognize signs of dysregulation in real time and respond without losing the interview

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Produce credible, complete, court-ready victim and witness accounts

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Apply ethical principles and self-awareness that protect both the subject and the interviewer

"Trauma-informed practice is not about being soft on the case. It is about being scientifically accurate about how the human brain handles what happened to it."

Joseph R. Auriemma, Jr.
The Reframe

This is not victim-comfort training.

It is evidence-based investigative practice that produces the most reliable, complete, and defensible accounts possible from people whose brains have been physiologically altered by what happened to them.

Realism

Built for the conversations that change cases

The interviews where getting it right protects the victim and the case, and getting it wrong loses both.

Domestic violence victims
Sexual assault disclosures
Child witnesses and victims
Trauma-exposed witnesses
Title IX investigations
Workplace harassment claims
Multi-victim case patterns
Delayed and partial disclosures

The right approach is the rigorous approach.

See if this training fits your work, schedule a discovery call

Where This Course Sits in the Field

Part of the same conversation as the recognized frameworks

Trauma-informed interviewing has become a discipline. Its foundations were laid by researchers and practitioners across multiple institutions: Fisher and Geiselman (Enhanced Cognitive Interview), Russell Strand (Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview, FETI), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD Protocol), the National Children's Advocacy Center (NCAC CFI Structure), ChildFirst® (Zero Abuse Project), CornerHouse, APSAC, End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI), the FBI High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), and the UK PEACE model. Each of these programs has shaped how the field understands the interview.

This course is not offered as a replacement for any of them. It is offered as the integrating framework that helps a working investigator deploy the right protocol at the right time, and extends the same trauma-informed science into the settings the established protocols were not designed to cover: adult suspect interviews, corrections intake screening, workplace investigation, and mixed-caseload environments.

If you already hold a FETI, NCAC, NICHD, ChildFirst, or CornerHouse certification, the course builds on what you know and gives you the operational framework for deploying it across the full range of interviews you actually conduct. If you do not, the course teaches the principles that unite these bodies of work and gives you the operational framework from the start.

The instructor was trained in the Finding Words forensic interview protocol (later reorganized into ChildFirst®) while assigned to the Ulster County Child Advocacy Center from 2006 to 2008, with additional New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services training in Basic Interview and Interrogation and in vulnerable-victim investigation, focused at the time on best-practice protocols for interviewing children and elderly complainants. This training was completed more than a decade before New York formalized its statewide Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training Standards in June 2019. This course extends the same trauma-informed principles into the settings the child-forensic protocols were not designed for: adult victims, corrections intake, workplace investigations, Title IX interviews, and suspect calibration.

If you already carry a FETI, NCAC, NICHD, or ChildFirst credential

Your protocol is your primary tool for its intended subject. This course does not replace it. What the course adds:

  • The Adaptive Strategies Compass™, a navigation system for choosing among protocols in real time, based on subject, setting, time pressure, and investigative stakes.
  • Adult suspect and adult mixed-caseload application, the same trauma-informed science extended into the interviews your child-protocol certification was not built for.
  • The seven other Compass directions, ACCESS Model, DISC, Route Map, Motive Mapping, Strategic Use of Evidence, Alignment Method, and Teach to Talk®, deployed alongside the cognitive-interviewing components you already know.
  • Recorded scenario debriefs in a peer environment that surfaces the interviewer habits that no protocol training identifies on its own.

This course is the operational framework that turns a certification into a working practice.

Beyond the Protocols

Calibrated for the settings the recognized protocols were not designed for

Corrections and jail intake

Newly incarcerated individuals include a substantial share of trafficking victims who entered the justice system through forced criminality. Intake interviews are high-volume, time-compressed, and typically not conducted by staff trained under FETI, NCAC, or NICHD. This course is calibrated for the intake environment: 15 to 30 minute conversations where the interviewer has to recognize trauma, build rapport, and produce a screening-quality disclosure while maintaining classification and processing workload.

Workplace investigations

HR investigators handling harassment, hostile-environment, and retaliation complaints work with adult trauma-exposed complainants outside the scope of any child forensic protocol. This course is calibrated for the workplace investigation environment and the documentation standards that survive EEOC review and civil litigation.

Title IX complainant and respondent interviews

Campus investigators work under trauma-informed expectations that the child-forensic protocols do not cover and that FETI was not primarily designed for. The course is calibrated for the campus context, including due-process obligations to the respondent that require the same rigor.

Suspect interviews under a trauma-informed framework

The recognized child-forensic protocols and FETI do not primarily address suspect interviewing. The research (Fisher and Geiselman, Meissner et al., PEACE model, Goodman-Delahunty) demonstrates that the same principles produce more reliable, court-defensible suspect statements. This course is calibrated for that domain.

The Compass, Calibrated for Trauma

Eight strategic directions. One body of science.

Trauma does not change the framework. It changes the physiology you are working with. The Adaptive Strategies Compass™ is built to read that physiology, and every direction of the framework deploys in the conditions where trauma sits at the table.

1Direction One

Teach to Talk®

Strategic empathy as investigative practice. Human-centered dialogue that creates the relational safety the prefrontal cortex needs to come back online and produce coherent recall.

2Direction Two

ACCESS Model

A six-stage investigative thinking framework (Assess, Collect, Collate, Evaluate, Survey, Summarize) applied to cases where disclosure unfolds across multiple sessions and details surface non-linearly.

3Direction Three

Personality Assessment (DISC)

Reading behavioral style under trauma. Distinguishing trauma-driven shutdown from communication style, and adapting approach without misreading either.

4Direction Four

Cognitive Interview

The most research-validated technique for improving recall accuracy in trauma-exposed subjects. Context reinstatement, varied retrieval, reverse-order recall, and change of perspective applied to fragmented memory.

5Direction Five

Route Map

Conversation planning that accounts for non-linear disclosure. Anticipating where the account will surface in pieces, where pacing has to slow, and where the conversation needs space to re-enter difficult material.

6Direction Six

Motive Mapping

Understanding why a subject is responding the way they are right now. Five lenses applied not just to suspect behavior but to the survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) that walk into every trauma interview.

7Direction Seven

Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE)

Handling evidence disclosure with trauma-exposed subjects. Testing consistency without triggering shutdown, and surfacing inconsistency without crossing into accusation.

8Direction Eight

Alignment Method

Challenge-and-clarify questioning that distinguishes trauma-driven inconsistency from deception. Disciplined intervention that produces clarification, not re-traumatization.

Every direction in this Compass deploys when trauma is at the table. Investigators leave this course with the complete framework, calibrated for the population whose physiology has been altered by what happened to them.

Explore the Adaptive Strategies Compass™ → Bring this framework to your team
What the Compass Adds to What You Already Know

The recognized trauma-informed protocols each teach one approach for one type of interview.

  • FETI teaches the sensory-anchored, open-ended recall interview, primarily for adult victims and witnesses.
  • NICHD teaches the structured, non-suggestive interview, for child victims of alleged abuse.
  • NCAC CFI, ChildFirst, and CornerHouse each teach a structured child forensic interview under the CAC ecosystem.
  • EVAWI trains victim-centered sexual-assault investigation practices.

Each of these is a protocol calibrated for one type of interview. Each is precise and effective inside its intended scope.

The Adaptive Strategies Compass™ teaches the practitioner when to draw on which framework, and gives them seven additional strategic directions any working investigator uses across a mixed caseload. FETI draws heavily on the Cognitive Interview components represented in Compass Direction Four, together with the rapport and psychoeducation elements in Direction One. NCAC's CFI Structure similarly overlaps with those directions. The Compass includes the other six directions that no single protocol was designed to cover.

That is what this course teaches. Not a competing protocol. The integrating framework.

Course Curriculum

What the course covers

Trauma Fundamentals
Neurobiology of Trauma

How the brain and body respond to threat, why memory becomes fragmented under acute stress, and how to interpret the physiological signatures of trauma in the interview room. Grounded in current neurobiological research, including the work of Bessel van der Kolk, Peter Levine, and Janina Fisher, not folklore.

Memory, Disclosure, and Behavior

Why trauma survivors disclose non-linearly, why details surface across weeks or months, and how to distinguish trauma-driven inconsistency from deception. The foundation every other technique in the course is built on.

Rapport & Relational Safety
Building Psychological Safety

Environmental setup, opening sequences, and the relational moves that create the safety required for disclosure. Without this foundation, no technique that follows can produce a complete account.

Trust as an Investigative Tool

Rapport is not soft. It is the single most reliable predictor of interview quality in any setting. The Teach to Talk® methodology applied to trauma-exposed subjects, moving from rapid-fire questioning to strategically directed conversation.

Reducing Fear, Promoting Disclosure

Verbal and nonverbal interventions that reduce the threat response, lower physiological arousal, and allow the prefrontal cortex back online, where coherent recall actually lives.

Communication & Questioning
Language and Tone

Word choice, sentence structure, and tone that support understanding without leading or contaminating. The specific phrasings that promote disclosure and the ones that shut it down, calibrated for trauma-exposed subjects.

Trauma-Informed Question Design

Open-ended, sensory-anchored questions that account for fragmented memory. The course integrates the principles that unite the major recognized trauma-informed protocols: the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview (FETI) developed by Russell Strand, the NICHD Protocol developed by Lamb, Orbach, and Hershkowitz, the NCAC Child Forensic Interview Structure, and the Enhanced Cognitive Interview developed by Fisher and Geiselman. The course teaches the shared principles across these frameworks, open-ended and non-suggestive question design, sensory anchoring, context reinstatement, and varied retrieval, and gives the practitioner the framework for deploying them contextually across adult and child, victim and suspect, high-time-pressure and long-form interviews.

Pacing, Pausing, and Re-engagement

When to slow, when to pause entirely, and how to re-enter difficult material without re-triggering the survival response. Pacing is the highest-leverage skill in a trauma-informed interview.

Observation, Interpretation & Ethical Practice
Reading Trauma in the Room

Recognizing the verbal and nonverbal signatures of dysregulation, dissociation, and survival response in real time. What the body is telling you when the words go quiet, and what to do about it without losing the interview.

Distinguishing Trauma from Deception

The single most consequential interpretive skill in trauma-informed work. How to read inconsistency, fragmentation, and emotional flatness as trauma signatures rather than deception cues, supported by research and case examples.

Ethical Practice & Self-Awareness

Vicarious trauma, interviewer self-regulation, and the ethical principles that protect both subject and interviewer over the course of a career. Doing this work well requires doing it sustainably.

Beyond Victim Interviews

The same science applies to suspect interviews

Trauma-informed practice is often framed as a tool for working with victims. The research says otherwise. Decades of empirical work in cognitive interviewing and investigative psychology show that the same techniques that produce accurate disclosure from trauma-exposed victims also produce more reliable, court-defensible statements from suspects, with fewer false confessions and more admissible accounts.

Why suspects respond to the same techniques

A suspect under accusatorial interrogation experiences the same physiological stress response as a trauma-exposed victim. Threat activates the limbic system. The prefrontal cortex, where coherent recall and decision-making live, goes offline. The result is the same: fragmented memory, dysregulated affect, and the four survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn).

An interviewer who reads that physiology as guilt, evasion, or deception is reading it wrong. An interviewer who reads it as stress activation and responds with the same rapport-based, cognitively supportive technique used with victims will produce a statement that is more accurate, more complete, and far more likely to survive suppression.

Many suspects also carry their own histories of trauma. Childhood abuse, prior violence exposure, substance use disorder, and adverse life events are present at significantly higher rates in justice-involved populations than in the general public. Trauma-informed technique meets the suspect where they are physiologically, which is where the truthful account actually lives.

"The same rapport, the same pacing, the same open-ended questioning that earns disclosure from a victim earns it from a suspect. The science of memory does not change based on who is sitting across the table."

Joseph R. Auriemma, Jr.
The Practical Reality

Aggressive interrogation produces more false confessions, not more true ones.

Decades of wrongful conviction case review and controlled laboratory research arrive at the same conclusion. The technique that earns reliable disclosure is the same technique whether the interviewee is a victim, a witness, or a suspect.

Fisher & Geiselman

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview produced 35–40% more correct information from cooperative interviewees without an increase in errors.

The same rapport-building, context reinstatement, and varied-retrieval components apply across victim, witness, and suspect interviews. The technique does not discriminate by interviewee role.

Holmberg & Christianson, 2002

Convicted sex offenders and murderers reported significantly higher rates of admission and complete disclosure when interviewed with a humanitarian (respectful, empathetic) style rather than a dominant (aggressive, accusatory) style.

Foundational research showing that trauma-informed principles, applied to suspect interviewing, produce more truth, not less. Studied across actual convicted offenders, not laboratory analogs.

Russano et al., 2005

Minimization tactics (downplaying severity, suggesting moral excuses) and presumption-of-guilt approaches significantly increased the rate of false confessions while only modestly increasing true confessions.

The Central Park Five, the Norfolk Four, the West Memphis Three, and dozens of other documented wrongful-conviction cases share interview conditions that produce false confessions from innocent subjects. Aggressive interrogation does not just risk wrongful conviction. It produces statements that fail Daubert challenges, get suppressed, and cost agencies civil exposure. The trauma-informed alternative produces statements that hold up.

Meissner et al., 2014 (meta-analysis)

Information-gathering interview approaches produced significantly more true confessions and fewer false confessions than accusatorial approaches across 12 experimental and field studies.

A meta-analytic summary of the body of evidence: rapport-based, cognitively supportive interviewing is the most effective approach for eliciting reliable confessions, in both lab and field settings.

Bull & PEACE Model Research

The UK PEACE model, grounded in cognitive interviewing and non-confrontational technique, has replaced accusatorial interrogation in the UK for over two decades and is now standard across multiple Commonwealth jurisdictions.

A national-scale demonstration that information-gathering, trauma-informed interviewing is operationally viable for serious-crime suspect interviews. Falsified confessions in PEACE jurisdictions are vanishingly rare compared to historical accusatorial practice.

Goodman-Delahunty et al., 2014

Field study of terrorism-related suspect interrogations found that rapport-based approaches produced 14× more useful intelligence than coercive approaches.

Even in the highest-stakes suspect interviews, where pressure-based technique is most often justified rhetorically, the empirical evidence shows rapport outperforms coercion by an order of magnitude.

Trauma-informed suspect interview: investigator and subject across the table in a measured, rapport-based exchange Hover to enlarge
“
The suspect interview is not the opposite of the victim interview. It is the same conversation, conducted with the same discipline, calibrated for a different physiology that arrived at the table through a different path.
Joseph R. Auriemma, Jr.
What This Means for Your Investigators

Investigators who complete this course leave equipped for both sides of the interview room. The same trauma-informed framework that produces a credible victim disclosure produces a reliable, defensible suspect statement. One body of science. One methodology. Two domains of application.

Companion Courses

The same framework, calibrated for your work environment.

Trauma-Informed Interviewing is one of multiple ASC courses calibrated for the conversations that determine case outcomes. For comprehensive investigative interview training, see From Information to Evidence. For patrol-level field interviewing where many trauma disclosures first surface, see Investigative Field Interviewing. For workplace investigation work, see Strategic Workplace Interviewing. The same Adaptive Strategies Compass™ framework anchors all of them.

From Information to Evidence Investigative Field Interviewing Strategic Workplace Interviewing
FAQ

Common questions about this course

How long is the Trauma Informed Interviewing course?

The course is offered in one-day and two-day formats. Both cover the core curriculum: how trauma affects memory and disclosure, building rapport and relational safety, communication strategies, trauma-informed questioning techniques, observation and interpretation, and ethical practice. The two-day format adds extended scenario practice, complex case-type drills, and recorded debriefs.

Who is this course designed for?

Law enforcement at all levels (patrol, detectives, special victims investigators, supervisors), Title IX and campus investigators, HR investigators handling sensitive complaints, attorneys interviewing trauma-exposed clients and witnesses, and victim advocates. No prior trauma-informed training is required.

What does “trauma-informed” actually mean in an interview context?

Trauma-informed interviewing recognizes that trauma physiologically affects how victims encode, store, and retrieve memory. Trauma-exposed subjects may disclose non-linearly, omit key details, recall events out of sequence, and present what looks like inconsistency. Trauma-informed practice creates the conditions and uses the techniques that produce accurate, complete accounts despite these effects, while minimizing the risk of re-traumatization.

How does trauma affect a victim’s memory and disclosure?

Trauma can fragment memory, delay disclosure, produce non-linear accounts, and create gaps that fill in over multiple interviews. These are documented neurobiological effects, not signs of fabrication. Investigators trained to recognize trauma responses interpret victim statements correctly and avoid mistakenly treating trauma symptoms as deception indicators.

Is inconsistency in a victim statement always a sign of deception?

No. Research consistently shows that inconsistency in trauma-exposed victims is often a trauma response, not a deception indicator. Treating trauma symptoms as deception is one of the most common interviewer errors and frequently undermines otherwise viable cases. The course teaches investigators to distinguish between the two.

How does this training help avoid re-traumatizing victims?

The course covers environmental setup, language choices, pacing, and interventions that minimize re-traumatization risk. Interviewers learn to recognize signs of dysregulation in real time, slow or pause appropriately, and provide grounding without compromising evidentiary integrity. The result is more complete disclosure, better cases, and lower secondary-harm risk.

Does this course satisfy compliance requirements for trauma-informed practice?

The course is grounded in current trauma-informed best practices and aligns with the standards required by many state, federal, and grant-funded programs, including VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) grant compliance, OVW (Office on Violence Against Women) training requirements, SAMHSA's trauma-informed care framework, and EVAWI's trauma-informed interview training standards. For agencies whose child forensic interviewers work under NCAC or APSAC-referenced Child Forensic Interview Structure standards, this course extends the same principles into the adult, suspect, and mixed-caseload work that sits outside those protocols. For specific compliance questions related to your jurisdiction or grant requirements, contact ASC and we will confirm fit before scheduling.

Is this course a replacement for FETI, NCAC, NICHD, ChildFirst, or CornerHouse training?

No. Those protocols are the recognized standards for their intended subject and setting: FETI for adult victims and witnesses, NCAC and NICHD and ChildFirst and CornerHouse for child forensic interviews. This course is not offered as a replacement for any of them. It is offered as the integrating framework, the Adaptive Strategies Compass™, that helps a working investigator deploy the right protocol at the right time, and extends the same trauma-informed science into the adult, suspect, and mixed-caseload settings the established protocols were not designed to cover.

I already have a FETI certification. What does this course add?

FETI is your primary tool for adult victim and witness interviews. This course adds three things. First, the seven other Compass directions, ACCESS Model, DISC, Route Map, Motive Mapping, Strategic Use of Evidence, Alignment Method, and Teach to Talk®, that any working investigator deploys alongside cognitive-interview technique across a mixed caseload. Second, the trauma-informed framework extended into adult suspect interviews, where FETI was not primarily designed to go. Third, recorded scenario debriefs and peer-review structure that surface interviewer habits no protocol training identifies on its own.

Does this course cover child forensic interviewing to the NCAC or NICHD standard?

The course teaches the principles that unite the recognized child protocols and the operational framework for deploying them. It is not a substitute for a full NCAC, NICHD, or ChildFirst certification, and any practitioner conducting formal child forensic interviews in a Child Advocacy Center or equivalent setting should complete one of those certifications. This course is calibrated for the broader working caseload: patrol contacts with child witnesses, intake screening in corrections, Title IX interviews with student-age subjects, and adult interviews where child-forensic principles inform the approach.

Does the instructor hold recognized protocol training?

Yes. The instructor completed formal training in the Finding Words forensic interview protocol (later reorganized into ChildFirst®) while assigned to the Ulster County Child Advocacy Center from 2006 to 2008, plus New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services training in Basic Interview and Interrogation and in vulnerable-victim investigation, focused at the time on best-practice protocols for interviewing children and elderly complainants. This training was completed more than a decade before New York formalized its statewide Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training Standards in June 2019. Advanced Strategic Communications does not certify practitioners in ChildFirst®, NCAC CFIS, NICHD, FETI, CornerHouse, or any other proprietary protocol. This course teaches an integrating framework that helps trained practitioners apply their protocol contextually and extends the same trauma-informed principles into interview types the child-focused protocols were not designed for.

Does this course meet DCJS trauma-informed training standards?

The course is aligned with the DCJS Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training Standards published in June 2019, and is consistent with the trauma-informed interviewing principles integrated into the 2026 Basic Course for Police Officers. For New York agencies, the course serves as the working-investigator continuation of what recruits now receive at the academy, calibrated for the case types recruits do not see until they are in the field. POST credit hour filing paperwork is submitted upon a signed contract.

How do I bring this course to my agency?

The course is delivered on-site at your agency in one-day or two-day format. Contact ASC through the Request Training form or by calling (914) 489-2330 to discuss scheduling, format choice, and case-type focus areas.

What does this training cost?

Published rates for every ASC course, including Trauma-Informed Interviewing, are listed on the pricing page. Final pricing depends on course duration, organization size, customization, and location. Joe responds to every inquiry personally and provides an exact quote tailored to your team's specific scope, sector, and case-type focus areas.

Do you offer refresher training or follow-up for teams that have completed the course?

Yes. ASC offers refresher modules for teams returning a year or more after their initial engagement, advanced specialty modules (extended FETI practice, child witness work, multi-victim case patterns, complex disclosure scenarios), and case-specific consultation for active investigations. Many host agencies engage ASC on a recurring basis as new investigators rotate into special victims, Title IX, and HR investigation roles.

Why does this course cover suspect interviews under a trauma-informed framework?

Because the neurobiology of stress is the same in suspects as it is in victims. Decades of empirical research (Fisher & Geiselman, Holmberg & Christianson, Russano et al., Meissner et al., the UK PEACE model, Goodman-Delahunty et al.) demonstrate that rapport-based, cognitively supportive interviewing produces more reliable, court-defensible suspect statements with fewer false confessions than aggressive accusatorial technique. Many suspects also carry their own histories of trauma. The same trauma-informed framework applies, calibrated for a different physiology that arrived at the table through a different path.

New York State Alignment

Aligned with New York State standards

This course is aligned with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training Standards (June 2019), and is consistent with the trauma-informed interviewing principles integrated into the Domestic Incident Response section of the Basic Course for Police Officers effective January 1, 2026. The course is designed to serve as the working-investigator continuation of what New York recruits now receive at the academy, calibrated for the case types recruits do not see until they are in the field: sexual assault investigations, child abuse investigations, human-trafficking-unit intake screening, domestic violence follow-up, SVU work, and mixed-caseload corrections and workplace applications.

The course is also consistent with the Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence (OPDV) trauma-informed guidance for law enforcement and advocates, and with the IACP Trauma-Informed Sexual Assault Investigation Training Curriculum delivered through New York partner agencies. For New York agencies procuring in-service trauma-informed interview training under STRIVE, VAWA, or state training funds, ASC will confirm alignment with your specific procurement or grant requirements before scheduling.

POST credit filing. Advanced Strategic Communications will submit the required paperwork to file for POST credit hours in the delivery jurisdiction upon a signed training contract.

Joseph R. Auriemma, Jr. teaching an investigative interviewing class
24+
Years Law Enforcement
2 Yrs
Child Advocacy Center
12,000+
Interviews Conducted
6,500+
Professionals Trained
The Instructor

Built from two decades of interviews with people whose worst day became their case file

Joseph R. Auriemma, Jr. served 24 years with the New York State Police. Two of those years were spent at the Ulster County Child Advocacy Center, where every interview involved a child victim, a survivor of abuse, or a witness to violence at an age that should never have included it. Six and a half years followed in the Major Crimes Unit, where victim and survivor interviews are at the center of every case that goes anywhere. He retired as a Senior Investigator supervising 5 investigators and 29 uniformed troopers. His career spanned thousands of interviews with crime victims, witnesses, and survivors of the most serious offenses in any agency's caseload.

Joe served as lead instructor at the New York State Police Academy for Investigative Interviewing, where the trauma-informed methodology now central to ASC was first refined into a teachable system. He contributed at the New York State Preparedness Training Center in Investigative Interviewing. The trauma-informed methodology he teaches was developed across thousands of those interviews, refined in the cases that hinged on getting it right, and grounded in the research that explains why what works in the field works neurobiologically.

Trauma-Informed Interviewing is built on those years of work. The lessons of the cases where the interview had to be exactly right, where the witness was a child, where the survivor's first disclosure was the only one they would give, where a coached confession would have been the easy outcome and a careful, scientifically accurate interview was the right one. The course is the methodology that delivered those interviews and the research that explains why they worked.

Trained across the field's recognized foundations

Joe's methodology is grounded in the recognized trauma-informed interviewing science. He was trained in the Finding Words forensic interview protocol (later reorganized into ChildFirst®) while assigned to the Ulster County Child Advocacy Center from 2006 to 2008, with additional New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services training in Basic Interview and Interrogation and in vulnerable-victim investigation, focused at the time on best-practice protocols for interviewing children and elderly complainants. Those trainings were completed more than a decade before New York formalized its statewide Trauma-Informed Victim Response Training Standards in June 2019.

The methodology this course teaches is grounded in the same body of research that anchors FETI, NICHD, NCAC, ChildFirst, and EVAWI. It is calibrated for the working caseload most investigators actually face: a mix of subjects, settings, and time pressures no single protocol was designed to cover. Advanced Strategic Communications does not certify practitioners in ChildFirst®, NCAC CFIS, NICHD, FETI, CornerHouse, or any other proprietary protocol; the course delivers a certificate of completion.

Certifications: IADLEST National Certified Instructor (INCI) · Certified Forensic Interviewer (CFI) · Certified Polygraph Examiner

Closing Note

Empathy is not the opposite of rigor. It is the route to it.

The most trauma-informed interview is also the most evidentiarily defensible. Investigators who recognize trauma responses, build relational safety, and pace the conversation around the physiology of memory produce statements that hold up in court and protect the people who give them.

Contact ASC to bring this training to your team and equip your investigators for the conversations that turn on getting it right.

Free field resources available at the Resource Library, including downloadable interview frameworks and field guides.

Real empathy·Real disclosure·Real evidence·Train today·Lead tomorrow

Host This Course

Bring it to your agency, and train your own people free

Host this course as an open-enrollment offering: you provide the room and help fill the seats with regional attendees, and ASC handles registration, payment, instructor travel, and POST filing. In return, your agency earns complimentary seats for its own people.

You provide

The room, and help filling it

A training space, and a hand getting the word out to neighboring agencies. That is the host's part.

ASC handles

Everything else

Registration, payment processing, instructor travel and lodging, materials, and POST credit filing.

You earn

Up to 3 free seats

One complimentary seat for every 10 paid registrations: 1 at 10, 2 at 20, 3 at 30. Train your own people at no cost.

See How Hosting Works
Planning Details

What to expect, start to finish

Format
One-day course. Delivered open enrollment, closed to your team, or as a custom engagement.
Group size
Open enrollment fills from 10 paid attendees. Closed and custom deliveries carry no per-person minimum, at any group size.
Included
Attendee workbooks and reference cards, certificate of completion, in-class Q&A, and 30 days of post-course email support from Joe.
POST credit
State POST submission is contract-triggered. Upon a signed host agreement for this course, ASC files to apply for credit hours in the host agency’s state (POST, MPTC, MCOLES, TCOLE, CLEET, or equivalent training commission); approval rests with that credentialing body. Attendees from other states receive documentation supporting reciprocal submission in their home jurisdiction.
Travel
Built into the per-attendee rate for open enrollment, since regional attendees fill the room. Quoted separately at actual cost for closed and custom deliveries.
Booking & policy
Joe scopes every engagement personally and replies within one business day. See the full pricing and formats or the refund & cancellation policy.
For Your Decision File

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