Background
Adam Nunemaker faces an ongoing prosecution for rape, aggravated child molestation, child molestation, and enticing a child for indecent purposes. The alleged victim, R.C., had intermittently lived with the Nunemaker family as a foster child between 2013 and 2018.
Before accusing Nunemaker, R.C. reported that her mother’s boyfriend, Oscar Ruben Lopez-Gabriel, and a minor male cousin had molested her. Lopez-Gabriel later pleaded guilty to two child-molestation counts. The State moved to exclude evidence of those prior incidents under Georgia’s Rape Shield Statute. Nunemaker argued the evidence supported his misidentification defense, including a theory that prior trauma contributed to fabricated or conflated memories.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals held that Georgia’s Rape Shield Statute does not automatically bar evidence that a child victim was previously sexually abused by other perpetrators. Prior molestation or rape committed against a victim is not the victim’s past “sexual behavior” within the statute’s meaning.
The trial court therefore erred by treating the evidence as categorically inadmissible. The appellate court vacated that portion of the ruling and remanded for the trial court to assess admissibility under the ordinary evidence rules, including relevance and the Rule 403 balancing test. The court did not decide Nunemaker’s separate constitutional-rights argument.
Key Takeaways
- Evidence that a child victim was previously molested is not automatically excluded by Georgia’s Rape Shield Statute.
- Such evidence must be evaluated under the usual rules governing relevance, admissibility, and unfair prejudice.
- White v. State did not overrule earlier cases holding that abuse inflicted on a victim is not the victim’s sexual behavior.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes evidence of a complainant’s sexual behavior from evidence that the complainant was victimized by another person. In child-sex-abuse prosecutions, defendants may seek admission of prior-abuse evidence when it is relevant to a defense, but trial courts must make a case-specific evidentiary ruling rather than apply an automatic rape-shield exclusion.