Donald Schaff is charged with various crimes related to his alleged molestation of M. S., who is also his minor daughter. We granted his application for interlocutory appeal to review the trial court’s order granting the State’s motion to disqualify defense counsel, Kevin Gough, whom the court determined would be a necessary witness with regard to a videotaped recant of the victim.1 For the following reasons, we reverse the disqualification order. Schaff also enumerates as error the trial court’s order preventing him from interviewing the victim prior to trial, but we discern no error with regard to that enumeration. The record before this Court establishes the following. When the trial court made the challenged rulings, jury selection had been completed,2 and the court was presiding over argument of various pretrial motions, including Schaff’s motion in limine to admit evidence of M. S.’s prior, allegedly false accusations of sexual abuse. Several witnesses proffered testimony concerning the statements allegedly made by M. S. when she was eight years old, including the victim and her mother also Schaff’s wife. M. S., however, testified that she did not independently remember the instances as testified to by her mother until after her mother had discussed them in her presence. Additionally, during M. S.’s proffer, it was elicited by the State that M. S. visited Gough’s office on “three or four” occasions with her mother. M. S. testified that at one of the visits, she made a videotaped interview with Gough during which she recanted her allegations of abuse by Schaff. M. S. also recanted the allegations on the stand during the witness voir dire.
The prosecutor then entered into a line of questioning in which she asked M. S. when she “decided that none of this happened.” At the end of the exchange, the State, fearing that M. S.’s mother was improperly influencing her with regard to the case, asked the court to appoint a guardian ad litem for the child and/or for the Department of Family and Children Services “DFACS” to determine whether continued placement with her mother was appropriate during the remainder of the proceedings. The trial court granted the State’s oral motion, appointed a guardian ad litem for M. S., and placed her into DFACS custody.
