Court Opinion

ID: 9612780
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:11:16.804791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:23.019484
License: Public Domain

LOHR, Justice,
specially concurring:
The majority holds that the trial court properly admitted the testimony of Patricia Wyka, who was qualified as an expert in victimology, in order to help the jury determine what effect should be given to the victim’s eighty-nine day delay in reporting the sexual assault. I agree with this conclusion and write separately only to emphasize what I believe to be the narrow scope of this holding. The majority opinion does not approve the admission of rape trauma syndrome evidence generally, or to prove that the victim was raped, or to corroborate the victim’s truthfulness, but only to provide an explanation for the victim’s delay in reporting consistent with her claim of having been raped. The issues concerning the admissibility of rape trauma syndrome evidence for other purposes is properly left to be addressed on another day.
*954In this case the victim did not report the sexual assault until eighty-nine days after it had occurred. The trial court admitted the testimony of Wyka after defense counsel informed the court that the reporting delay would be the subject of serious attack, and after defense counsel vigorously cross-examined the victim about the delay. As the Supreme Court of California noted in People v. Bledsoe, 203 Cal.Rptr. 450, 457, 681 P.2d 291, 298 (Cal.1984):
[I]n such a context expert testimony on rape trauma syndrome may play a particularly useful role by disabusing the jury of some widely held misconceptions about rape and rape victims, so that it may evaluate the evidence free of the constraints of popular myths.
Wyka did not testify that the victim had been raped or even that she suffered from rape trauma syndrome, but instead testified generally about the reactions of rape victims. Her testimony provided the jury with an alternative explanation for the reporting delay, and was properly admitted because of its relevance for this limited purpose.