Opinion ID: 2770336
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Initial Allegations

Text: From 2004 until 2010, appellant lived in a series of houses in the District of Columbia with A.J. and her ten children. During that time, appellant stayed at home to take care of the children while their mother worked. Appellant is the biological father of six of the children and stepfather to the remaining four. In 2008, twelve-year-old D.J., one of appellant‟s stepdaughters, wrote in her diary that appellant had made her “hump him” in 2005 when she was nine. She 1 D.C. Code §§ 22-3008, -3009, -3020 (2001). 3 later retracted that allegation in a signed statement to the police. Then, in May 2010, D.J. and M.J., another one of appellant‟s stepdaughters, told their mother that appellant had been touching them. She called the police, who told her to take the girls to the Bundy Child Advocacy Center (the “CAC”). Forensic interviewers at the CAC conducted separate, videotaped interviews of both girls on May 25, 2010. In part of her interview, D.J. described the first instance of abuse in 2005, where appellant forced her to sit on his lap and moved back and forth against her. In her grand jury testimony on October 26, 2011, D.J. stated that what she said in her CAC interview was true. However, it does not appear from the record that the tape of that interview was played for the grand jury, or that it had been played for D.J. before she was asked to affirm the truth of statements she made seventeen months earlier. On April 24, 2012, appellant was indicted on nine counts of first-degree child sexual abuse and eight counts of second-degree child sexual abuse. The indictment alleged that between July 2004 and May 2010, appellant sexually abused D.J., M.J., and two of their friends on numerous occasions. Each count identified a single victim and alleged a specific time period and type of sexual act. 4 For example, count two alleged that appellant touched M.J.‟s breast sometime between 2005 and 2007.