The sole issue we must decide is whether the trial court erred in allowing expert testimony that the alleged victim was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Because the foundation to qualify the witness to offer this testimony was insufficient, we hold that it was error to allow it and accordingly award a new trial.
Defendant was tried and convicted of two counts of first degree sexual offense, two counts of taking indecent liberties, and attempted rape. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the first degree sexual offenses, six years imprisonment on the indecent liberties convictions, and three years imprisonment on the attempted rape conviction. The court ordered all sentences served concurrently.
Evidence at trial showed that defendant, a fifty-nine year old naval architect, invited his girlfriend and her two children to his cottage at Kill Devil Hills. The girlfriend’s daughter asked another child to accompany them to the beach. According to the invited child (the victim here), while defendant’s girlfriend was at the store, defendant took the two girls into a bedroom and showed them “dirty magazines” and two vibrators. He also had them touch his private parts. Later that evening defendant came into their bedroom with no clothes on and put his mouth on their private parts. He also placed a vibrator on the children’s private parts, placed his penis on their private parts, and had both put their mouths on his privates. The pediatrician who examined the prosecutrix testified that he found no evidence of sexual abuse or physical trauma to her female organs.
*149 Defendant’s evidence, presented through the girlfriend and her two children, tended to show that the two girls went with the girlfriend to the store that day rather than remaining at the cottage, and that both girls slept on the couch that night, rather than in a bedroom, because it was near the air conditioner. The girlfriend’s son testified that the two girls were on the couch when he returned to the cottage around 3:00 a.m. According to the girlfriend and her daughter, defendant never abused or molested either of the two children. A physical examination of the girlfriend’s daughter also revealed no evidence of physical trauma to her female organs.
The State sought to present expert testimony by a licensed clinical social worker that the daughter’s friend suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. The witness was qualified as an expert in the field of clinical social work based on the following testimony:
Q. What is your occupation?
A. I am a licensed clinical social worker.
Q. And licensed by whom?
A. By the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Q. And that gives you authority to do what?
A. Basically, to practice in mental health and psychotherapeutic counselling with people for emotional and psychological reasons.
Q. In the course of that work ... do you diagnose disorders that people may have?
A. Yes, emotional disorders.
Q. Would you give the jury a little bit of your background please, in the field in which you work?
A. Yes, I have approximately fifteen years of mental health experience. I worked for a long period of time in San Antonio, Texas, and then in the last seven and V2 years I have worked at Portsmouth Psychiatric Hospital on a children’s inpatient unit which treated exclusively children with emotional problems, and children who have experienced trauma. I am currently in private practice.
*150 Following the court’s ruling qualifying this witness to testify as an expert in the field of licensed clinical social work, the prosecutor asked: “Can you tell the jury in your capacity as an expert what post-traumatic stress syndrome is?” (Emphasis added.) Over objection the witness was allowed to describe this disorder and to testify that in his opinion the daughter’s friend was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome as a result of sexual abuse. Defendant assigns error to the admission of this testimony.
Post traumatic stress syndrome is a relatively newly recognized medical disorder.
See Funchess v. Wainwright,
Whether a witness has the requisite skill to qualify as an expert in a given area is chiefly a question of fact, the determination of which is ordinarily within the exclusive province of the trial court.
State v. Bullard,
Here the questions posed and answers given in qualifying the witness as an expert in the field of clinical social work failed to establish that the witness had any particularized training or experience relating to post traumatic stress disorder. Such training or experience is not inherent in the designation “licensed clinical social worker.” It is unclear when the witness received his graduate degrees, but the transcript suggests that it may have been as much as ten years prior to medical recognition of this disorder. Given the relative newness of recognition of this disorder, the court could not assume that the witness received training in it during his graduate studies. The prosecutor also failed to inquire as to whether the witness had received any postgraduate education on the disorder or had actual experience in identifying and counselling regarding it. Without a foundation showing the witness to have sufficient skill, knowledge, or experience in or related to the syndrome, it was impossible to determine whether his opinion would aid the trier of fact in the search for truth. McCormick on Evidence Sec. 13 (3d ed. 1984).
As in
State v. Stafford,
“[w]e neither reach nor decide the question of whether in a proper case expert testimony concerning [post traumatic stress syndrome] will be admitted in the trial courts of this state.”
State v. Stafford,
New trial.