Court Opinion

ID: 9682703
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:15:02.990222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:40.786787
License: Public Domain

GUILLOT, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The majority’s opinion presupposes that Tex.Code Crim.Proc.Ann. art. 38.07 (Vernon 1979) requires corroboration of a complainant’s testimony in a case involving the rape of a child under the age of seventeen. That presupposition is incorrect, I believe, in light of the legislative history of art. 38.07 and in light of the common sense approach that the law has taken toward the sexual abuse or rape of a child.
To begin with, the purpose of the bill which encompassed art. 38.07 was to make it less difficult to obtain convictions in sexual offense cases by eliminating the need for corroboration when the victim informs another person of the offense within six months.1 Heretofore, however, there was never a need for a child’s testimony to be corroborated because corroboration was necessary when the defendant claimed the complainant consented, and a child, as a matter of law, cannot consent to sexual intercourse. Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 21.09 (Vernon Supp. 1982-1983); McKinney v. State, 505 S.W.2d 536 (Tex.Cr.App.1974).
Furthermore, it does not make sense to require a child’s testimony to be corroborated just because that child fails to inform anyone of the violation within six months. In most instances, the cases involving sexual abuse and rape of a child are ones that involve a father, a relative, or someone close to one of the child’s parents. And, more often than not, the perpetrator has threatened the child with death or severe injury if she or he tells anyone. What child, under these circumstances, would not hesitate to make an outcry? Under the best of circumstances every child has a healthy fear of her or his parents — especially the father — but, under circumstances in which there is sexual abuse by a threatening father, that healthy fear becomes terror. It takes monumental courage for a child to inform someone that her or his father has committed sexual abuse. It goes against common sense to require corroboration of a child’s testimony if there has been no outcry within six months.
I believe that, viewing Tex.Code Crim. Proc.Ann. art. 38.07 in light of the legislative history and common sense, it is clear that there never has been, nor is there now, a need for corroboration of a child’s testimony in cases of sexual abuse and rape.
Consequently, I would hold that art. 38.07 refers to only those instances of sexual abuse and rape of someone over the age of seventeen.

. See Judge Clinton’s concurring opinion in Hernandez v. State, 651 S.W.2d 746 at p. 752 of concurrence.