My daughter told one of the CPS case worker that her school bus driver had sex with her.
Full Question:
I have an 8 year old daughter. Few months back my daughter returned from school complaining of pain in her private parts. We took her to the nearest hospital to get her checked. While we were on our way to the hospital my daughter told my husband that her school bus driver had “touched her privates.” We informed the same to the doctor who treated her but no medical evidence of the incident was discovered. We reported this incident with the police but due to lack of evidence, they could not do anything. My daughter refused to speak to the police officers about this. The police then asked us to approach the Child Protective Services (CPS) (Washington). During an interaction with one of the CPS case worker in our house, my daughter told that on several occasions her bus driver touched her private parts and that she had felt pain whenever the bus driver brought his private parts close to hers. Can we use my daughter’s statement made to the case worker as evidence in the court?
12/13/2016 |
Category: Criminal » Statutory Rape |
State: Washington |
#28023
Answer:
“(1) A person is guilty of rape of a child in the first degree when the person has sexual intercourse with another who is less than twelve years old and not married to the perpetrator and the perpetrator is at least twenty-four months older than the victim.
(2) Rape of a child in the first degree is a class A felony.”
“The courts have found that complaints of genital pain during sexual contact are sufficient corroborating evidence of sexual abuse.”
In State v. Biles, the Washington Court of Appeals held, that a Child's hearsay statements, given through testimony of case worker indicating genital contact between them and that it hurt and she cried, was “sufficient to support logical and reasonable inference that penetration occurred, . . . thus provide sufficient evidence of corpus delicti of first-degree rape of child.”
In the given instance, the hearsay statement given by the 8 year old girl to the case worker may effectively be used as hearsay evidence in the court, as they indicate genital contact and pain suffered by the child. Thus, the court may charge the bus driver with rape of the child in the first degree on the basis of the hearsay evidence.
State v. Biles, 73 Wash. App. 281, 284, 871 P.2d 159, 161 (1994)
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