In re Cindy L

In In re Cindy L. (1997) 17 Cal.4th 15, the juvenile court admitted into evidence hearsay testimony from a teacher's aide that a three-year old child victim pointed to her vagina and said that "Papi" touched her there with his "'fingers.'" (Cindy L., supra, 17 Cal.4th at pp. 19-20.) The juvenile court admitted these statements under the child dependency exception even though it also found that the child was incompetent to testify in court because she could not distinguish between truth and falsity. The Supreme Court affirmed because the time, content, and circumstances of the child victim's statements provided sufficient indicia of reliability. Factors influencing the court were the spontaneity of the child's statement, the precociousness of her knowledge of sexual matters, her lack of motive to lie, her use of infantile descriptive words, the absence of any leading or suggestive questioning, and the consistency with which she repeated it to two social workers and a police investigator. (Id. at p. 35.) The statements were supported by corroborating physical evidence from a doctor, who, upon examining the victim, reported that he could not "'visualize a hymen,' a fact consistent with a history of sexual abuse . . . ." (Ibid.) The California Supreme Court articulated the following requirements for admission of child hearsay statements of sexual abuse in dependency proceedings: (1) the court must find that the time, content and circumstances of the statement provide sufficient indicia of reliability; (2) the child must either be available for cross-examination or there must be evidence of child sexual abuse that corroborates the statement made by the child; (3) other interested parties must have adequate notice of the public agency's intention to introduce the hearsay statement so as to contest it.