Court Opinion

ID: 9708035
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:28:13.768029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:04.640037
License: Public Domain

MONTEMURO, Judge,
concurring:
I join Judge Wieand’s excellent opinion and write separately only to emphasize one matter. As has already been pointed out, the ideal of face to face confrontation is subject to adjustment depending upon the adverse interest to be protected, as long as there is “no material departure from the reason of the general rule.” Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 107, 54 S.Ct. 330, 333, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1933). Judge Wieand has found that appellant’s right of confrontation was in no way abridged by use of the closed circuit television monitor to broadcast the victim’s testimony, and that there has indeed been no “departure from the reason *373of the rule”. Where children are involved, as victims of (sexual) abuse, the interest adverse to that of the accused is the state’s obligation as parens patriae, the ultimate parent, to protect its charges, simply because, by virtue of their age, they labor under a disability. They are, as Judge Tamilia points out, qualitatively different from adults, particularly when they have been victimized. To ignore the difference is to disregard the protective responsibility, although it is in fact the motivating factor in the recent criminalization of child abuse in Pennsylvania’s legislation.1 Its importance here is in the recognition that the inherent weakness of children, which allows the sort of exploitation being prosecuted, leaves the victim open to further persecution if the state’s obligation to prevent additional harm is not fulfilled. Appellant capitalized upon his child’s vulnerability to perpetrate the abuse, and again at the preliminary hearing to prevent her testimony. Without the court’s (successful) intervention in reconciling appellant’s interests with that of the child, appellant could have at trial as well used not only his presence, but the system itself to frighten his daughter into “silence or anxiety-produced confusion.” Mahady-Smith, The Young Victim as Witness for the Prosecution: Another Form of Abuse?, 89 Dick.L.Rev. 721, 743 (1985). To accomplish this result with the connivance, or at least the acquiescence, of the state would override not only formalistic expressions of constitutionality, but the basic fairness such concepts as the right of confrontation are meant to preserve.
Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that by doctrinaire insistence on “eyeball to eyeball” contact, the opposite effect is actually achieved, that is, the notion that with especially susceptible witnesses, “anxiety influences memory by interfering with focused attention.” Id. at 724, n. 21. In such witnesses, particularly children, stress can operate *374to the extent that the increased tension generated by face to face confrontation would decrease rather than increase probity. G.B. Melton, Procedural Reforms to Protect Child Victim/Witnesses in Sex Offense Proceedings, in Child Sexual Abuse and The Law (1981). Since a trial is the process of seeking truth, technological advances which facilitate that process while preserving intact all of the interests involved are not to be lightly disregarded.
DEL SOLE and JOHNSON, JJ., join.

. Not until the 1982 passage of the amended Child Protective Services Law was the accepted wisdom dispelled that child abuse was a problem to be addressed by social service agencies, rather than a crime requiring law enforcement intervention. Attorney General’s Family Violence Task Force Report, Violence Against Children (1987).