Opinion ID: 1425788
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: parallel disclosures by the children

Text: On October 2, 1985, 3-year-old B.A. walked out of a day-care center bathroom with her dress tucked in her tights. The center's teacher, Lisa Conradi, untucked the dress and told B.A. to keep her private parts covered. When B.A. appeared confused, Conradi explained that private parts means the areas covered by her bathing suit. B.A. pointed to her chest and crotch area. Conradi then added that no one should look at or touch B.A.'s private parts, whereupon B.A. said, Uh-huh, Mommy and Daddy do. When asked What do Mommy and Daddy do?, B.A. replied, Mommy spits on me. Conradi asked where, and B.A. pointed to her crotch. At this point, Conradi gave B.A. a book and took the rest of the children downstairs. When Conradi returned, she asked B.A. if her parents did anything else to her private parts. B.A. said she spits on Mommy in her private parts and that Daddy puts his potty in me and it hurts real bad. Conradi explained that a man's potty was a penis. The two then walked around the room. B.A. played peekaboo from behind a door with Conradi several times, and said, My daddy plays peekaboo with me. She also said, My daddy puts his penis in my mouth and icky milk comes out. When asked who else played this game, B.A. said Josh does. B.A. also said they played the games in the bedroom with their clothes off. When Cindy Bratvold, the day-care owner, returned to the center a short while later, Conradi told her about B.A.'s statements. Bratvold then called Child Protective Services (CPS). After calling CPS, Bratvold asked B.A. whether her close friend R.T., who attended the same day-care center, played games with B.A.'s parents. B.A. said yes. Two CPS caseworkers interviewed B.A. that day. B.A. would not answer questions they posed, but when Conradi asked in their presence if her mother spit on her or put her mouth on B.A.'s private parts, the child nodded and said yes. The interview ended when the defendant Kathleen Swan came to take her daughter B.A. home. The CPS caseworkers then decided to interview R.T. and B.A. on October 4, when both girls were scheduled to be at the day-care center. R.T. came to the center the following day, October 3, but B.A. did not. Bratvold took R.T. upstairs and began to talk to her. Bratvold started by asking R.T. if she liked certain people, including B.A.'s mommy. R.T. liked the people listed and kind of liked Kathy Swan. When asked what she meant, R.T. said she makes us play funny games. These games included exercise games and ring around the rosy in the nude and falling on the bed. Then we kiss Kathy's boobies and we lick her potty, and she does that to us, too. R.T. also said that Kathy puts  one time Kathy put something in my potty and made me bleed, and she cleaned it up and told me not to say anything. R.T. then said she played games with Uncle Bill (the defendant William Swan). She said that Uncle Bill's favorite game was the happy birthday game. And that's where he puts his peepee in my mouth and shakes it around, and then he says, `Here is your happy birthday present,' and something icky gets in my mouth. R.T. also said that the Swans put candles and marbles in her peepee. She added that another man, John or Josh, played the games. The next day, a CPS caseworker came to the Bratvold day-care center to talk to the two girls. An initial attempt to interview them together proved unsuccessful, so the caseworker talked to the girls separately in Bratvold's presence. R.T. told the caseworker that she played with a game of marbles at the Swans' home. She then added, Bill plays without his clothes on. Bill touches my potty with his fingers. When asked what a potty was, R.T. said it was a peepee hole. R.T. then said, Kathy put some marbles in my bottom. When asked where her bottom was she said peepee hole and pointed to the vaginal area of an anatomically correct doll that the caseworker had brought. R.T. then added, I am afraid ... Kathy touches my potty. Blood was on my bottom. Kathy put something in my peepee hole. It hurt. She said there was blood down there and pointed to her crotch. She also said that she touched Kathy's potty and boobies and put her mouth on them. R.T. then said that B.A. was present, and added, I am too afraid for it. I just hurt, she poked a marble in it, she just put a marble in it, in my potty. What happened? Kathy fixed it. Bratvold then asked R.T. about the happy birthday games. R.T. said, Bill and Kathy put a candle in my potty and played happy birthday. Bill put marbles in my potty to make it better. Stuff comes out of his peepee. When asked if the stuff was like milk, water, or blood, R.T. replied, Like milk. She added that Bill gives me a happy birthday present, gives me one in my bottom. When asked if she liked Bill, R.T. said, He is mean, I don't like him, he hurts me, he puts his peepee - -. R.T. pointed to the vagina on the doll when asked where Bill puts his peepee on her. It hurt. R.T. added that B.A. played the marble and happy birthday games with the defendants. The CPS caseworker then interviewed B.A. When asked if Mommy spits on her potty, B.A. replied, Yes. When asked where Daddy puts his peepee, she said, On my potty. When asked how it felt, she answered, It hurts. B.A. said R.T. was present when these things happened, and she said that she played happy birthday and marble games with her mother and father, but she would not describe the games. After the interviews, the police were called and the children were taken into protective custody. B.A. was placed in a foster home while R.T. was returned to her parents and continued to attend Bratvold's day-care center. Two months later, R.T. told Bratvold she wanted to tell her something. See my finger? I have a burn. I had a burn.... When Bill and Kathy lit the candle in my potty and I tried to grab it out, my finger got burned, and then I bumped my head on the counter when they made me lay on the counter. On October 17, 1985, after the alleged abuse came to light, R.T. spontaneously told her father that Bill and Kathy are bad because they put marbles in her bottom. B.A.'s foster mother testified that while drying B.A. off after a bath, B.A. told her that her mommy and daddy put marbles in her potty. The foster mother asked her son for some toy marbles and asked B.A. if they were the type of marbles Daddy put in her potty. B.A. laughed and said no. When asked what kind of marbles Daddy used, B.A. pointed to her crotch. The foster mother then asked if the marbles were on Daddy's potty, and B.A. pointed to her crotch and said, Yes, and a snake full of marbles. The foster mother also testified that B.A. had mentioned marbles on other occasions, and once had said that her daddy put marbles and other things inside her potty and then started to cry as she said this. The foster mother testified further that B.A. once brought up the subject of birthday candles in her potty. Having outlined the parallel disclosures made by the children, we now turn to an analysis thereof to determine whether, as the State argues, these disclosures are corroborative evidence of the alleged abuse. B.A. and R.T. did not have contact with each other on October 2 or 3, the days that they talked to the day-care workers. On October 4 they sat together but briefly before their separate interviews by the CPS caseworker. Summarizing the similarities between the statements of these two 3-year-old children, we find the following. B.A. said that her daddy put his potty in me, and R.T. said that he put his peepee in her. B.A. said that Daddy put his penis in her mouth and icky milk came out; R.T. said Uncle Bill put his potty in her mouth and something icky, like milk, came out. B.A. said that she and her parents played games in the bedroom without clothes on; R.T. said that they played ring around the rosy in the nude, that Uncle Bill played without his clothes on, and that they fell on the bed after their games. B.A. said Josh also played the games, while R.T. said John or Josh played. B.A. said that her parents put marbles and birthday candles in her potty; R.T. said that the Swans put candles and marbles in her peepee and her bottom. The Court of Appeals did not discuss these statements in detail before dismissing their corroborative value. The Court of Appeals held, Certainly, to some degree, R.T.'s statements corroborate those of B.A. and to some degree B.A.'s statements corroborate those of R.T. However, under the circumstances of this case we do not believe that this corroborative evidence is, standing alone, sufficient to lead to the requisite `logical and reasonable inference.' Recent cases from other jurisdictions have discussed cross-corroboration in greater detail and have used it to support the admission into evidence of child victims' hearsay statements. The statutory guidelines in those other jurisdictions, however, are not precisely the same as those set forth in Washington's child victim hearsay statute, RCW 9A.44.120. The New York Court of Appeals found that three brothers' hearsay statements of abuse cross-corroborated each other in the second of two child protective proceedings reported in In re Nicole V., 71 N.Y.2d 112, 518 N.E.2d 914, 524 N.Y.S.2d 19 (1987). The action underlying the second proceeding was governed by a civil statute providing that out-of-court statements may be corroborated by `[a]ny other evidence tending to support' their reliability. [17] Applying what it referred to as this broad flexible rule, the court concluded that the statements of each brother tended to support the other's statements and, viewed together, gave sufficient indicia of reliability to each victim's out-of-court statements. [18] As the court there declared: Specifically, both Francis and David described an incident in which respondent had David put a stick into respondent's vagina while Francis looked on. Additionally, both Samuel and Francis described separate incidents where respondent came into each child's bedroom in the middle of the night and had sexual relations, hand to penis contact and mouth to penis contact, with each child after which she threatened each child not to tell anyone about the incidents. Because each child had consistently and independently described these particularly detailed sexual acts, the reliability of the victim's out-of-court statements could be weighed by comparing them. In re Nicole V., 71 N.Y.2d at 124. Thus, in this New York case the courts below properly found each victim's hearsay statements were sufficiently corroborated by the statements of the other victims to establish a prima facie case of sexual abuse. [19] [3] As noted earlier, our statute (RCW 9A.44.120) requires corroboration of the act of sexual abuse, and thus is less broad and flexible than the New York statute applied above. B.A. and R.T. did, however, consistently and independently describe similar sexual acts in varying degrees of detail. Using the logic and reasoning implicit in In re Nicole V., the many parallels between the 3-year-old girls' statements in this case supply a reasonable inference that the abuse described by these young children did occur. The Alaska Court of Appeals also used cross corroboration to allow admission of two child victims' hearsay statements into evidence in Murray v. State, 770 P.2d 1131 (Alaska Ct. App. 1989) and Clifton v. State, 758 P.2d 1279 (Alaska Ct. App. 1988). The Alaska statute applicable to both cases required additional evidence to corroborate a child victim's hearsay statements before they could be admitted into evidence before a grand jury. [20] In Murray, a 5-year-old and her 9-year-old neighbor told their parents and a police officer that a family friend had sexually abused them. They described in detail sexual acts that they were subjected to and which they had witnessed being performed on each other. Despite lack of a confession or any medical or physical evidence, the court found the girls' charges corroborated in large part by each other's claims. The court cited Clifton in observing that one child's claims of sexual abuse may corroborate another child's claim against the same individual. [21] In the other Alaska case, Clifton, an 11-year-old boy and his 13-year-old sister told a social worker that their stepfather had sexually abused them, and then recanted their statements. In their original statements, the boy had described in detail ongoing acts of oral sex, while his sister said that the defendant had touched her sexually four or five times. At trial, the youngsters again denied their earlier charges, but admitted making earlier accusations of sexual abuse. The court concluded there that the original statements corroborated each other and were admissible as evidence. [22] In the case before us, as in Murray, the girls described in some detail (R.T. more than B.A.) similar sexual acts and said that the other was present. The fact that the children in this case reported each other's presence, coupled with their parallel references to certain sexual practices, lends support to their claims of abuse. In Clifton, the children recanted their claims, while in Murray and the case at bar the children repeated the same basic stories of abuse. Indeed, weeks and even months after their allegations first came to light, both R.T. and B.A. independently indicated that the defendants had inserted marbles and birthday candles into their vaginas. Moreover, these consistent claims came from 3-year-olds, as opposed to the 5- to 13-year-olds involved in Clifton and Murray. We agree with the State that the likelihood that 3-year-old girls would fabricate this same story simultaneously, or that the girls would conspire to tell a continuing tale of sexual abuse about the parents of one of them, is remote. While Clifton and Murray required only corroboration of the statements, their acceptance of two victims' hearsay as mutually corroborative strengthens the State's contention in this case that the statements of R.T. and B.A. are corroborative of each other's abuse. Tied to these parallel disclosures is the State's argument that the girls' eyewitness accounts of each other's abuse corroborates their abuse. Each girl simply said, however, that the other was present; neither described in detail what was seen to happen to the other. This is in contrast with Murray, where the 9-year-old said that she saw the defendant licking her 5-year-old friend's vaginal and breast areas and is also in contrast with Nicole V., where the two boys described a specific act of abuse in which one participated. [23] Here, the bare statement that the other girl also played the games provides little corroboration of the alleged abuse.