Ohio v. Clark: Domestic Violence Meets Child Abuse

 Ohio v. Clark is a lesser reported, but as significant as any, case decided this Supreme Court term.  This case raises concerns regarding an often unprotected class: children. 

Three year old L.P.arrived at pre-school with bruises.  When his teachers spoke with him, L.P.indicated that his mother’s boyfriend, Clark, hurt him.  L.J.’s statements were admitted at trial and Clark was convicted.  The fundamental issue before the Court was whether the child’s statements were properly admitted, particularly in light of Crawford v. Washington.  In a 9-0 opinion, the Court held that the statements were properly admitted.  In doing so, the Court relied on Crawford’s applicability only where statements are testimonial in nature and made for purposes of substituting for live witness testimony.  The Crawford test presumes that the speaker is available for trial.  “This Court’s decision in Crawford v. Washington, … held that the Confrontation Clause generally prohibits the intro­duction of ‘testimonial’ statements by a non-testifying witness, unless the witness is ‘unavailable to testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” A statement qualifies as testimonial if the “primary purpose” of the conversation was to “creat[e] an out-of-court substitute for trial testimony.”

 L.P. was deemed unavailable for trial due to his young age.  Neither the setting of the questioning nor the reason for the inquiry supported the responses as testimonial in nature.   The use of L.P.’s statements at trial was not, then, in violation of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause. 

The opinion is important because it enhances the ability of the state to protect children through prosecution of their abusers. 

However, what is significant for those who represent  abused parents is the often judicially ignored connection between abuse of a woman’s children when the mother herself  is abused.  The Supreme  Court implicitly noted the interconnectedness.   Justice Alito’s opinion begins:  “Darius Clark sent his girlfriend hundreds of miles away to engage in prostitution and agreed to care for her two young children while she was out of town.”  L.P.’s bruises were discovered the very next day. 

 Forced prostitution is often a tool of intimate partner abuse.  Experienced advocates have heard client disclosures of being forced into sex work by the current or former intimate partner.  The culture may refer to men such as Clark as “pimp”, but to someone such as L.P.’s mother  he is “boyfriend”.

 To researchers, the child abuse was predictable.  When a mother is abused, the chances that her children will be abused hovers around 50%.  Some studies place the risk higher.   How heartening it would be for the U.S. Supreme Court to explicitly acknowledge this connection, even in a footnote. Advocates for abused mothers would find their work in family court so much easier if only one SCOTUS case supported the empirical data that family courts so often ignore.