The testimony of a teenage child whose stepmother is accused of having sex with him was deemed admissible by the court and will now be presented at trial.
The order on the child’s hearsay statements against his stepmother, Alexis Von Yates, was filed by Judge Timothy T. McCourt of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Court in Marion County on Friday, May 30.
Yates, whose nursing license was suspended in April, is accused of sexual battery on a person 12 to 18 years of age by someone in familial custody.
The stepmother was allegedly caught by her husband while she was having sex with her stepson in July 2024.
On April 10, prosecutors filed a notice to use the child victim’s statements as evidence at the trial of the case.
On May 29, the court held a hearing about the notice and, among other items, discussed the testimony of Allie Munshi, a forensic interviewer. Munshi conducted an interview with the victim on August 30, 2024, around four weeks after the alleged incident.
The court was charged to determine whether the victim’s statements were “reliable and trustworthy” by determining whether the child’s testimony demonstrated that the child “accurately perceived and related the circumstances of the offense.”
“Even if a child’s statements are reliable, the court may not admit statements under this exception to the hearsay rule if ‘ the source of information or the method of circumstances by which the statement is reported indicates a lack of trustworthiness’,” reads a statement from the seven-page order.
The order suggests that the victim, who was 15 years of age at the time of the alleged incident, appears “to be a particularly intelligent and mature young man” who is “somewhat worldly and familiar with adult things.”
The order also indicates that the passage of multiple weeks between the incident and when it was reported does not lessen the reliability of the child’s testimony because he was “dissuaded from telling” his birth mother or “otherwise disclosing” the incident by his family members.
“The passage of time and the delay in the child making statements to CPT (after he returned to his mother’s home in Washington, D.C.), is entirely reasonable under these circumstances,” reads a portion of the order.
The order notes that the victim “appeared to still be emotionally affected” by the situation during the interview.
“While he was not displaying emotions like sadness, the child appeared nevertheless expressed a mix of emotions consistent with the complex situation in which he then found himself (a situation the child himself referred to as being ‘f***ed up.’)
The victim allegedly described being “lovestruck” and “infatuated” with his stepmother and angry at his father for wanting to cover up the incident.
The order goes on to state that child “has no apparent motive to fabricate these allegations” and that the victim is “obviously competent to testify”).
Furthermore, the victim has the “ability to distinguish fantasy from reality” and there was no evidence of any “improper influence” or of a “domestic dispute” that would have led the child to fabricate the allegations.
“The child did not shy away from making statements that would cast himself in a negative light (i.e., using marijuana the night of the incident, and frequently in the months leading up to it) as part of an overall description of the act. Had he minimized these things – which he would have had motive and opportunity to do – but did not. The court finds that this bolsters the overall reliability of his statement and its contents,” reads the order.
Yates was arrested last November and pled not guilty to the charge in December. Earlier this year, Yates’ attorneys requested a continuance to allow their team the opportunity to conduct depositions and build a defense for their client. Her defense team also took the deposition of a digital forensic examiner.