Court Opinion

ID: 9774091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:08:29.967303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:32:01.864761
License: Public Domain

Robert L. Brown, Justice, concurring in part, dissenting in part. I concur with the affirmance of the carnal abuse conviction but would also affirm the rape conviction. The crimes in question occurred in the Group Home, a residential center for persons with developmental disabilities, both physical and mental. The victim, who was age 23, was mentally impaired and had the mental capacity and academic ability of a child of between ages six and eleven. The appellant was married to one of the victim’s supervisors at the Group Home — a person in charge — and would visit his wife at the home on weekends. The crimes occurred in the victim’s private room on the premises. The majority finds no “forcible compulsion” in this case due to the exclusion of hearsay statements of the victim made four days after the event which included an implied threat by the appellant. However, even if the stale statements are excluded, there is sufficient evidence of forcible mental compulsion to warrant a conviction. The victim was impaired and living in the Group Home’s structured environment. This made her very vulnerable and susceptible to assault. Her assailant was in a position of some authority due to his marriage to the victim’s supervisor, and he knew his victim to be susceptible to direction. There was more than mere trickery here. The appellant directed the victim on what to do. Under such circumstances and in such an environment, it is difficult for me to conclude that the victim was not compelled to yield to the appellant’s sexual demands. “Forcible compulsion” is defined as “physical force or a threat, express or implied, of death or physical injury to or kidnapping of any person.” Ark. Code Ann § 5-14-101(2) (1987). We have held that where three girls stayed with their uncle after school each day and submitted to his sexual advances, their submission was induced by the forcible compulsion of the uncle who stood in loco parentis to the three girls. Griswold v. State, 290 Ark. 79, 716 S.W.2d 767 (1986). Admittedly, in Griswold there were threats by the uncle, but we quoted with approval from an Oregon case that placed great emphasis on the situation of the victim and her intelligence in discussing forcible compulsion: In the present case, the complaining witness was a young girl toward whom for more than 17 years the defendant had stood in loco parentis.... [A] reading of her testimony indicates that her intelligence is not of a very high order. Upon such a person the constraints of family discipline and the habit of obedience must necessarily exercise a considerable influence. How a more mature and more intelligent woman might have reacted under the circumstances is not in point. . . . Where submission of a girl is induced ‘through the coercion of one whom she is accustomed to obey, such as a parent or one standing in loco parentis,” the law is satisfied with less than a showing of the utmost physical resistance of which she was capable. State v. Risen, 235 P.2d 764, 766 (Ore. 1951). As the husband of the supervisor of a mentally impaired victim living in a structured environment, the appellant undoubtedly was perceived as an authority figure by the victim. This case is analogous to the situation in State v. Risen. Here, the intelligence of the victim was not of a very high order — somewhere between the ages of six and eleven. Here, also, though not a person, strictly speaking, who stood in loco parentis to the victim, the appellant was most assuredly in a position to control the victim’s destiny through his wife. Under such circumstances I readily find forcible compulsion by implied threat. Hays, J., joins.