Opinion ID: 2556376
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fifteen-Month-Delayed Report Posing as Fresh Complaint

Text: That the majority sanctions as a fresh complaint a report of sexual abuse that occurred fifteen months earlier indicates that the fresh-complaint doctrine has now become completely untethered from its historical underpinnings. The fresh-complaint doctrine is derived from the common-law requirement that a sexual-assault victim utter a hue and cry to dispel any suspicion of her consensual involvement in the act. See State v. Hill, 121 N.J. 150, 157, 578 A. 2d 370 (1990). Under that requirement, it was assumed that a `normal' woman would `naturally' complain after having been raped. Id. at 162, 578 A. 2d 370. Outmoded views about how normal women would react to a sexual assault reflected in the hue and cry requirement gave way to the more nuanced, modern version of the fresh-complaint rule. Under the present fresh-complaint doctrine, a victim's out-of-court report is admissible to support her in-court testimony for the purpose of negating the inference that her silence would be an indication she was not sexually assaulted. Id. at 163, 578 A. 2d 370 (citation omitted). To qualify as a fresh complaint, the victim's statement must have been made to someone she ordinarily would have called for support,  must have been made within a reasonable time after the alleged assault and must have been spontaneous and voluntary. Ibid. (citations omitted) (emphasis added). The fresh-complaint rule serves the narrow purpose of rebutting the negative inference the jury would draw from silence. Ibid. (citation omitted). Only the fact of the complaint is admissible, not the particulars of the accusation. Ibid. (citation omitted). Reporting a sexual offense within a reasonable time is a precondition to the admission of fresh-complaint evidence. The fifteen-month delay now permitted by the majority completely eviscerates the reasonable time requirement and will make every complaintregardless of when it is reportedfresh. While courts allow children additional time to make a fresh complaint when they claim sexual abuse, State v. Bethune, 121 N.J. 137, 143, 578 A. 2d 364 (1990), there must be some logical end to that period. Here, the child was a young adult, age sixteen, when she made her initial complaint. Today's opinion is the first time that the Court has expanded the fresh-complaint doctrine to permit allegations made so long after an alleged assault. Cf. State v. Smith, 158 N.J. 376, 378-79, 730 A. 2d 311 (1999) (complaint one day after assault admissible); State v. Mann, 132 N.J. 410, 415, 426, 625 A. 2d 1102 (1993) (complaint within one day after assault admissible); Hill, supra, 121 N.J. at 152, 154, 169, 578 A. 2d 370 (complaint to friend within six weeks after assault admissible); Bethune, supra, 121 N.J. at 140-41, 145-46, 578 A. 2d 364 (permitting two-week-delayed complaint, but questioning whether statement was voluntary); State v. Tirone, 64 N.J. 222, 225-26, 314 A. 2d 601 (1974) (complaint within one day after assault admissible); State v. Balles, 47 N.J. 331, 334-35, 339, 221 A. 2d 1 (1966) (complaint within one day after assault admissible). That some lower courts have allowed much longer periods to report a sexual assault, while still characterizing the complaint as fresh, is no reason for this Court to allow the doctrine to become so distorted and muddled that any result affirming a conviction can be rationalized. See ante at 204-06. Moreover, the fresh complaint in this case was not admitted to support the in-court testimony of the alleged victim but to impeach that testimony. We have never held that fresh-complaint testimony can be used for any purpose other than to show that the prior complaint is consistent with the witness's testimony on the stand. Cf. Smith, supra, 158 N.J. at 378, 730 A. 2d 311 (stating that fresh complaint was consistent with alleged victim's trial testimony); Balles, supra, 47 N.J. at 335, 221 A. 2d 1 (same). An additional irony is that the State introduced the fifteen-month-late report as fresh at the very same time that it introduced CSAAS testimony through an expert to explain why the report was so delayed. One must wonder how a complaint can be admissible based on its freshness and yet require the extensive testimony of a CSAAS expert to explain why the complaint was not freshly made. The importance of evidence to the State does not validate its admission. Process is an end in itself. It assures fairness in all proceedings and legitimizes a trial's outcome. The majority's new and improved fresh-complaint doctrine takes the fresh out of the doctrine. III.