Opinion
48722.
SUBMITTED NOVEMBER 5, 1973.
DECIDED NOVEMBER 21, 1973.
Statutory rape. Jones Superior Court. Before Judge Jackson.
Walter M. Henritze, Jr., for appellant.
Joseph B. Duke, District Attorney, for appellee.
Under Code Ann. § 26-2018 no conviction for statutory rape shall be had on the unsupported testimony of the female. This nine-year-old child testified in detail as to the circumstances of an act of rape against her on the part of her stepfather, and further testified she had been so treated previously on many occasions. The testimony in corroboration is that of the mother, who testified that her child had complained to her on former occasions over a period of nine or ten months and that she had complained to her husband and been beaten and threatened as a result, plus the testimony of an examining physician who found her vagina dilated to an adult size and gave his opinion, from this and lack of evidence of trauma, that the child had been subjected to this or similar treatment over a period of months. The quantum of the corroboration and its persuasive character is usually for the jury. Lee v. State, 197 Ga. 123 ( 28 S.E.2d 465); Climer v. State, 204 Ga. 776 ( 51 S.E.2d 802). In this case there was also the testimony of a 14-year-old brother that on the occasion on which this prosecution is founded the defendant told him to take the baby outside and then locked them out; he also testified that he had witnessed an act of sexual intercourse performed on his sister by his stepfather in another state some nine months previously. See also Jones v. State, 213 Ga. 814 ( 102 S.E.2d 21). The general grounds of the motion for new trial are without merit.
2. It sufficiently appears that the rape was committed at the trailer where the child lived, and there was testimony that this trailer was located at a given address in Jones County, thus establishing venue. Although the family had lived in various counties and states in the past, an examination of the testimony as a whole leaves no doubt but that the specific act testified to and reported on September 23, 1972, was committed in the last county of residence.
3. The infant prosecutrix testified that prior to the event on which this prosecution was based the defendant had done certain things to her, the description of which showed it to be an act of sodomy. Sexual offenses of the same nature and within a short span of time, especially where they show a proclivity for a particular type of abnormal sexual activity, form some what of an exception to the general rule that evidence of other criminal activity is irrelevant and prejudicial, as stated in Bacon v. State, 209 Ga. 261 ( 71 S.E.2d 615). The testimony here is close in point of time, and both acts concern illegal and incestuous assaults on a young child. We therefore consider the testimony admissible as an exception to the general rule. See McNeal v. State, 228 Ga. 633 ( 187 S.E.2d 271); Anderson v. State, 222 Ga. 561 ( 150 S.E.2d 638); Hargett v. State, 121 Ga. App. 157 ( 173 S.E.2d 266); Staggers v. State, 120 Ga. App. 875 ( 172 S.E.2d 462); Warren v. State, 95 Ga. App. 79 ( 97 S.E.2d 194).
Judgment affirmed. Bell, C. J., and Quillian, J., concur.