IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 23-1347
Filed August 19, 2026
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State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
Chad Reese Bennett, Defendant–Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Marion County, The Honorable Charles C. Sinnard, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Karmen R. Anderson, Des Moines, attorney for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee.
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Considered without oral argument by Tabor, C.J., Langholz, J., and Vogel, S.J.
Opinion by Tabor, C.J.
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TABOR, Chief Judge.
Following a bench trial, the district court found Chad Bennett guilty of three counts of sexual abuse in the second degree. The State’s evidence showed that Bennett repeatedly performed sex acts on a ten-year-old girl who lived in his neighborhood. His appeal raises several issues. First, Bennett alleges the State violated his right to confront his accuser under the Iowa Constitution. Second, he claims he should have access to the victim’s counseling records. Next, he challenges both the weight and sufficiency of the State’s evidence. Finally, he asks to be resentenced because a victim impact statement introduced improper matters.
Because Bennett failed to preserve error on his claim under the state constitution, we decline to reach it. As for the counseling records, we performed our own in camera review and find no abuse of discretion in the district court’s assessment of the confidentiality privilege. On Bennett’s challenges to the sufficiency and weight of the evidence, we find no error or abuse of discretion in the district court’s rulings. And as to his last issue, we discern no sentencing error.
I. Facts and Prior Proceedings
Marie woke in the early morning hours of June 29, 2020, and checked the bedroom of her ten-year-old daughter, M.S.1 The door was locked. And when Marie knocked, her daughter did not respond. Marie picked the lock and found M.S. missing. Panicked, Marie called 911 and her adult son. They searched for about three hours. Finally, around 5:30 a.m., the family spotted M.S. and her dog walking back toward the house from a wooded area abutting
1 M.S.’s last name changed during the proceedings, but we choose to use her original initials. We refer to the mother by her middle name.
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the property of their neighbor, Monte Bennett.2 M.S. “was tearful, crying, anxious, afraid.”
As her daughter approached, Marie noticed someone ducking behind a black SUV in Monte’s driveway. When Pleasantville Police Chief Joseph Mrstik arrived at the scene, he found Chad Bennett, Monte’s brother, lying in the SUV’s backseat. Bennett told the chief that he was sleeping there while waiting to help Monte, who ran a trash collection business. But Chief Mrstik knew June 29 was not a garbage day in Pleasantville. Besides, Bennett did not appear to have been asleep. The chief recalled: “He was actively communicating with me, answering questions, he was breathing quite heavily, and he’s sweaty.” When Mrstik asked about M.S., Bennett “denied having any knowledge of that.”
Chief Mrstik also spoke with M.S. at her house that morning. Mrstik asked “if anything sexual had occurred between her and [Bennett].” M.S. said it had. The chief followed up with M.S. at the police station, and based on her disclosures, he referred her for an interview at the Blank Children’s Hospital STAR Center.3 M.S. met with forensic interviewer Nikki Romer, but M.S. said she was not completely honest with Romer because she didn’t “trust her.” M.S. also saw Jennifer Sleiter, a pediatric nurse practitioner, who found “perihymenal erythema, which is basically redness around the hymenal opening.” Sleiter could not give an opinion as to the cause but testified that the redness was “consistent with trauma to the area, as reported.”
2 We will refer to the neighbor as Monte and the defendant as Bennett.
3 STAR stands for Support Teams for Achieving Resilience; it houses a Child Advocacy Center.
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Meanwhile, while searching Bennett’s home, police found M.S.’s sweatshirt. Officers interviewed Bennett twice. When they first asked about M.S., Bennett denied knowing her. But Bennett later said they talked a couple times, and when confronted with more facts, conceded that she had been to his house on several occasions. He denied sexual contact with M.S.
The State charged Bennett with three counts of sexual abuse in the second degree, in violation of Iowa Code sections 709.1 and 709.3(1)(b) (2020). At trial, M.S. said she visited Bennett’s house, which was about three blocks from where she lived, many nights from April to June 2020. According to her testimony, she usually snuck out her bedroom window around 10 p.m. and did not return home until 5 a.m. She recalled nearly every visit involved sexual contact. She described three kinds of sex acts: penis to vagina, fingers to vagina, and penis to anus.
As corroborative evidence, the State offered testimony from Bennett’s neighbor, who was leaving for work around 4:30 a.m. on June 29 when he saw Bennett with someone matching M.S.’s description outside of his house.
The State also called forensic interviewer Romer as an expert witness.
She testified in general about disclosure of sexual abuse:
[W]hen [a] child is disclosing, they’re kind of dipping their toe in the water and then checking to see how people respond and what their life looks like. . . . It could be that there were things that they weren’t comfortable with at the time, but as time has gone on, they have become more comfortable, and they feel like they can talk more about what happened.
The district found Bennett guilty as charged and ordered him to serve a prison sentence not to exceed twenty-five years on each count, with a mandatory minimum term of seventeen and one-half years. The court imposed consecutive terms for two of the three counts. Bennett now appeals.
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II. Analysis
A. Confrontation Clause
Over Bennett’s objection, the district court approved the State’s request for M.S. to testify by closed-circuit video and audio. She testified outside of Bennett’s presence in March 2023. More than a year later, the supreme court decided that testimony by one-way, closed-circuit television violated article I, section 10 of the Iowa Constitution. 4 State v. White, 9 N.W.3d 1, 3, 15 (Iowa 2024) (noting that the video system allowed White to see the child witnesses, but the witnesses could not see White); see also State v. Lindaman, 30 N.W.3d 547, 560 (Iowa 2025) (rejecting State’s request to overrule White). On appeal, Bennett seeks to benefit from the supreme court’s new pronouncement in White.
The State argues that Bennett failed to preserve error on his state constitutional claim. We agree with the State. In the district court, Bennett resisted the State’s motion for a protective order, maintaining it could not “meet the high threshold to allow for use of the procedure specified in [Iowa Code] section 915.38.” Bennett also argued that using the procedures in section 915.38 would violate his rights “under the 6th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Article I, sections 9 and 10 of the Iowa Constitution.” But that was his only mention of the state constitution. The rest of his resistance focused on federal caselaw: Maryland v. Craig, 497 U.S. 836 (1990), and Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).
4 Article I, section 10 of our state constitution reads: “In all criminal prosecutions, and in cases involving the life, or liberty of an individual the accused shall have a right . . . to be confronted with the witnesses against him . . . .”
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What’s more, the district court ruled only on the statutory challenge, finding the State made an “adequate showing” that if M.S. had to testify in Bennett’s presence, she would suffer serious emotional distress such that she could not reasonably communicate. The court did not address the state constitution.
Because Bennett did not make an argument under state constitutional law and did not obtain a ruling under article I, section 10, we do not consider White’s applicability to Bennett’s trial. See State v. Hernandez, 20 N.W.3d 502, 509 (Iowa Ct. App. 2025) (“[W]e cannot correct an ‘error’ the district court never made.”). And because Bennett does not contest the court’s finding under section 915.38 on appeal, we have nothing to review.
B. Counseling Records
Bennett next contends that the district court should have allowed him to review M.S.’s counseling records. He points to evidence suggesting that M.S. had a posttraumatic stress disorder diagnosis “that preceded the instant allegations” and would affect her credibility.5 We apply “a hybrid standard of review” to Bennett’s contentions. See State v. Doorenbos, No. 19-1257, 2020 WL 3264408, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. June 17, 2020). We review his due process claims de novo and his nonconstitutional challenges for an abuse of discretion. State v. Thompson, 836 N.W.2d 470, 476 (Iowa 2013); Doorenbos, 2020 WL 3264408, at *4.
Our legislature created a “confidentiality privilege” for counseling records. See Iowa Code § 622.10. Generally, a counselor cannot “disclose any
5 The defense knew about M.S.’s diagnosis from the testimony of Dorothy Lifka, M.S.’s long-time therapist, at the hearing on the State’s motion for a protective order to have the child testify outside of Bennett’s presence.
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confidential communication properly entrusted to the person in the person’s professional capacity” that was “necessary and proper to enable the person to discharge the functions of the person’s office according to the usual course of practice or discipline.” Id. § 622.10(1). In a criminal case, this privilege is “absolute” and cannot “be construed to authorize or require the disclosure of any privileged records to a defendant.” Id. § 622.10(4)(a).
Despite being “absolute,” the privilege has two exceptions. First, privilege holders may waive their rights. See id. § 662.10(4)(a)(1). Second, a defendant may discover confidential records by “demonstrating in good faith a reasonable probability that the information sought is likely to contain exculpatory information that is not available from any other source and for which there is a compelling need for [him] to present a defense in the case.” Id. § 622.10(4)(a)(2)(a). When a district court finds that threshold showing met, it reviews the records in camera to decide whether they contain “exculpatory information” Id. § 662.10(4)(a)(2)(b).6 When records contain exculpatory information, the court must “balance the need to disclose such information against the privacy interest of the privilege holder.” Id. § 662.10(4)(a)(2)(c).
In preparing for trial, Bennett moved to produce M.S.’s confidential counseling records. After an in-camera review in December 2020, the court allowed counsel access to several records, including M.S.’s social history
6 Our supreme court has encouraged district court judges—in close cases—to examine the records in camera to avoid conditional remands for that purpose. State v. Leedom, 938 N.W.2d 177, 188 (Iowa 2020). Because the legislature did not define “exculpatory” in section 622.10, the Leedom court looked to its ordinary meaning: evidence tending to “establish a criminal defendant’s innocence.” Id. (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019)). Leedom also rejected any distinction between impeachment and exculpatory evidence. Id.
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taken at Tanager Place, psychotherapy notes from therapist Lifka, and recordings of M.S.’s interviews, progress notes, and laboratory tests from the STAR Center.
At a May 2021 hearing, the prosecutor noted that before deposing M.S., defense counsel “was provided documents that related to prior allegations of sexual assault upon this child.” The prosecutor added: “At that deposition [Bennett’s counsel] was allowed to ask the alleged child victim about those allegations of past sexual abuse” by two family members.
Bennett followed up with another motion to produce records in September 2022—this time, he sought M.S.’s psychiatric records. After receiving more records from medical providers, the court reviewed over 3,400 pages for exculpatory evidence. In November 2022, the court decided that although some documents referred “to certain events which could be characterized as ‘exculpatory,’ all of the potentially exculpatory information was previously produced to [Bennett] on December 31, 2020.” Thus, the court decided that under section 622.10(4)(a)(2)(c), there was no need for additional disclosures to Bennett.
Bennett objects to that November 2022 order on appeal. He insists that the “denial of disclosure” by the district court “raises great concern” because “it is impossible for [him] to know the extent and potential relevance of the records.” In defending the district court’s decision, the State emphasizes that the statute protects M.S.’s right to privacy in her mental health records by having a judge rather than an advocate for the alleged abuser review the records. See Leedom, 938 N.W.2d at 189.
The State notes that our court has reviewed sealed records to determine whether the district court abused its discretion. See State v.
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Sauvain, No. 20-0164, 2021 WL 811175, at *5–6 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 3, 2021). We follow that precedent here. After our own in-camera review of the psychiatric and counseling records submitted by M.S.’s medical providers, we discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s assessment. Any potential exculpatory evidence in M.S.’s therapeutic history was already available to Bennett from the December 2020 disclosures. M.S.’s privacy interests far outweigh the need for cumulative disclosure of that information. See Iowa Code § 622.10(4)(a)(2)(c).
C. Sufficiency and Weight of the Evidence
Bennett challenges both the sufficiency and the weight of the State’s evidence against him. We review his sufficiency challenge for the correction of legal error. State v. Wilde, 987 N.W.2d 486, 494 (Iowa Ct. App. 2022). Our “review is the same for a bench trial as a jury trial.” Id. The court’s factual findings act as a special verdict and are “binding on appeal if supported by substantial evidence.” Id. In other words, the record must convince a rational factfinder that Bennett is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Crawford, 974 N.W.2d 510, 516 (Iowa 2022). “We view the record in the light most favorable to the court’s [verdict].” Wilde, 987 N.W.2d at 494.
By contrast, we review rulings on new trial motions on weight of the evidence for an abuse of discretion. State v. Ary, 877 N.W.2d 686, 706 (Iowa 2016). The court may grant a motion under Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.24(2)(b) if the “verdict is contrary to the weight of the evidence.” Id. In other words, Bennett must show that a greater amount of credible evidence supports his side of the case. See State v. Shanahan, 712 N.W.2d 121, 135 (Iowa 2006).
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First, sufficiency. To convict Bennett, the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bennett committed a sex act with M.S. when she was under the age of twelve. Iowa Code §§ 709.1(3), .3(1)(b) (2020). A “sex act” is defined as, “any sexual contact between two or more persons by any of the following:” “penetration of the penis into the vagina or anus,” contact between the mouth and genitalia or anus, “contact between genitalia of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person,” or “contact between the finger, hand, or body part of one person and the genitalia or anus of another person.” Id. § 702.17 (cleaned up).
Bennett contends that the State did not offer substantial evidence that he committed sex acts with M.S. on the three occasions alleged in the trial information. He asserts that “[M.S.’s] claims suffered from a variety of credibility issues” overlooked by the district court.
That assertion is inaccurate. The district court addressed head-on the reliability of M.S.’s reports of abuse. The court recognized “[t]he fighting issue at trial was . . . the credibility of M.S.’s account of the facts.” The court highlighted Bennett’s skepticism:
Specifically, [Bennett] contends that M.S. made up the allegation that [he] sexually abused her in order to avoid punishment for running away from home on June 28th and 29th, 2020. [Bennett] attacked the credibility of [her] account, alleging that [her] testimony was uncorroborated, inconsistent and unlikely.
The court also acknowledged that M.S. “had given slightly different accounts” about when the abuse took place during her four different interviews with authorities. But the court found the variations unsurprising, relying on the expert’s testimony “that it is consistent for juvenile[s] subjected to sexual abuse to make gradual and uneven disclosures.”
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Critical to our analysis, the district court expressly found M.S.’s account credible. In support of that finding, the court cited her testimony that two or three times she saw “white stuff” come out of Bennett’s penis. The court observed: “This is a detail that would be unlikely for a ten-year-old to know unless they have actual experience with it.”
Challenging that observation on appeal, Bennett points out that M.S.
was three years older by the time of trial and contends that “is something a thirteen-year-old would certainly be aware of.” So, in his view, the court erred in giving credence to that detail. We are unconvinced by Bennett’s contention for two reasons. First, nothing in the record suggests that all thirteen-year-old girls know how male ejaculation works. Second, trial was not the first time that M.S. revealed that “white stuff” came out of Bennett’s penis. She also offered that detail at her deposition when she was eleven. And she told Chief Mrstik in a July 2020 interview that Bennett “squirted something” onto her.
At its core, determining credibility is the factfinder’s function. See Wilde, 987 N.W.2d at 495. And not only did the court believe her testimony standing alone, it detailed several corroborating circumstances that bolstered her believability. For instance, M.S. left her sweatshirt at Bennett’s house, and Bennett’s neighbor saw someone matching M.S.’s description in the early hours of June 29. Beyond that date, Marie said she noticed earlier that summer that her daughter had been acting tired during the day, supporting M.S.’s revelations that she had been sneaking out of the house at night.
Because a rational factfinder could credit M.S.’s testimony and determine beyond a reasonable doubt that Bennett performed three different sex acts on a child, substantial evidence supports his convictions. See State v. Donahue, 957 N.W.2d 1, 11 (Iowa 2021).
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Second, weight. To merit a new trial, Bennett had to show that the district court’s verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence and the court abused its discretion when denying his motion for a new trial. See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.24(2)(b)(7). Like his sufficiency claim, Bennett’s focus is on M.S.’s credibility. He argues, “Over the course of [her] multiple interviews her story surrounding the alleged abuse evolved, heightening its untrustworthiness.” And he alleges that Chief Mrstik’s leading questions “contaminated” M.S.’s report of abuse.
But as the State points out, the district court mulled the circumstances detracting from M.S.’s credibility and still believed her testimony about the sexual abuse. “And because this was a bench trial, the district court necessarily assessed the credibility of the witnesses in reaching its verdict.” See State v. Stendrup, 983 N.W.2d 231, 246–47 (Iowa 2022). We find no abuse of discretion in the court’s decision and affirm. See id. at 246 (“Our review is not to determine whether the verdict is contrary to the weight of the evidence but only to determine whether the district court abused its considerable discretion in denying the motion.”).
D. Sentencing Procedure
Lastly, Bennett asks to be resentenced, alleging that the district court considered impermissible matters included in a victim impact statement offered by M.S.’s mother. Bennett points to her “inflammatory description” of a separate criminal conviction on his record, and he highlights Marie’s reference to statistics allegedly showing “the chances of rehabilitating a pedophile at his age are very close to 0%.”
We review Bennett’s sentence for the correction of legal error. State v.
Sailer, 587 N.W.2d 756, 758 (Iowa 1998). To merit resentencing, Bennett
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must show an abuse of court discretion or a defect in the sentencing procedure, such as consideration of impermissible factors. See id. at 759. “Even if improper material is presented at sentencing, it is reversible error only if the district court relied on it.” State v. Schooley, 13 N.W.3d 608, 619 (Iowa 2024).
Bennett cannot show such reliance here. To the contrary, the court recognized that the mother’s victim impact statement “did make some reference to outside matters” and emphasized that it would not consider those matters. Nothing in the court’s rationale for its sentencing decision causes us to doubt that it followed proper protocol.
The sentencing court ordered the prison terms for counts I and II to be served consecutively to each other and concurrently to the term for count III. The court reasoned that those consecutive sentences were appropriate given Bennett’s pattern of victimization, the nature of the offenses, and his lack of remorse as exhibited by a letter he sent post-verdict to the victim’s family. The court rejected Bennett’s excuses:
There does not appear to this Court any effort by you to address the factors that cause you to behave that way or to do anything to rehabilitate yourself and to protect others, therefore the Court feels that it is its duty to impose the maximum opportunity for you to rehabilitate yourself and address those issues that the Court just spoke of, and most importantly to protect the public from further offenses.
Bennett argues that despite the court’s disavowal of the impermissible information, its reference to rehabilitation revealed “a clear and unambiguous correlation between [Marie’s] suggestion [regarding his chances of rehabilitation] and the Court’s ruling.” We disagree. We rely on sentencing courts to “filter out improper or irrelevant evidence” from victim impact statements, which are by their nature “unabridged expression[s] of
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the impact of the offense.” Sailer, 587 N.W.2d at 761, 764. The court made it clear that it did not consider the offending evidence here. See State v. Matheson, 684 N.W.2d 243, 244−45 (Iowa 2004). We find no abuse of discretion.
AFFIRMED.