Supreme Court of Wisconsin Finds Child Abuse Pediatrician Didn’t Improperly Vouch for Victim by Testifying That Only Around 1% of Child Sexual Assault Disclosures Are False

In State v. Haseltine, 352 N.W.2d 673 (1984), the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin held that 

witnesses may not testify that they think another witness is telling the truth. Vouching for the credibility of another witness is impermissible under the rules of evidence because it invades the province of the trier of fact—here, the jury. State v. Molde, 2025 WL 1668403 (Wis. 2025). 

In Molde, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin had to decide “whether an expert witness violated the Haseltine rule when she testified that only around one percent of child sexual assault disclosures are false, but did not offer an opinion on whether the victim in this case was telling the truth.”

The court concluded that there was no violation of the Haseltine rule, finding as follows:

In this case, we conclude that Dr. Swenson’s statistical testimony did not cross the line into impermissible vouching. Dr. Swenson testified that “false disclosures are extraordinarily rare, like in the one percent of all disclosures are false disclosures.” Dr. Swenson’s answer to the jury question did nothing more than tell the jury that false disclosures are, statistically speaking, uncommon. She did not directly or indirectly comment on the veracity of Lauren’s allegations against her father. Dr. Swenson never indicated that she thought Lauren was telling the truth. The juror’s question was statistical in nature: “[H]ow frequent is it for children to make up a story of sexual abuse?” Dr. Swenson answered the juror’s question directly and did not take that extra step of applying it to Lauren’s testimony.

Molde contends that Dr. Swenson’s supervision of the forensic interview transformed her testimony into implicit vouching. The jury, Molde argues, would have understood Dr. Swenson’s answer as a personal or particularized endorsement of Lauren’s credibility. But the record does not reflect what this supervision entailed; we have no way of knowing how closely Dr. Swenson got to know Lauren—if at all. We do not believe that Dr. Swenson’s supervisory role automatically transforms her answer to the juror’s question about false reporting into an opinion that Lauren herself was telling the truth.

Molde’s core legal claim in this case is that he received ineffective assistance of counsel when his lawyer did not raise a Haseltine objection to the juror’s questions. Ineffective assistance requires that Molde prove he was prejudiced as a result of his counsel’s constitutionally deficient performance….Because Dr. Swenson offered permissible statistical testimony instead of impermissible vouching, we conclude Molde’s counsel had no duty to object to this admissible testimony. Accordingly, his counsel was not deficient for failing to raise a Haseltine objection, and Molde’s ineffective assistance of counsel claim fails.

-CM