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Heard v. State

The victim's mother's testimony about the victim's veracity merely showed that she believed her child and did not impermissibly bolster the victim's testimony regarding the child molestation claims against the defendant.

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A jury found Donald Heard guilty of child molestation, aggravated child molestation, and incest on the person of his natural daughter. His amended motion for new trial was denied, and he appeals, asserting insufficiency of the evidence and improper bolstering and testimony as to the ultimate issue. Finding no error in any respect, we affirm.

1. Construed in favor of the verdict, the evidence shows that the victim testified that her father had vaginal intercourse with her on a regular basis, three or four times a week, as well as anal intercourse and oral sex less frequently. This began in November 2007, when she was 11 years old, and it continued until after she made outcry to her mother in March 2009. The victim testified that the abuse began after she called the police because her parents were fighting and her mother was arrested, and her father told her she had to have sex with him to “make it up, for making my mom go to jail.” The victim also described the sexual abuse during a video-recorded forensic interview by a police investigator; that recording was played for the jury. This investigator also attempted to confirm independently the details of the victim’s testimony, and she was able to verify information such as the date of the mother’s arrest and descriptions of locations where the victim stated that sexual abuse took place. The victim’s younger sister also testified that the father would take the victim into their parents’ bedroom after her mother left for work and they would stay “for a long time.”

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