Opinion
No. CAF 10-00547.
June 10, 2011.
Appeal from an order of the Family Court, Erie County (Patricia A. Maxwell, J.), entered February 24, 2010 in a proceeding pursuant to Family Court Act article 10. The order, inter alia, placed respondent under the supervision of petitioner.
WILLIAM D. BRODERICK, JR., ELMA, FOR RESPONDENT-APPELLANT.
JOSEPH T. JARZEMBEK, BUFFALO, FOR PETITIONER-RESPONDENT.
DAVID C. SCHOPP, ATTORNEY FOR THE CHILD, THE LEGAL AID BUREAU OF BUFFALO, INC., BUFFALO (CHARLES D. HALVORSEN OF COUNSEL), FOR.
Present — Scudder, P.J., Centra, Peradotto, Gorski and Martoche, JJ.
It is hereby ordered that the order so appealed from is unanimously affirmed without costs.
Memorandum: In this proceeding pursuant to Family Court Act article 10, respondent father appeals from an order that, inter alia, placed him under the supervision of petitioner based on a finding that he sexually abused his daughter. Contrary to the father's contention, the finding of sexual abuse is supported by the requisite preponderance of the evidence ( see § 1046 [b] [i]; Matter of Tammie Z., 66 NY2d 1, 3).
Contrary to the father's further contention, Family Court did not abuse its discretion in denying his motion for a Frye hearing with respect to the admissibility of validation testimony of a court-appointed mental health counselor. "Once a scientific procedure has been proved reliable, a Frye inquiry need not be conducted each time such evidence is offered, and court[s] may take judicial notice of [its] reliability" ( People v Hopkins, 46 AD3d 1449, 1450, lv denied 10 NY3d 812 [internal quotation marks omitted]; see People v LeGrand, 8 NY3d 449, 458). Here,' the court-appointed counselor utilized the Sgroi method to interview the child and make a determination with respect to the veracity of her allegations. The Court of Appeals has cited to Dr. Sgroi's "Handbook of Clinical Intervention in Child Sexual Abuse" ( see Matter of Nicole V., 71 NY2d 112, 120-121, rearg denied 71 NY2d 890), and other courts in New York State have admitted validation testimony of experts who have utilized the Sgroi method ( see e.g. Matter of Thomas N., 229 AD2d 666, 668; Matter of Nassau County Dept. of Social Servs. v Steven K., 176 AD2d 326, 327-328). Further, the court-appointed counselor testified at the hearing that the Sgroi method was used by "all" counselors in the field to validate allegations of sexual abuse. Inasmuch as a Frye hearing is required only where a party seeks to introduce testimony on a novel topic ( see People v Garrow, 75 AD3d 849, 852), and there is no indication in the record that the methods used by the court-appointed counselor to validate the allegations of sexual abuse in this case were novel, the father's motion for a Frye hearing was properly denied.
We further conclude that the court properly determined that the out-of-court statements of the child were sufficiently corroborated ( see Nicole V., 71 NY2d at 118-119). We have reviewed the father's remaining contentions and conclude that they are without merit.