Title: State v. Weeks

State: vermont

Issuer: Vermont Supreme Court

Document:

STATE_V_WEEKS.91-284; 160 Vt. 393; 628 A.2d 1262


 NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P. 40
 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
 Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
 Court, 109 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05609-0801 of any errors in
 order that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.

                                 No. 91-284


 State of Vermont                             Supreme Court

                                              On Appeal from
      v.                                      District Court of Vermont,
                                              Unit No. 1, Bennington Circuit

 Richard Weeks                                September Term, 1992


 Theodore S. Mandeville, Jr. J., defendant's motion for psychological
      evaluation

 Paul F. Hudson, J., trial on merits

 Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Attorney General, and Susan R. Harritt, Assistant
    Attorney General, Montpelier, for plaintiff-appellee

 E. M. Allen, Defender General, and Anna Saxman and Henry Hinton, Appellate
    Attorneys, Montpelier, for defendant-appellant


 PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Gibson, Dooley, Morse and Johnson, JJ.


      Morse, J.  The principal issue in this appeal from a conviction for
 sexual assault is whether allowing an expert witness to comment on the child
 victim's credibility and to identify the perpetrator was plain error.  We
 hold that it was and reverse and remand for a new trial.
                                     I.
      After a bitter divorce, defendant and his ex-wife continued to
 struggle over his visitation with their daughter and only child.  When the
 child resisted the visits and defendant insisted on them, the mother, on
 advice of counsel, sought out a psychologist, Dr. Cunningham, to determine
 whether the child had been sexually abused.  Dr. Cunningham examined the
 child three times over a six-day period.  Between the second and third
 visits, he reported to the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services
 (SRS) that the child had been sexually abused.  An SRS worker and a police
 officer interviewed the child, and defendant was subsequently charged with
 three counts of sexual assault under 13 V.S.A. { 3252(3) for incidents of
 penile-vaginal contact, penile-anal contact, and digital-vaginal contact.
      The child victim was six years old at the time of trial; she testified
 about events that had occurred when she was somewhere between two-and-a-
 half and four years old.  With her mother sitting beside her, she was led
 through her testimony.
           State:   Did you like visiting with your daddy?
           Child:   No.
           State:   Could you tell us why you didn't like it?
           Child:   Because he hurt me.
           State:   And how did he hurt you?
           Child:   I don't want to tell.
           State:   This is the last time you have to tell, [J.W.].
                    Can you tell them how he hurt you?  Did he hurt
                    you on your body?
           Child:   (Nods head.)
           State:   Can you tell us where?
           . . .

           Child:   Private place.

 She then identified the private place (her vagina) and "what he used to
 touch [her] with" (his penis) by making marks on anatomically correct
 drawings.  The court allowed these drawings "to assist in the development
 of the testimony.  She's, obviously, very reluctant to testify again today."
 On cross examination, J.W. admitted that she had previously told defense
 counsel that her daddy did not touch her and that this was a lie.
         Defense:   Do you remember telling me before . . .
                    that your daddy didn't touch you?
         Child:     Uh huh.
         . . .

         Defense:   Okay.  Was that a lie, back then, when you
                    said that daddy did not touch you?
         Child:     Uh huh.
         Defense:   So you told a lie one time about all this?
         Child:     Uh huh.

      The child's credibility was the central issue at trial.  Defendant
 claimed that he had been falsely accused, that his ex-wife had fabricated
 the story to keep his daughter away from him.  He sought to show
 inconsistencies in the child's story and to emphasize that she had recanted
 to both Dr. Cunningham and defense counsel.
      The State supplemented her testimony with five additional witnesses:
 the child's mother and maternal grandmother, the SRS worker and the police
 officer who had interviewed her, and Dr. Cunningham.  The child's mother
 testified that the child became increasingly unwilling to visit with her
 father, that she would get sick the night before the visits and would refuse
 to get dressed the next morning.  The child's symptoms got worse -- she had
 nightmares, would throw up her breakfast, refuse to get out of the car --
 but she would not explain why she did not want to go with her father.  When
 the child returned from visits she did not want to take a bath and would say
 she did not want to be touched.  When she was put in the bathtub, she would
 spread her legs apart and push toys into her vagina.  The mother testified
 that she never considered the possibility that her daughter had been
 sexually abused.  Rather, when she consulted her lawyer about whether the
 visits had to continue, he suggested that she take the child to a doctor to
 find out why she resisted the visits.  The mother testified that, after
 telling Dr. Cunningham about the abuse, the child also told her some details
 about it and that her father said if she told her mother about the abuse,
 her mother would hate her and he would go to jail.  The grandmother
 corroborated the child's resistance to visits with her father and her
 increasingly sexualized behavior during baths.
      An SRS worker, Kelly Smith, testified that she notified the state
 police after receiving a report of sexual abuse from Dr. Cunningham and,
 accompanied by Sergeant Robert Vargo, interviewed the child victim.  Ms.
 Smith stated that, after establishing rapport with the child and asking her
 to identify body parts, she asked the child if anyone had touched her
 vagina.  The child responded that her daddy had.  Ms. Smith related that the
 child, using anatomically correct drawings, showed that defendant had
 touched her vagina with his penis, nose, and hand.  She also indicated that
 the child told her that she was afraid she was going to get in trouble for
 talking with her.  Sergeant Vargo, who was present during part of the
 interview, corroborated Ms. Smith's account.
      Dr. Cunningham was the State's final witness.  He began by describing
 symptoms typical of sexually abused children.  Anticipating an attack on the
 child witness's credibility, he stated that delayed reporting is not
 unusual, especially if the abuse occurs within the family, and that
 recanting is common, a "kind of a wish that . . . it never happened."  He
 explained that multiple interviewing can lead children to recant because
 when asked the same question a number of times, they get the message that
 they will not be believed and, in essence, they give up.  He also stated
 that often the nonabusive parent will become upset at disclosure of the
 abuse and the child will change the story to protect that parent from
 further pain.
      He then described his interviewing technique in great detail,
 particularly the use of anatomically correct pictures.  First, he showed the
 child drawings of naked children and asked her to find one who looked like
 her.  He then asked her to name the body parts and to mark places where she
 had been touched that she did not like.  He then asked who had touched her
 and to find a drawing of a (naked) person who looked like the abuser.  He
 then asked her to identify the part of the abuser's body that had touched
 her.
      The testimony then moved to the key area of identifying the
 perpetrator.  Dr. Cunningham stated that he had asked the child who had
 touched her and testified
         Expert:   Her first answer was, daddy.
         State:    Did you ask her any more questions, regarding
                   who daddy was?
         Expert:   Yes.  I was aware it was a divorce and that
                   there was another man, Mitch, living with her
                   and her mother.  And so I asked her, is this
                   daddy, Mitch, or daddy, Richard.  . . .
         State:    And what did she say?
         Expert:   She said daddy Ricky.

 Dr. Cunningham returned to the issue of the perpetrator's identity and
 stated his personal opinion that the perpetrator was not Mitch:
         State:   And did you specifically ask about Mitch?
         Expert:  Yes; I did.
         State:   Was she clear about that as well?
         Expert:  She was very clear about that. . . . I was
                  pressing that quite hard . . . because . . .
                  there was greater access of Mitch to her than
                  her father at the time, and I wanted to get to
                  that issue directly.
         State:   But you pretty well resolved that in your mind,
                  that [it] wasn't Mitch.
         Expert:  Yes, ma'am.

 Because Mitch was the only other possibility raised, this remark was
 tantamount to Dr. Cunningham's naming the child's abuser.
      Dr. Cunningham's testimony on the child's credibility cannot be easily
 summarized.  It did not take the form of one or two isolated statements;
 rather, it followed the path of his own reliance on the child's word -- how
 he came to believe her to the point that he reported abuse to SRS.
      Dr. Cunningham first described his process for verifying a child
 victim's account of abuse.  Basically, he would ask for descriptions in
 various different ways (pictures, dolls, questioning) and repeat this
 process over more than one interview, looking primarily at the level of
 detail and the degree of consistency.  He stated that consistency is
 particularly important to determining whether an allegation is fabricated:
         State:   . . . do you try to determine whether or not
                  the child has been coached or these responses
                  suggested to her by someone else?
         Expert:  Yes; I do.  What I look for is a consistency
                  between the different meetings that I have.

      After relating the details of the child's first visit, Dr. Cunningham
 then testified that she had described the same kinds of abuse and identified
 the same abuser on the second visit.  After the second visit, Dr. Cunningham
 called SRS to report abuse because "I thought I had sufficient reason to
 believe that [she] had been sexually abused and that consistency to
 identify her father as the perpetrator."  In response to State questioning,
 he conceded that he was "mandated by law, if I even suspect sexual abuse, to
 report it to either the police or SRS."
      Dr. Cunningham testified about the child's credibility in other ways.
 He testified that he knew fabrication was more likely where divorced parents
 were engaged in visitation disputes and that he therefore questioned the
 child directly about whether her mother had prompted her.
         And she was real clear with me, that no, her mother did
         not.  It did happen.  That if somebody said that her
         mother had told her to say this to me about dad
         touching, that that was a lie.  And again, this is a
         girl who I'd be hard pressed in high school to debate
         with this child.  I found her to be rather definitive.

 (Emphasis added.)  In response to the State asking whether, based on his
 expertise, the child's disclosures could be "solely attributable to a
 divorce that may have had some dispute over custody or visitation," Dr.
 Cunningham stated, "I would not make that conclusion."
      In talking about how children commonly characterize sexual contact, he
 concluded that the child's way of describing anal/penile contact by pointing
 to the appropriate anatomical drawings and saying, "he got me with this" was
 "indicative of a genuine statement from her," in other words, her way of
 describing the incident made him believe that it had actually occurred.
                                     II.
      Defendant argues that it was plain error for Dr. Cunningham to identify
 him as the perpetrator and to imply that the child's allegations were true.
 The State responds that the majority of Dr. Cunningham's testimony was
 admissible under V.R.E. 804a and as expert testimony on the profile
 characteristics of abuse victims.
      Under V.R.E. 804a, a witness may testify to hearsay statements made by
 a child ten years old or younger if the statements are offered in a sexual
 assault case where the child is an alleged victim, the statements were not
 taken in preparation for a legal proceeding, the child is available to
 testify, and the circumstances surrounding the statements show substantial
 indicia of trustworthiness.  The trial court scrupulously followed V.R.E.
 804a, qualifying Dr. Cunningham's testimony in preliminary hearings and
 making extensive findings, and the applicability of the rule is not
 questioned on appeal.  The inquiry, however, does not end there.
      Rule 804a has not overruled our long line of precedents on the
 parameters of expert testimony, starting with State v. Catsam, 148 Vt. 366,
 371,