Opinion ID: 1909621
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fear of Imminent Harm

Text: At trial, the evidence showed that defendant had maintained an incestuous relationship with his daughter for a period of four years, beginning when the victim was thirteen years old and continuing until the incident at the motel. Initially, the sexual assaults took place in the home, but when the victim was older, defendant began to arrange assignations at motels. According to the victim, the assaults took place approximately once a week. On numerous occasions, defendant told the victim that failure to consent to his advances would be severely punished. He threatened to kill her on several occasions, even showing her the gun he would use should she fail to satisfy his demands or report his actions. After the initial assault in 1981, the victim reported the incident to her school principal who contacted a social worker. After the social worker contacted the victim's parents to arrange an interview, defendant reiterated his intent to kill her unless she recanted her story; she recanted. Under 13 V.S.A. § 3252(a)(1)(C) (prior to 1990 amendment), sexual assault occurs when a person compels another person to engage in a sexual act [b]y placing the other person in fear that any person will be harmed imminently. Defendant argues that the fear-producing threats must be proximate to the incident. Nothing in 13 V.S.A. § 3252(a)(1)(C) requires that the threats be made in a particular way or bear a particular temporal relation to the sexual act. The statute requires only that the victim fear imminent harm; it is silent as to how and when that fear must be instilled. Here, the victim had been conditioned by repeated threats of harm to submit to defendant over a four-year period. See In re Nash, 149 Vt. 63, 65, 539 A.2d 989, 991 (1987) (victim's earlier knowledge that the defendant had a knife was sufficient to supply evidence of fear of imminent harm). On this evidence, the jury was justified in finding that defendant compelled his daughter to engage in a sexual act by putting her in fear of imminent harm, and the trial court did not err in denying defendant's motion for judgment of acquittal.