Court Opinion

ID: 9765642
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:12:01.612294+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:54:07.982345
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Justice SPAIN
as to Issue I and Opinion of the Court by Justice SPAIN Affirming as to Issues II and III.
E
Respectfully, I dissent from the majority’s reversal of appellant’s conviction by reason of Issue I, concerning the testimony of Mr. Lane Veltkamp, the director of the Child Abuse Center of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. The trial judge ruled that Mr. Veltkamp was an expert in his field of clinical social work based upon his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work and his twenty-three years’ experience as a therapist, researcher, and writer, during which he has evaluated and treated over one thousand children and testified in court over one hundred times.
C.H. was referred to Mr. Veltkamp by the medical school’s Department of Family Practice in July 1989, since which time he has evaluated and treated her on eight visits to the Child Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic. He testified that C.H. had been traumatized, had a number of symptoms, and was very much in need of treatment. He described her symptoms (characterized editorially as “vague” by the majority) of experiencing bad dreams, having a great deal of anxiety and anger, being distrustful of men, having stomach pain complaints, and of delaying disclosure of her complaints of sexual abuse. He further stated that it was not unusual for sexually abused children sometimes to delay in reporting such incidents, and explained reasons why they did so. This was the extent of his testimony on direct examination by the prosecution. Appellant objected on the grounds that his testimony was based on hearsay from C.H. and was not relevant to the charges against appellant. It also is argued that “delayed disclosure” is often listed as a symptom of the controversial child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome and that this Court has repeatedly condemned testimony about the existence of such a syndrome, citing Mitchell v. Commonwealth, Ky., 777 S.W.2d 980 (1989), Hester v. Commonwealth, Ky., 734 S.W.2d 457 (1987), Lantrip v. Commonwealth, Ky., 713 S.W.2d 816 (1986), and Bussey v. Commonwealth, 697 S.W.2d 139 (1985).
The prosecution responds that no testimony whatever was heard by this jury regarding the syndrome and that the trial judge alluded to Bussey and to Souder v. Commonwealth, Ky., 719 S.W.2d 730 (1986), when he overruled appellant’s objections to Mr. Veltkamp’s proffered opinion testimony. I agree. Both the Commonwealth and the trial court attempted with great care not to let this case degenerate *617into another overturned sexual abuse accommodation syndrome exercise. According to the majority, they did not succeed. To me, Mr. Veltkamp was clearly qualified as an expert to express his opinions about his patient, C.H., whom he was treating, and to explain his view as to why she did not complain to her mother earlier about her allegations of Hellstrom’s sexual abuse of her. The prosecution correctly anticipated that appellant would emphasize this delay while cross-examining C.H., necessitating Mr. Veltkamp’s testimony about delayed disclosure.
The remaining complaints of appellant have to do with opinions elicited from Mr. Veltkamp solely on cross-examination by defense counsel, not on direct examination by the Commonwealth. It was in this questioning that Veltkamp opined that C.H. had indeed been sexually abused by appellant. As we said in Estep v. Commonwealth, Ky., 663 S.W.2d 213 (1983); “One who asks questions which call for an answer has waived any objection to the answer if it is responsive. 1 Wigmore, Evidence, Sec. 18, p. 344 (3rd ed.1940); See West v. Commonwealth, 273 Ky. 779, 117 S.W.2d 998 (1938).)” Apparently by his skilled cross-examination, defense counsel succeeded in eliciting enough tainted syndrome evidence to get this conviction reversed by the majority. What ever happened to “waiver”?
II.
Appellant’s next claimed error centered on testimony offered by Dr. Gary Kearl, a family physician, regarding his physical examination of C.H. Appellant concedes that this issue was not preserved for review; however, even if it had been, the majority of the Court holds there was no error. A physician can certainly express a medical opinion as he did here that the physical changes, including thickening and scarring observed in the external genitalia of a patient, were consistent with complaints of sexual abuse including prodding of the genitals.
III.
The third claimed error concerned the introduction into evidence of drawings and contemporaneous captions accomplished by C.H. in the presence of her mother and a police officer at the time she gave her statement and on another occasion a few days later. (Commonwealth Exhibits # 1, 2, 3, and 4.) Only Exhibit # 4 was objected to at trial. While it is true that the writings were out-of-court statements offered for their truth, and thus hearsay, they were identified and explained by the child victim during her in-court testimony and thus were merely cumulative evidence. Furthermore, she was subject to full cross-examination thereon. The error in admitting the exhibits, if any, was harmless in the opinion of this Court’s majority. Similarly harmless was the testimony of C.H.’s mother, the policewoman, and the child abuse investigator as to actions taken by them following C.H.’s allegations. Moreover, there were no contemporaneous objections made at trial to preserve the issue.
REYNOLDS and WINTERSHEIMER, JJ., concur in this dissent as to Part I.
LAMBERT, REYNOLDS and WINTER-SHEIMER, JJ., concur in Parts II and III and thus the trial court is affirmed on these two grounds.
LEIBSON, J., dissents by separate opinion as to Parts II and III and is joined by STEPHENS, C.J., and COMBS, J.