In the Interest of M.D., Minor Child ( 2023 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 23-0536
Filed May 24, 2023
IN THE INTEREST OF M.D.,
Minor Child,
V.W., Mother,
Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Cheryl Traum, District
Associate Judge.
A mother appeals the termination of her parental rights. AFFIRMED.
Barbara E. Maness of Kimball-Stevenson House, Davenport, for appellant
mother.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Mary A. Triick, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Jean Capdevila, Davenport, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child.
Considered by Schumacher, P.J., and Chicchelly and Buller, JJ.
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BULLER, Judge.
The juvenile court terminated the mother’s parental rights to this child (born
in 2022) on six separate statutory grounds, and the mother appeals. Finding clear
and convincing evidence of at least one statutory ground, we affirm the termination.
As the juvenile court noted, this family has a lengthy history with the trial
courts and the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), pre-dating
the birth of the child at issue in this appeal. Child-in-need-of-assistance (CINA)
cases and termination proceedings relating to other children were litigated from
2018 to 2021, prompted at first by concerns related to the mother’s medical abuse
or neglect of her children.
Our court also previously decided cases related to this mother and her older
children. In 2020, a panel of our court reversed termination of the mother’s
parental rights, finding the State failed to prove either that the children could not
be returned to the mother’s custody or that the basis for the CINA adjudication
persisted. In re T.W., No. 20-1161, 2020 WL 7022390, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App. Nov.
30, 2020). The core of the factual allegation in that case was that the mother
provided false and exaggerated information about one or both of her children,
perpetrating what was once known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and is
now referred to as factitious disorder imposed on another. Id. at *2. In other words,
the mother was inventing or exaggerating medical conditions and subjecting the
children to unnecessary tests and treatment.
Tragically, two months after our court’s panel decision in T.W., one of the
children was fatally injured by the mother’s paramour, who is the father of the child
at issue in this appeal. The facts of that abuse are recounted fully in a February
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2023 decision of our court, which affirmed the termination of parental rights for one
of the mother’s surviving children. See In re B.W., No. 23-0002, 2023 WL
2148767, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App., Feb. 22, 2023). Suffice to say, the paramour
(through either neglect or overt abuse) inflicted numerous serious injuries on the
male child, including broken bones, burns to his mouth and nose, injuries to his
anus and genitalia, and fractures to his skull. Id. The paramour was convicted of
neglect of a dependent person resulting in death by an Indiana court, and he was
sentenced to thirty-two years in prison. Id. We affirmed termination of the mother’s
rights to B.W. for four reasons: because the mother was dishonest with her
therapist regarding the child’s death, because she remained “oblivious” to risks
posed to her children given her poor protective capacities, because her tendency
to expose children to unnecessary medical interventions persisted, and because
she “struggled to form a bond” with the child. See id.The record developed in this termination proceeding convinced the juvenile
court that these same concerns had not abated and warranted termination of the
mother’s rights to this child under Iowa Code section 232.116(1), paragraphs (d),
(e), (g), (h), (i), and (n) (2022). On our de novo review, we may affirm if any one
of these grounds was proven by clear and convincing evidence. In re A.B., 815
N.W.2d 764, 774 (Iowa 2012). We dispose of the appeal by applying
paragraph (h), for which the mother contests a single element: whether the child
could be returned to her custody “at the present time.” Iowa Code
§ 232.116(1)(h)(4); see In re A.M., 843 N.W.2d 100, 111 (Iowa 2014) (recognizing
“at the present time” means at the time of the termination hearing).
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In reviewing this record, we credit and are persuaded by the credibility
findings and observations of the juvenile court. See A.M., 843 N.W.2d at 110. The
court found that, based on its observations of the mother “in each court hearing,”
the mother showed little empathy for the children and only expressed emotion
“during testimony about [the paramour’s] prison sentence” and when things
otherwise “affected her, not her children.” The court also noted that, even as of
the termination hearing, the mother had not fully accepted that her paramour killed
her older child or that her decision to allow him to care for the child played a role
in the death.
The juvenile court’s observations of the mother’s cold indifference are
supported by the record evidence. For example, while the mother claimed that
she dropped to the ground upon news of her child’s fatal injuries, the social workers
in Indiana reported that the mother spent much of her time at the hospital on her
cell phone and showed very little emotion. At the termination trial, when discussing
her older child’s fatal injuries, she described taking the child off life support as
“pulling the plug,” rather than the emotional experience of a parent deciding end-
of-life treatment.
In the months leading up to termination, the mother repeatedly
demonstrated she still lacks basic parenting skills. She required prompting to tend
to her crying child, and she demonstrated no meaningful bond with the child. She
refused to cooperate with HHS’s requests for the identity of her multiple paramours
or associates (including the identity of the father she recently conceived with),
which has prevented background checks necessary to ensure the child is not
exposed to dangerous individuals. Even after one year of therapy, the mother
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failed to disclose the facts surrounding the death of B.W. to her therapist, which
highlights her failure to recognize that her parenting choices can have fatal
consequences for the children in her care. At the time of termination, she had
discontinued counseling and essentially all other services. Finally, the mother
remains deceitful and dishonest, as evidenced by her lying about whether her child
had vomited, pricking her child’s finger for blood when the provider was briefly
distracted, and continuing to debate the merits of her factitious-disorder diagnosis
rather than work to improve her parenting skills.
In sum, we agree with the HHS worker’s testimony, well-grounded in her
work with this family, that the mother’s “ability to protect her children . . . has not
improved through this service case. It has gotten worse, actually.” In light of the
evidence discussed in this opinion and the deference we owe to the juvenile court’s
credibility determinations, we fully adopt the juvenile court’s finding that the child
“still cannot be left with the mother outside of close and constant supervision.” This
finding defeats the mother’s challenge on appeal and ends our analysis. The State
met its burden under section 232.116(1)(h), and we affirm the termination of
parental rights, consistent with our recent decision in B.W., 2023 WL 2148767, at
*2–3 (applying section 232.116(1)(f)—the analogous provision for older children).
AFFIRMED.