Commonwealth v. Souza

Three grandchildren of the defendants, Shirley and Raymond Souza, complained that their grandparents had sexually molested them. Those complaints, the grandparents said in their defense, were false — the product of family hysteria and parental suggestion. In aid of that theory, defense counsel sought to cross-examine the mothers of the complaining grandchildren about the mothers’ recovery of previously repressed memories of sexual abuse that they themselves had suffered. The trial judge excluded questioning along those lines, and that is a claim of error on appeal. Another claim of error is…